Monthly Archives: May 2011

“Love And Anger: The Parental Dilemma”–Chapter 8: “Mad Is Not Bad”

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“One of the most difficult things for a parent to do is to acknowledge a child’s intense expressions of anger – and to validate that anger as real.”

Have you ever struggled with that? Or with helping your child manage what behavior is acceptable when they are angry?

The authors validate in this chapter that as parents we can be very uncomfortable with anger as an emotion coming from our children.  And mothers in the audience, we can be even more uncomfortable at times because many women are peacemakers by nature and by conditioning.  The authors relate many stories within this chapter where parents recount how they were not allowed to express anger.

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Musings on 19 Years Of Marriage

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Happy Anniversary to my husband!

I cannot believe we are almost in “double decades” of our marriage; that used to seem like a number only old people could attain.  Yet, here we are.

It has been such a journey and such an adventure we have undertaken.  Who would have thought that any “ordinary life” could be anything but ordinary?  Every day is a walk along this road together with amazing vistas and spectacular sunsets.

One thing I know for sure is that our sense of humor and the way we are laid back about things has helped us smooth the roads we ventured forth on.  The way we have been able to put ourselves first as a couple together  but also have had respect for who we are as individuals has also been a cornerstone as we have grown together over the years has also made the journey light.

It is funny, endearing and yes, scary,  when we can have a conversation with no words but I know exactly what you are thinking or when we can pass a glance between us and  you know exactly what I am  thinking.  How did this happen that we know each other so well? 

Thank you for teaching me the  secrets to a happy marriage as we walk together:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/05/30/secrets-of-a-happy-marriage/

Most of all, thank you for journeying with me.  I love you!

Many blessings,

Carrie

Struggling At Bedtime

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I have gotten quite a few comments and emails from parents lately about bedtime being a struggle.  I wonder if this  is in part due to just the time of year it is now, being light later at night here in the Northern Hemisphere.

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“Love and Anger: The Parental Dilemma”–Chapter 7: “An Unthinkable Rage”

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Was this chapter hard for anyone else to read?  Parts of it were so hard, to see the deep pain (I think the authors call it that at one point) of these mothers with their small children.

And didn’t this chapter just make you mad?

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Following Through

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One of the hardest parts of parenting is developing our own will to not waffle back and forth on “following through” in discipline.  We really can learn to  follow through calmly on what we said we would do when a child does something that is not part of the rules in our family.

To do this, I think one has to have in mind what the rules of the house or family actually are, and also the developmental expectations for that age.   Think to yourself:  can this child of this age meet the rules of the house or family, and in what way?  What is my part in this as the parent, and what is my child’s part?  The younger the child is, the more it is up to you to help the child.

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Homeschooling Waldorf Fourth Grade: Local Geography

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The article “Geography In Fourth Grade”  by Franklin G Kane (available here:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/geography.pdf) was a lovely starting point for me to read regarding the inclusion of local geography in the Fourth Grade that I am planning for fall.  Mr. Kane writes:

“The child around the ninth year undergoes an important turning-point in his development. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, the whole approach to teaching must delicately adjust to meet the more  conscious, questioning and independent being. For one thing a child of nine or ten now begins to
feel more separate from the environment which until now he accepted as a larger homelike protection. As one of the ways to meet this, Dr. Steiner suggested that in the Fourth Grade a study of the local area should take place. Through observation of the history and geography of the local
environment, a picture develops as to why the industries, occupations, and way of life of his home have evolved to what they are.
Unlike the early study of history that has its origin in the broad, cosmic remembrances of the old  fairy tales and myths of long ago, the study of geography starts nearest the child and gradually expands, in the course of years, to take in a study of the whole world.”

I also keeping this scope and sequence of geography for the fourth through eighth grades in mind as I plan:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/waldorf-homeschool-publishing-and-consulting/curriculum/subjects/geography.html

And, the last thing I am keeping in mind that in a Waldorf Education we start with the child and with the doing.  Map-making holds a dear place in Waldorf Education – drawing maps, modeling salt dough maps, etc.  This is a wonderful book by David Sobel that could really assist one in planning this block:  http://www.amazon.com/Mapmaking-Children-Sense-Education-Elementary/dp/0325000425

To create this block, I used suggestions from both the Christopherus Fourth Grade Syllabus and Marsha Johnson’s free files for Fourth Grade available at her Yahoo!Group.  Here is my tentative outline/ideas, and I hope it will be helpful to you as you plan in your own area and state (and note these are loose ideas, not written in a two or three day rhythm or anything!)

Week One –

Start with taking a bird’s eye look (something for a child past the nine year change!) at our schoolroom, my child’s bedroom and our home moving into our neighborhood –draw maps.  Take a blindfolded walk around our yard and in the little park in our neighborhood.

Walk outside of our neighborhood down to the main street of our community – make a diaroma of our community’s Main Street

Take a field trip to a historic site where there used to be a working Mill on a river near our house; this is what this land used to do and how people lived here!

Draw major features of our city into our Main Lesson Book along with facts about our city and how our city is part of a county

Over weekend between weeks one and two – hubby or I will rent canoe and take child on major river that runs through our area; on Labor Day we will venture to a canyon in our state

Week Two

Main theme this week is the story of the four elements that shaped our state and the animals and  people that settled here; and also geographic terms.  Plan to go to high mountain top near our home and look out over our region at what we can see and identify; visit a park area near our major river that child went canoeing on and build and play in the mud and sand to create land like our four elements story

A look at the special element of water in our state and all the waterways, where they begin and end and create a salt dough relief map of our state

Talk about the barrier islands of our state in story form of course and add to our salt dough map; add beeswax animals to our map – talk about our state animals

Draw a map of our state freehand with the five geographic regions of our state (not sure if this will be here or at the end of this block)

Over weekend between weeks two and three, visit local Native American Mounds

Week Three

Tell story of the Mound Builders, build a mound ourselves in sandbox and then in clay or salt dough

Tell story of the Native Americans in our area who conquered the Mound Builders and how they lived (review from Third Grade); plan to visit the Cherokee Museum in neighboring state

Talk about the Gullah culture, not detailed, in preparation for our trip; cooking projects!

Between weeks three and four hope to visit the coast which has the first developed city of our state and the barrier islands of our state

Week Four

Talk about first settlers in our state, first developed city; first capital city and how this moved around and how this was shaped by geography; make state flag and draw other state symbols

Talk about Gold Rush and farmers; visit farm preserved from days gone by; we have sifted for gold in the past at different places in the state so we can touch on that

Hang up a map of our state and mark places we have gone on this map; talk about how we are not driven so much anymore by industry in our state but by service and talk about several large local businesses.  Hope to visit some of those and finish up with a visit to our State Capitol building that is not far away.

A busy schedule, but at least some general ideas!    Hope that helps some of you who are planning.  All of this will of course be presented in imaginative story and form and not much emphasis on the horrible and terrible but the general flow of how the geography of our land shaped who settled here and why they settled here and how.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Summer Stories and Summer Nature Table

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Sometimes it is hard to know what to do with summer and the small child under the age of 7:  is it better to keep the Circle Time/Story Time intact and going or to take a complete break?  Some mothers decide to stick to one or two seasonal songs and fingerplays and not do a full Circle Time, and to still tell a story a few days a week.  They leave the other days open for outings in berry pickings, lake swimming, creek exploring or beach fun.

There is one festival coming up to prepare for, and that is St. John’s Tide.  You can read more about  summer and  that particular festival here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/07/01/celebrating-summer-with-small-children-a-waldorf-perspective/  and here:   https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/09/midsummers-day-st-johns-tide-day/

To me, this is a very important festival.  It is the day in which the sunlight hours begin to actually decrease, and exactly a half year later we celebrate Christmas.  The book “Festivals With Children” by Brigitte Barz has many interesting suggestions regarding how to celebrate this special day and its significance.  She recommends a festival table set with a picture of St. John with a white lily to the left of the picture and a rose to the right of the picture to represent the beginning , the innocence of man versus the earth, the transformation of man into the future.

This book makes a beautiful comment about the Feast of St. John on page 74-75:

“John the Baptist was the one who prepared the way for Christ.  He serves this function still today…”The way in which the inner soul of man is to be prepared is indicated by Luke’s invocation of the prophet Isaiah:  Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.” (Luke 3:4f)  Mountains and valleys are not only external objects of nature, they are also images of conditions within the soul.  We experience them in the life of feelings, as we swing between the heights of jubilant ecstasy to the depths of depression and despair.  The task of John is to hold the balance between these two extremes…..Of course, we cannot present the powerful words of John to children, at least not their content.  However, we can provide an image for them of the path of  inner development, in the form of the lily and the rose.”

Here are some suggestions for stories and songs.  Please add your favorites in the comment box!

Summer Stories:

  • For the five and a half and six year old:  “Goldener”  and “The Three Oranges” found in “Plays For Puppets” by Bronja Zahlingen.
  • “The Castle Under The Sea” for ages 6 and up – see Main Lesson
  • A simple “Midsummer’s Eve” story of half a page can be found in the Wynstones Summer book.  It may work for ages four and up depending upon your child.
  • “Holidays” – a story in the back of “All Year Round” for the pre-school child
  • Suzanne Down had a lovely story about a fish that was in a back issue of Living Crafts…Does anyone out there remember the exact title or issue?

Stories For the Feast of St. John:

  • The Six Swans by Brothers Grimm (ages 7 and up)
  • The Goose Girl by Brothers Grimm  (ages 7 and up)
  • Faithful John (ages 9 and up)
  • The Journey To The Sun, a Slovak folktale (ages 7 and up)

(These recommendations come from the book, “The Easter Story Book” by Ineke Verschuren)

  • St. John’s Gift in the Wynstones Summer book – ages six and half and up

Songs for Summer:

Song of the Midsummer Sun found in “All Year Round” – page 106

“Over In The Meadow”

Activities:

  • A St. John’s Tide walk
  • Inner work for the adult around raising our children with reverence and gratitude
  • Making Herbal bath bags, collecting and drying herbs
  • Making rose petal jam and rose petal sandwiches  – see “All Year Round”
  • Making a gold spiral or suns to hang up – see “All Year Round”

The Nature Table:

Beehive with bees and Summer Fairies for St. John’s Tide

For a more regular summer nature display, shells, a sand castle made from starch and wet sand, little boats of bark and twigs, little birds or swans with a pond are all suggested in the book, “The Nature Corner” on page 51, older edition.

Hope that helps you get planning.  For those of you wanting to read more, there is a little book entitled simply, “St John’s:  An Introductory Reader” by Rudolf Steiner where Matthew Barton has added commentary that may be valuable to you.  An important thing for Christians to do would be to attend church and celebrate this wonderful day!

Please take what resonates with you –

Many blessings,

Carrie

Toddler Nights

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Nights with a toddler can be challenging….Sometimes toddlers don’t fall asleep very easily or readily. Sometimes they fall asleep easily but then wake up frequently.  Sometimes they fall asleep easily but then wake up for a period of hours during the night and then go back to sleep.

The one thing you can count on in toddler nights is that it will change every night!

Many mothers ask about night weaning their toddlers, or how to get their toddlers to sleep longer. Here are some outside resources about toddler sleeping and toddler nights that you might find helpful for you and your family.  You are the expert on your family, so take what works for you and your situation:

These are some of the links I have found helpful over the years, and I hope you will enjoy them as well.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Restlessness And Forgetfulness In The Eight To Ten Year Old

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It is rather odd to me that so many mainstream parenting resources focus solely on the developmental stages and phases of the toddler and preschooler, and once a child becomes the age of children in the grades, no one seems to think these children are growing or changing in significant ways anymore!  Yet, parents of children between the ages of  7  to 14 will tell you this is a time of  incredibly rapid change.

To me, two of the hallmarks of development in the time between ages 8 to 10 involves restlessness and forgetfulness. 

It is literally so difficult for the 8 to 10 year old to settle down, to sit down, to focus at times.  It is unreasonable to think that a child in this age range will be able to sit and write and read all day long like an adult.   They are not adults, and they need a lot of movement and time to release energy.  Ways to do this include spending time in nature; neighborhood games; probably less organized sports than one thinks but more  family fun such as hiking, roller blading, roller skating, skiing, swimming, climbing; lots of breaks for movement during school; many chances for movement and DOING to permeate the subjects we are teaching in drawing, modeling, map making, painting, making models.

This is completely unpopular, but I believe strongly that media and screens for this age should be limited.  There are too many other things in life they need to experience with their hands and their restlessness is a sign of this need.

Another place this can be in conflict for homeschoolers is that  it can be very easy to want to really ramp up academics in this age range because the child seems so much more mature than earlier.  If one is not careful it is easy to lose sight that children of these ages are really in the heart of childhood and that rational thinking is not yet quite there.  Hang on, and keep including many concrete and doing ways of addressing your academic subjects.

Forgetfulness is something that very much annoys parents of children this age.  You can ask a child of this age to do something and they will forget within a moment or two. 

One of the ways we can work with this is through RHYTHM.  If the order of every morning is that we get up, we have breakfast, we get dressed and brush our hair and teeth and make our beds, then the child can follow that.  Do try to pick an order to things that works for your children.  For example, you may wish that everyone would get dressed and make their beds before breakfast but everyone wakes up starving, so craft a rhythm that takes that into account.

Chores are important, but you simply must figure out what you will do regarding the forgetfulness and dawdling around chores and what the consequences of this will be.   I have seen very individual approaches from family to family.

I think the last area surrounding forgetfulness that can be helpful is to think about bringing in habits – habits that will build character through practical life.  This takes time, and it is easy to want to work on everything at once.  Pick one area and really focus on that for forty days and see how it becomes ingrained in the child.  Sometimes for the child in this age range it can be something quite small, such as going back to making sure hands are washed before dinner, since acts of hygiene often slip around this age.  Maybe it is speaking politely; these are ages where many parents complain about the tone in which children speak.

To me, sometimes this age needs a bit of a carrot. Not a bribe at all, but more a bit of incentive.  Haven’t you ever had a really long and rough day and thought how you would try to persevere through it because you were getting to go out that night to something special, or you were going to eat something special for dinner, or you were going to call a special friend on the phone, and it made the day just a bit more bearable? To me, that is different than a bribe that is announced and “you must do this to earn this”.  It is just an incentive of something lovely that helps all days go just a little bit better and helps us keep on track.

I cannot tell you how often to try an incentive, or what that incentive even should be per say as I think that is so individual to each family and each situation, but it is just something to think about.

Just a few thoughts to ponder today!

Many blessings,
Carrie

“Love And Anger: The Parental Dilemma”–End of Chapter 6

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The very last part of this chapter is entitled, “The “Special” Child Challenge”.  It opens with a scenario about a little boy called Eben who was born prematurely and as a result had faced a variety of physical problems that lasted into childhood and affected his ability to play and participate in everyday life.  His mother related how she tried so hard to hold it all together in front of him that she realized she never showed him some of her authentic emotions. 

Many of the long-time readers to this blog  know that I was born prematurely (and my husband was as well!), we also  have one daughter who was born prematurely and my work as a neonatal physical therapist involved feeding and development for infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  Children who are facing special challenges, whether these be physical or emotional or spiritual (and how can we tease every thing out so separately!  It is all part of the holistic human being!) are very close to my heart.

This chapter points out “many parents [of children with challenges] admit that the deeply felt emotions of rage, unfairness, and resentment never completely go away.  Even the strongest parents could find their anger triggered anew by a reminder that their disabled child would never experience – or share with them-the normal daily pleasures.”

The authors go on to point out that the anger some parents experienced lessened once they could let go of the “why” and the need to find answers and move more into acceptance and the realization that this challenge, whilst sad and upsetting at times, it is only a small part of the essence of the child.   The  child is bigger than “only” the disability or challenge.

I have known many parents and families whose children have had challenges that have been walking a long road in helping to heal their children.   I wondered how you felt about anger, special challenges, and what helps.

Many blessings,

Carrie