I spent nearly a decade in the Montessori classroom working with toddlers. I watched children light up when they were given the freedom, the tools, and the trust to do things for themselves. I saw what happens when adults step back just enough to let a child step forward.
Then I became a mom.
And suddenly all that training met the messy, exhausting, beautiful reality of raising a child in your own home. I learned quickly that knowing the theory and living it every day are two very different things, especially when you're running on broken sleep and cold coffee.
That gap between what parents know in their heads and what feels possible in the moment is exactly why I started Wide Eyes Little Hands.
I work with parents on Milwaukee's North Shore and beyond to bring Montessori principles into real homes, not magazine-worthy ones. My approach is grounded in AMI training, developmental science, and the honest understanding that parenting is hard and that you don't need to do it perfectly to do it well.