One little change can have an impact.
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About Jesse McCarthy
For 20 years, Jesse McCarthy has worked with thousands of children, parents, teachers and administrators — as a principal for infants to 8th graders, an executive with a nationwide group of private schools, an elementary & junior-high teacher, and a parent-and-teacher mentor.
Jesse received his B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and his Montessori teacher's diploma for ages 2.5 to 6+ from Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), the organization founded by Dr. Maria Montessori.
Jesse has spoken on early education and child development at schools around the globe, as well as at popular organizations in and outside of the Montessori community: from AMI/USA to Twitter. Jesse now heads MontessoriEducation.com and hosts The Montessori Education Podcast.
Transcript: Lower Your Voice
The educator Dr. Maria Montessori once said, "The child developing harmoniously, and the adult improving himself at his side, make a very exciting and attractive picture." Welcome to Montessori Education, with me, Jesse McCarthy, where we talk raising children and educating students, while bettering ourselves right alongside them.
So a few months back, I found that I was getting frustrated. Not with my child, but with my wife, actually. So what was happening is, I would be in our room, maybe working on something, and then I'd hear Alessandra, my wife, she's yelling something at me. Not in a mean way, but just, you know, something that she wanted to remind me of or have me do or something.
But she's in a completely different room. It's far away. So I'm getting, you know, muffled voice, can't really understand her. And then again, I'm in the middle of doing something. So it was. It was pretty annoying. So I was getting frustrated. And what was weird about this is that at other times I'd realize after I started to pick up on this from Alessandra is that I was doing the same thing to her.
So I might be in here working on something like I'm recording this podcast and I might be like checking an email and be like, Oh, did you see this thing? And now I'm yelling to her in a different room. So it's, it was just this weird situation and we were getting upset with each other because it's like, Hey, is he listening to me?
Is she listening to me? Why isn't she answering? Or if I do answer or she answers, you got to yell back. So that's awkward. So it just became this thing like, why are we yelling from afar? You know, I think there's some element of convenience there, like, I don't want to get up and go, and go walk over there.
But why are we shouting these things to each other? And it led to all sorts of just, frustration for no reason. So, I'm mentioning this not because I want to get into, you know, dealing with spouses and so forth, but we do the same thing with children. And usually much, much more. And what I'm talking about here is just yelling or just loud voices for no real reason.
You can imagine, I mean, all sorts of examples. You're at the park. Alright, we gotta go! And you just scream this into a group of children. I guess hoping your child hears or thinking your child hears and is focused on you. You could be at home. I know this happened here. Like, we're having dinner in five minutes!
And you just shout that into your child's room from, like, the kitchen. At school, this happens all the time, particularly in the playground, right? Like a teacher's like, I'm like, Jacob, Jacob. And she gets this little boy's attention. Go tell Samantha to come over here. And you're yelling all of this, right?
So then, of course, in this situation, Jacob's going to proceed to run over maybe near the Samantha girl and just yell to her, Samantha, get over here. So we've got this, domino effect of yelling and screaming. So this is problematic for a few reasons, which I'm going to get to, and I think what we all need to do is just, as I often say, is just chill out.
Lower our voices a little bit and start like eye to eye contact, talking a little bit lower. It's so, so helpful. And what's wild is the examples I've given, none of them are even when we're angry. So if we're raising our voices for all these different situations, yelling or just very high voices, when we're not angry.
Who knows what happens when we're really worked up with a child or with a spouse, significant other, you know, et cetera. So what I want to do today is simple and it's going to be short and sweet is just to get across that: we all need to lower our freaking voices. I know simple, why are you doing a podcast episode on this?
But I think it's important. It's super practical. So why not just get it out there? I'll definitely tell you over my years and years of experience. It's so huge, but it's this minor thing that we just change up. I remember once, I was doing a talk at some school, I don't even remember where it was now, but sometimes when I do talks, I'll observe in the classrooms, for, you know, half the day or something like that beforehand.
I was observing in this 3 -6 Montessori classroom, and I was just shocked because, I was like, where is this, where is the teacher? And I'm looking around because I can't hear her. She was speaking to the children with literally, like, this is how she would speak to the children. Now, I'm kind of whispering, but she wasn't really whispering, she was just talking very low and she'd go, she'd get right next to them and say, Oh, I see that you're working on this right now.
Um, it looks like you need a little bit of help. Something like that. And, and then of course the children were also speaking in soft voices. This wasn't something forced, like, we need to speak in low voice. It just came naturally, and it was just such a peaceful environment. I've also observed in a lot of infant classrooms, again, these are usually Montessori schools, and what I found that is incredible is if a child is, gets really upset for something, just, you know, really worked up crying, the best, best, best teachers or caretakers I've seen, they go over there, and it's this soothing voice, very low.
You know, with a crying infant, you don't go over, What's, what's going on? That just gets the excitement and the energy up where they need this calm, composed voice. So, again. Peaceful. This lowering the voice. Lowering our voice. I mean, even if you see a struggle between maybe two children, as long as they're not hitting, because I'm not crazy, or if it's an emergency, you yell, you know, like, stop that across the room if somebody's about to hit another child or is hitting.
But let's say, you know, two children are just arguing back and forth. If I go over there and I'm like, what are each of you doing? And this high voice can be like, Okay, so what's going on here, guys? Yeah, I'm going to talk it out in a low voice and that voice alone kind of calms the situation a little bit.
Again, this isn't like magic, everything's not going to just be solved by us talking in a low voice, but it helps. I remember actually just thinking about this in an introspective way. I remember as a teacher, I used to teach 4th through 8th graders, and I, I have a few very vivid experiences in mind where I could just sense myself getting louder and louder with a child who wasn't, quote, listening.
This was in a relatively traditional school, so they're, you know, kids are sitting in desks and I'm lecturing. And you, you know, when you get your voice is getting louder and louder and you're not getting the response you want, you can feel it viscerally, like inside. So that's the sign that, I'm getting worked up and maybe I should cool down before I keep speaking, and I think even speaking lower, so I say lower your voice, I think that can cool us internally, so we calm ourselves.
So I think that's another benefit of just speaking low. It's just a calming thing for the body, and for the children, and for other people around us. And now I know this, you know, just hugely experientially with my own son, Ragnar, who's 23 months old. It's just amazing, what happens when I consciously lower my voice and again, this isn't when he's just doing something quote wrong or that I want to change.
It's like all of a sudden I become aware, wait, I'm speaking kind of loud. Let me just, let me just switch it up here a little bit. My voice goes down and then what happens with Ragnar's? His voice goes down. Now I know I'm not like spitting some massively deep insightful thing here, but I think we really all need reminders. So this isn't just for you, like, Lower your voice out there listeners. This is for me as well. Like man, it could be so helpful with my own child, with the children that I work with, with my spouse, with other adults.
If I just have that as a reminder, in my mind, am I, am I speaking at a normal voice level? Or am I talking really loud and getting hyped up? And I tend to get hyped up. So I really work on this. And I will say, you know, another example of this actually is, so we have a little school house and my son is in it and sometimes he will wake up a little early and now the other children in the class, they're still sleeping and, again, my son is 23 months old. The other children, this is a three to six classroom, so they're a little bit older. But I'll walk my son out, and I'll, you know, I'll put the finger over my mouth and "Shhh, the other children are still sleeping. We need to keep our voices low." And it really is crazy, he will, he'll mimic the, the action of putting the finger over the mouth, and So, we have to model this type of behavior if we want it in our children, because of course there's going to be times when we want our children not to be screaming and yelling, you know, restaurants, friends houses, all sorts of experiences where it's just not appropriate to be using loud, loud voices, and children often use loud, loud voices.
And I think part of it is because we often use loud voices with them, because we think that's going to help if we raise our voices, oh, they're really going to listen. No, weirdly enough ironically enough, if we keep our voices low and, and say what we mean and mean what we say, they listen.
They really do. Now I've talked about us with adults and I do want to mention that I don't think this is just with children. I do think it's with other people. Um, I remember this one experience. This was years and years ago. I was living in this apartment complex.
Something had gone wrong. I don't remember the whole context, but I had to go down to the main office and the manager was there. So I'm talking with the manager explaining, you know, what's going on and I'm a pretty chill guy. I'm not, I don't yell at people. Um, I just really don't yell at people unless there's some serious situation going on.
But all of a sudden, this guy just gets crazy worked up with me. He starts getting really loud and I'd, I'd experienced him before and he wasn't like this. He's like almost screaming at me. So I just said in that moment, I just, I remember this so vividly. I just said it very calm, low and kind of an empathetic voice, you know, like, Hey, is everything all right?
I mean, you're yelling at me. And it was just like that. It was very calm, and it was not like, what the, what the hell? And I gotta tell you, it was this immediate change in him. And he just apologized, and then we kind of discussed the actual situation I was dealing with. You know, we didn't get into his emotions and issues he might be having, because that definitely wasn't my place.
But it's just to say that even the tone of voice with another adult can have an impact. Of course I was using kind of, I had some serious empathy for this guy because who knows what was going on in his life. I remember it was late in the afternoon and so forth, but who knows, but just lowering our voices, whether it's an adult or a child.
Now I am not. I'm not saying that doing this is The Answer, you know: World peace comes through lowering our voices or something ridiculous like that; or even peace with children. I mean, so much goes into creating a peaceful, awesome environment whether at home as parents or in school as teachers with children.
So, it's not, you know, lowering your voice is everything. But it is a piece of the puzzle, and it's just such a simple, practical, easy change or reminder that we can have for ourselves, so I thought, let's get it out there.
And that's it. I hope it's a little bit helpful for you guys out there. If it was or if you just enjoy the podcast generally, please, please, please, share it. Review the show. The show is the Montessori Education Podcast with me, Jesse McCarthy. You can also subscribe to the channel on YouTube and definitely click the bell there to get notified of new videos if you have not done that yet.
All this really helps out, getting other people to know about the show and it's much appreciated by me as well. Now, if you want to reach me personally, just head over to MontessoriEducation.com and you can contact me there.
I do want to apologize to any of you who have emailed me in the last few weeks or maybe even months. It's just been super busy. I will get back to you eventually. So, uh, just hold up and we'll get to you and that's really it. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Again I hope you enjoyed the episode today and adios for now.