The Importance of Repetition

‘How many times are you going to do that, again and again?’

Perfection. We all strive for perfection in our work. Some of us are willing to go the extra mile to enhance our skills, accumulate the necessary knowledge, build up our willpower to focus and concentrate on achieving that desirable state of being, where we feel satisfied with what we do and when we believe that there can be no better way of doing it. To the adult, therefore, perfection is an end result of meticulous hard work, planning and sometimes prodigious skill. It is something that requires our determination, focus and time. To the child, however, this is a natural way of life.

They say practice makes a man perfect, which is quite true. Repetition of an activity does make one better at it, and we learn from our mistakes. However, a child seems to repeat activities several times over, not only to do it better, but also with a sense of purpose, and utmost concentration as his fingers move to the steady rhythm in his heart. However, at the end of the many repetitions of a seemingly mundane task, there appears a satisfied smile on that little face.

Toddlers and small children for instance, ask for the same songs to be sung again and again, the same bedtime story to be repeated every night, and they might bang a spoon on a bowl several times just to hear the same sound again and again, till you are exhausted! Some parents may notice that their child just loves to wash his/ her hands again and again, despite them being clean. Others may find their little ones rushing to the brooms and brushes, trying to sweep a sparkling clean floor. I think we can agree that there seems to be an internal force which drives them to do the same activity again and again.

This ‘Repetition of the Exercise’ by the child was something that the children showed to Dr. Maria Montessori at the first House of Children, ‘Casa Dei Bambini’, as she observed them with her loving, yet unprejudiced eyes. A three year old girl was seen repeating the activity ‘Cylinder Blocks’ (a series of wooden blocks with cylinders which could be placed in and out of cavities that are scientifically graded. The child becomes conscious of the differences in the three dimensions of solids.). Dr. Montessori was intrigued by how the child seemed to focus all her energies on doing her work, completely oblivious to her surroundings. This kind of behaviour also seemed to be quite frequently happening in the first House of Children.

Dr. Montessori wanted to experiment with this apparent insensibility to one’s environment further, and she requested the adult (teacher) there to sing and clap around with the other children. The little girl went on. Dr. Montessori then gently picked up child along with her armchair, and kept her on a table. The girl quickly gathered up the blocks in her skirt and continued the activity 42 times. At the end of this marathon, where there seemed to be no obvious difference in her speed or skill, she looked up, and smiled.

This instance of repetition is not in isolation, nor is it unbelievable. This event happened somewhere around 1907. Humanity may have changed in several ways. But the child remains the same, frozen in time, with the same tendencies provided by nature and God. I’d like to share a few instances where the child showed me this innate need for repetition that seemed quite mysterious and intriguing. The first being, coincidentally, a story of repetition with the aforesaid Cylinder Blocks.

A four year old girl, who had been in the traditional method of schooling, had just come along with her mother to the Montessori Training Course. The mother was busy in class, and the little one was unable to stay still for a long time, her hands itching towards the various materials displayed, which her mother seemed to be able to work with. She was finally presented with the Cylinder Blocks by an adult, and it was quite amazing to see her sit down determinedly on the mat, working quickly and deftly with the Cylinders. She was talking to herself, humming to herself as she did the activity. I stopped what I was doing, and watched her. I counted the number of times she worked with the block. It was 15 times! At the end of it, she stood up with the block, telling everyone around her, ‘I’m done!’ and with a satisfied nod she put it back on the shelf.

I was left pondering, ‘But weren’t you done the first time?’

At the Montessori house of children I work at now, it is not unusual to see a child work with a Sensorial or Exercise of Practical Life material 5- 20 times at a stretch. Be it a 3 year old pouring grains and water several times and rejoicing that there was no water on his oilcloth, or a 4 year old cutting carrots and sharing with me smaller and more similar looking pieces of them every day, repetition seems to be a rhythm in a Montessori environment, that has helped the new children settle down and the others hone their skills. Repetition here with the means of development don’t just help with developing perfection and concentration, but repeatedly working with materials and imbibing the purpose of the activity, brings about something amazing- Discoveries.

Repetition by the child is truly wondrous, has to be respected and more importantly, should be allowed to happen!

It could be a 3 year old working everyday with the Pink Tower who realises that the cubes which change in all three dimensions (small to big) seem to be just like the third Cylinder Block (Block C) which has cylinders ranging from small to big. She picks the cylinders one day and places the smallest of the cylinders near the smallest Pink Tower cube and the next cylinder near the second slightly bigger cube of the Tower and so on. It could even be a 4 and half year old working with the Constructive Triangles, who repeats the activity of joining the black lines on triangles to make different shapes several times, and discovers that the scalene, right-angled triangles used to make a rectangle are the same as those used to make an elongated parallelogram. He overlaps the two rectangles that he has thus made and proudly shows them to the adult.

Sure, discoveries are not only restricted to the Sensorial materials, a child can even discover that a big square-like napkin when folded twice along its medial becomes a smaller square! Repetition by the child is truly wondrous, has to be respected and more importantly, should be allowed to happen!

This is Man in the process of creating himself. Let him take his time. He needs no external motive or reward for his struggles. He repeats and seeks to strive towards perfection for himself. Let us merely fade into the background and allow him to work in an environment where he can choose to work for however long he wants, till that seeking, striving, determined mind is satisfied. Because, he is capable of declaring to all around him when he is satisfied-

“I’m Done!”