Over time Dr Montessori came to see that in order to facilitate the full development of the human being assistance must begin at birth. She facilitated the formation of the first Montessori class for children from one to three years of age which began in Rome in 1947. In 1948 Adele Costa Gnocchi, one of Maria Montessori’s early students, began training adults to work with children under 3 in Rome. The work was precipitated by the publication of The Absorbent Mind and Montessori’s return from India following the war.

Soon an Assistants to Infancy course for adults began. This was a two year course, held every day. The staff included paediatricians and other Montessori people and in the beginning the students were mainly Montessori mothers and teachers. After Costa Gnocchi’s retirement, the course became a state vocational course and, as such, is still in existence.

In 1957 a sub-specialty of the Assistants to Infancy course was offered. This was an additional third year of training during which one learned about the last two months of pregnancy and the first two months of the newborn’s life, known as the “symbiotic period.”

In 1961 the “Centro Nacito Montessori”, a birth centre, was organised to:
1. study the problems related to pregnancy and the puerperium (the time immediately following birth).
2. find solutions for the problems of pregnancy and puerperium, and
3. help pregnant women, or women who had just given birth, find an Assistant to Infancy to help at home, a referral service as it were. Assistants to Infancy at this time sometimes actually moved in with the family and cared for the mother and baby for several weeks.

In 1980 Dr. Silvana Quatrocchi Montanaro, lecturer on the Italian State course began the AMI Assistants to Infancy Course in Rome, retaining on her staff many of the Montessorians associated with Assistants to Infancy training since its early years, including Gianna Gobbi.

In 1983 the first two-summer Assistants to Infancy course was held in the United States of America. Since that time there have been courses given in Rome, London, Mexico, Osaka, Japan and several cities in the USA. The first course to be offered in the Southern Hemisphere in planned to commence on 12 June 2000 on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. There are currently three AMI Directors of Training at the Assistants to Infancy level: Silvana Montanaro, Judi Orion and Silvia Carbone-Singh.