WAITING IS NOT EASY!
In Mo Willems’ picture book Waiting Is Not Easy!, Gerald the elephant groans his way through a very long wait for Piggie’s surprise.
Our children know the feeling. A child spots the Hundred Board… except it isn’t on the shelf. A friend has it out on a mat, placing the number tiles carefully, one by one. There’s only one Hundred Board in the classroom, so our eager counter does something quietly remarkable: they wait. The same thing happens at the Invitation Table, where children wait for a seat to open up before they take their turn.
Why we have just one of each
Dr Maria Montessori deliberately stocked her classrooms with only one of each material. In The Absorbent Mind, she explained that too many things create confusion, and she treated waiting as part of the lesson rather than a flaw in the plan. When one child is using a material, the next child waits until their friend finishes and returns it to the shelf.
Because this happens many times every day, respecting a friend’s work and waiting for a turn gradually become habits rather than rules. Children learn that they can want something right now and still manage the wait.
What Dr Montessori observed
Dr Montessori never believed adults could lecture patience into a child. Instead, she let the classroom do the teaching. As she put it: “So we have few things, even if there are many children.” Children come to respect a friend’s work not because a grown-up tells them to, but because they meet that reality every single day.
She noticed something else too. Each time a child holds back the urge to grab and chooses to wait, they exercise their will. With daily practice over months and years, that small act of self-control matures into genuine patience, a social skill children build for themselves.
That’s exactly what happens in our classroom. The Hundred Board always comes back to the shelf and a seat always opens up at the Invitation Table, so every wait that ends in a turn makes the next wait a little easier.
Try it at home
Name it and thank them. “You really want a turn. Waiting is hard, and you’re doing it!”
Keep your promises. If you say, “I’ll play after I finish this call,” follow through. Every kept promise makes the next wait easier.
Share strategies. Sing a song, count to 20, or find something else to do in the meantime.
Resist the rescue. Buying a second toy solves today’s wait, but practice builds tomorrow’s patience.
What we love to see
Every time your child waits for a turn, they practise managing big feelings, respecting others and trusting their community. So the next time your little one tells you they waited for the Hundred Board today, you’ll know how much learning happened in that wait.
And if waiting still feels hard at your house? Gerald would agree: waiting is not easy. It is, however, worth it.