Excerpts From Montessori Insights for Parents of Young Children by Aline D. Wolf.

Nurturing Concentration (page 22)
Cultivating a child’s power of concentration actually begins before the child is three.  Concentration is a fragile mind-set that can easily be interrupted by adults who do not understand that age 0-3 is the formative stage for this lifelong power. 

For example, a young child may be floating sticks in a puddle or lining up pots and pans on the kitchen floor when her caretaker decides, ‘Enough of this mess,” and abruptly ends the activity.

To interfere with a child’s concentration in order to change his messy clothes or clean up a cluttered floor is to put appearances ahead of the child’s psychic development.  If a child’s cycle of activity is interrupted, the results are a deviation of behavior, aimlessness and loss of interest...So whatever intelligent activity we witness in a child- even if it seems absurd to us...we must not interfere; for the child must be able to finish the cycle of activity on which his heart is set.”

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