Category Archives: Development

Personal Development In Parenting–Part Two: Biography and Balance

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Parenting can be challenging.  Some parents actually have children that I feel are pretty easy to parent, and some parents  have children that are truly challenging.  However, how we view and respond in parenting, like anything else in life, begins with us.  How calm are we?  What is our temperament?  What are our challenges?  What are our triggers? 

But, most of all, how can we grow and strive and improve? 

I think there are two fundamental places to start in personal development in parenting: one is biography and one is assessing  balance in your life. 

Biography is the process of looking at oneself, one’s story.  What patterns are in our life when we look back through it?  What responsibility have I taken for my own life, my own actions?  How do I accept myself, meet myself?  What people have I really connected with during this lifetime?

Can I think about my life?  What do I remember?  Can I put them within seven year cycles as talked about in “Tapestries” by Betty Staley?  We went through “Tapestries” chapter by chapter on this blog; fascinating!

What  do I feel about these events?  What empathy do I have for myself, for others connected to my story?  To other’s stories?

What can I do with this for the future?  What goals do I have? 

Biography is the first piece in knowing oneself and in being able to do that in order to connect with others.  It is the first step too, toward looking at your parenting patterns.

The other critical piece, I feel, is balance.  I see so many mothers that seem either to only live for their children with no thought for themselves or their spouses or go the other way and the children are deemed almost an afterthought or an inconvenience.  Where is the balance?

Where is the balance between the outer and inner selves?  The outer self, the physical body, is often seen by many as diminishing in the 40s…but this doesn’t mean that the physical body should be ignored.  Too often I see mothers who seem to not take great care of themselves.  You are important to your family, and your body is an important part of who you are!  Vibrant health, physical activity, clothes that make you feel good and influence how you feel – what is the place of all of these things for you?

The inner self is the other part that is equally important in this balance.  This is the piece people seem to  think about in regards to personal development more often than biography or balance.  How does one develop the inner self?  We tend to think of developing certain characteristics such as patience or calmness; we may look to spirituality and religion to help us meet those goals.   I feel if spirituality is our attitude and concern toward  the Divine, then perhaps religion is the way we express that.    

One thing that has helped me immensely in developing my inner self  is the use of rhythm in the day, the week, the year.  Liturgical rhythm through my religion.  Meditation on what I hear from God  and prayer to God.   These pieces, along with nurturing the physical body and the use of art, help keep me in balance. 

Our personal development impacts our health, and our health in turn provides the foundation for our family. 

Biography and balance.  Just a thought for today with a bit more about inner work to come in the next post.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Personal Development in Parenting–Part One

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In parenting and education, we recognize that every individual brings not only a hereditary history with him or her but also an individuality. Waldorf Education recognizes the individuality in each and every child that exists from before conception and birth and recognizes that each child has a personal destiny.  I guess a Christian perspective of this would be that God knows the child before the child is born and that the child has a destiny.   

Throughout this time of childhood we are working with the whole child, with  every aspect of the child – body, soul, spirit. We work with things from the most physical to the most mysterious and strive to be continually conscious of being an upright moral example that the child can imitate. We work to not provide hindrances to the child’s development.  We also work to provide an environment conducive to development, a protected environment for optimal development of the 12 senses and the child, but yet one where the child can develop unhindered

In the second lecture of “Curative Education”, Steiner talks about The Pedagogical Law in which it is who we are that teaches and educates; how children can perceive the gesture behind our words. Steiner lectured about the great responsibility we have when we raise small children. 

In the lectures compiled in “Soul Economy”, Steiner said in the lecture regarding children before the seventh year:  ”Anyone in charge of young children – especially those who work in children’s homes- who is aware of the activity of destiny must ask, Have I been specifically chosen for the important task of guiding and educating these children?  And other questions must follow: What must I do to eliminate as far as possible my personal self, so I can leave those in my care unburdened by my subjective nature?”

This can be a tall order where sometimes just surviving in parenting is where we are – and maybe just where we should be if we have children under the age of five.  It can be a tall order where things don’t go the way one wants them to; this happens to ALL of us because we are human!  Raising children is hard work!

One thing I think that can help, though, is this idea of non-judgmental self-review (um, the key is non-judgmental, to view yourself and your actions through the eyes of being a friend to yourself).  Here is a wonderful article about self-review for the teacher that would work equally well for parents of small children:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW57schweizer.pdf

I do love how this article asks us to look at ourselves and what we do during the day with our rhythm, our work and the children.  But, remember, do forgive yourself if things were not what you wanted.  Self-forgiveness and striving (and asking for help when you need it!) is so important.

During this season of Great Lent I wonder how we can work with both  our physical body and our spiritual body in order to benefit our families.  Like all things in Waldorf parenting and education, balance is a primary goal.  Dogma and rigidity is not.  Finding the Middle Way is of great import. 

Our next post will deal with concrete ways to work with our own physical and spiritual lives.  You must want to do this work, but we must be careful to maintain balance as we strive.

More to come.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Wonderful Links and FREE Resources to Check Out!

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A big thank you to Cypress over at Cypress Space (http://bobbinsandbrambles.blogspot.com/)  for alerting me that Joan Almon’s “Overview Of The Waldorf Kindergarten”   is available as a free e-book:http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/overview1.pdf   
This little pink book is wonderful; I highly encourage those of you with young children to read it!

There are two other free e-books also available from the on-line Waldorf Library.  The first one is WECAN’s  “Working With the Angels” available here: 
http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW2workingangels.pdf  and a new one I have recently read called “Developmental Signatures”:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/DevSig.pdf  

I also would like to point out the wonderful, truly wonderful post by Kara Fleck regarding the nine year old and homeschooling, called “The Nine Year Old Is The Lesson”:   http://www.rockingranola.com/2011/03/nine-year-old-is-lesson.html  Homeschooling at its finest!

And here is a call for mothers who are homeschooling Fourth Grade in Waldorf Education to share resources and ideas for local geography and history:  http://naturenest.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/do-you-have-any-local-geography-or-history-resources-you-can-share/

Finally, the last thing I wanted to share is that I am presently reading five lectures by Michaela Glockler, MD called :  “A Healing Education:  How Can Waldorf Education Meet The Needs of Children?”  This little book contains five very interesting lectures. 

I have written A LOT this year about discipline, authority, developmental stages and I  would like to spend some time in March  focusing on Waldorf homeschooling and how I believe an education inspired by Steiner’s ideas about development could be helpful for children in the home environment.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Interesting Observations About The Five Year Old

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Those of you who have read this blog for a long time know I rather disagree with The Gesell Institute book “Your Five-Year-Old” where five is seen as the golden age.  To me, five actually can be rather quirky and some five year olds seem stuck back at four with exuberant, out of bounds behavior and still on potty words….or they can be forging ahead to the six/seven year change.  Either way, it seems anything but golden to many parents I speak with. 

I have been observing a group of five year olds recently and have  noticed some interesting behaviors for five.  For those of you with five year olds, do any of these things ring true for you?

  • There is a big issue with birthdays – hard time with sibling birthdays, very sad indeed.
  • The other issue with birthdays is that the older five year old/early six year old wants to play only with people of the exact age of the child herself.  So, therefore, it is really concerning when a friend has a birthday and therefore obviously won’t want to play with the child anymore (“Because now Fanny Friend will be SIX!”) or the child doesn’t want to play with a child  younger or older. 
  • Five is the height of nightmares, and usually the child will wake up and scream but can’t seem to get out of bed well or wake up well or go back to sleep well.  The Gesell Institute does note that bad dreams persist until about age 8, with a lull at age 8 and then a  rise again  at age 9.
  • Typically tensional outlets are at a low, but increase again around five and a half.
  • Five is not an exceptionally fearful age, but six is full of fear.
  • There is a rise in marked rise in appetite at four and a half to five….  Many of the children I have been observing seem to ask to eat all the time.

I have several back posts about the five year old that you may find helpful:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/08/22/waldorf-in-the-home-with-the-five-year-old/

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/02/10/the-fabulous-five-year-old/

There are also many post if you use the search engine regarding the six/seven change. 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Blog Post Round-Up

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Here are some lovely blog posts that have recently caught my eye:

 

Yours,

Carrie

Other Questions Parents Have About Six/Seven Year Developmental Change

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Parents have many questions about the developmental leaps of the six/seven year old.  A few key points for this age:

I highly suggest you go back to all of these back posts for review as these will most likely cover some of these questions:

For more about the intricacies of peer relationships at this age:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/02/05/peer-relationships-for-the-six-to-eight-year-old/

Favorite books for gentle discipline to inspire you:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/11/27/favorite-books-for-gentle-discipline/

Hitting:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/03/28/boys-under-age-7-and-hitting/

Potty words:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/12/20/how-to-handle-potty-talk-in-small-children/

A review of my favorite book for the six/seven year change:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/02/19/a-book-for-parents-of-the-five-to-seven-year-old/

How To Best Support Your Child’s Development During The Six/Seven Year Change

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From about five and a half onward, the six/seven year transformation is a time of change. It is can be an overwhelming but profound period for children.  Children at this time are working out of not just imitation, but also with short, simple and clear phrases. They  need to be supported by speaking in pictures to them, not intellectually, and by setting strong boundaries.

During this time, many children often experience the need to be the boss. A “bossy” six year old is pretty typical of this age.  (Alhough I personally think if the child was spoken to as a little adult and given a myriad of choices from early on the bossiness in the six and eight year old years is probably worse than in children who were not parented that way). 

My favorite book on this subject is “You’re Not The Boss of Me: Understanding the Six/Seven Year Transformation” as edited by Ruth Ker and available through Waldorf booksellers.

Here are some ways to best support your child in this challenging phase:

  • Do your  own inner work and personal development.  Your authority and your calm response to things, whether it is door slamming or saying “I hate you, Mommy!” is really, really important.  They do not have equilibrium in this stage and you must have it for them.
  • Matter of fact responses are best:   “Teacher (Mommy) knows the lay of the land.”  “This is my job to help you.”  “You may do x” 
  • Don’t forget though, that movement and imagination and speaking in pictures still predominates – no lectures, no intellectual debates, no reasoning. 
  • Focus more on what you do want, rather than the behavior that is challenging you.  Help guide the child and cue them to what you want.
  • A strong rhythm is important, even if they are fighting against it.  You do the things in your rhythm.
  • Practical work is paramount at this time as the children are in a crisis in play.  You may need to sit down and plan longer projects, and really figure out where they can help alongside of you.  Here is a great article regarding work in the Waldorf Kindergarten written by an Atlanta colleague and friend, Karen Smith:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/purposefulwork%20doc.pdf
  • Assisting younger children is also helpful
  • Loving authority and boundaries—authority is demonstrated through knowing how to do something and through our calm and unruffled presence.
  • Manners are another way to provide form and boundaries for children.  Manners are very important to bring to the child gradually, through modeling, through treating the child respectfully.  Here is a lovely blog post from over at Christopherus pertaining to small children and manners:   http://christopherushomeschool.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/helping-little.html
  • Spending time in nature so the child can soak in quiet impressions is important.
  • Sleep, rest, warming foods are anchors for the day.
  • Love your child, be with your child, enjoy your child.

Many blessings,

Carrie

My Advice For The Nine Year Change

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I think nine years of age, in many ways, is a rather fragile time.  This sense of “I” ness and separation is coming out and beginning, but it is still rudimentary.  Criticism still cannot be separated from the overall sense of self.  It is an age to be handled with care.

I say this from experience.  Nine (Third Grade in Waldorf land) has been a rather odd year here for us.  It was a year where the academics seemed to jump up a notch, and also a year where the outside activities my daughter was involved in also seemed to jump up a bit.  (Some of it just coincidentally happened this year, but still it all seemed to converge this year for whatever reason).  I have also heard this from mothers whose children are nine and attending private and public schools as well, so I don’t think it is a complete anomaly to our family. 

My advice to mothers planning for fall for  their nine year old’s year is to keep it very simple.  Realize that some nine year olds really regress in writing skills, so perhaps plan not to require so much in Main Lesson books and such, but rather look to practical work and projects.  Many nine year olds needs a lot of movement, so build in extra breaks throughout the day to jump rope, jump on a trampoline and play games.

Keep the extra activities to one extra thing, maybe two, but please make sure those things are not jumping into competition (ie, therefore requiring much more tiring practice than previously) or into other lands of testing and winning and losing.

Nine needs lots of space to just be and dream.  Simple answers are fine, but complete wordiness and heady explanations are not.  It truly, in my opinion, is not the time for world politics and world events, beyond very simple explanations for things that come up. 

As mentioned, activities are fine, but within a balance and weighted more towards open and free time.  For this reason, I would advise letting a sport you think will turn competitive to wait until fourth or fifth grade if you can.  I recognize there are some children who are just wired to do whatever it is that they do, but I think that is further and farther in between than society thinks. 

Let Nine just be.  It can be a year that hits hard or a year that is okay, but I think much of it depends on how much “extra” is going on.  Coming out of the other side of the nine-year-change provides a much more stable base for the child to use as a foundation to expand academic, social and practical skills.

Many blessings,

Carrie

How To Best Support Your Child’s Development Ages 3-5

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Here are a continuation of some notes I made for my talk for The Waldorf Connection on development and how to best support development in children during the first seven year cycle of life.

Rudolf Steiner said that by the time children learn to speak and walk, formative forces released from the head join those being released in the chest region.  Whether or not this description resonates with you, I think one can see a change evidenced by the vivid memory and wonderful imagination children develop between the ages of two and a half and five. The memory is not ready for academic work at this point; it is emerging.  The child is still learning through imitation and play.

Here are some suggestions for the best ways to support your child’s development in these ages:

  • We must continue our own inner work and personal development; to have clarity in speech and thinking,  and to really SLOW DOWN and not speed up.  Things for this age need to be kept SIMPLE.  If we are not careful as parents, this can be a time where we feel pressured to enroll a child in classes, step up “socialization and enroll in preschool.  I have mentioned before that the age of Waldorf Kindergartens used to start around age four and a half and now is starting younger and younger.  To me, social experiences are wonderful to think seriously about when a child is five, definitely by six. Ages three and four are still very, very little.
  • To provide unconditional love and healthy boundaries.  Boundaries with chances for restitution and even with logical consequences are important for this age.  Boundaries involving YOU taking the child by the hand and essentially saying, “You may not do this but you may do this.”  Using movement and singing and verses and fantasy to help the child meet the boundary.

More notes about this important subject:  First you must be clear what the boundaries in your home really are, and what are the consequences (see more on that below), and what would the restitution be?  And three and four is really, really little, so you are going to have to repeat the movement toward the boundary and what is and is not allowed 500 times before the child really and truly understands it.  Some things also work in phases, and some of the things that drive parents to irritation really will pass.  Draw less individual attention to what you don’t want, but keep drawing the child to what you do what.  Keep striving to act as if you are the Leader in Your Home – because you are, and you must be!

Logical consequences for this age (ages 3 and 4) are not so much “announced”, but just happen as part of tweaking your rhythm throughout the day.  For example, if a small child is just falling apart and hitting you and such, then the small child is obviously tired and does not need to go out and play with the neighborhood children.  You don’t need to announce this so the child goes into another fit of tears, but just do it.  Arrange your afternoon so there is something physically repetitive outside, an early dinner and an early bedtime.    You must step up and be the parent for this age.  It is not being harsh, but guiding your child, because  what a child of this age needs is not always what a child of this age wants.  If you are resolute in what should or should not happen, what the rules in your house are, how people are treated with respect in your house (including yourself!  Are you being treated with respect by the members of your  family?), then it is much easier to hold the space and hold what is RIGHT.  You are showing your child how to be an upright moral human being, you are calmly setting boundaries and you are staying calm when the boundary is pushed against.

  • To provide age appropriate expectations – see all the back posts by age on this blog
  • Sensory protection!! Sleep, warming foods, rhythm, physical movement is all important.  Protection from the stress and anxiety of the parents, protection from  negative world news and screens.
  • Connection – how are you connecting with this child even if they are in a tough developmental phase of disequilibrium?
  • The lower four senses are being developed from birth, but I think especially in this period one must look at the sense of touch, sense of life, the sense of balance and the sense of movement.  Some remedial (Extra Lesson) Waldorf Teachers view excessive unruliness as stemming from a disturbed sense of life/well-being, excessive insecurity as a disturbed sense of touch, and a  lack of inner understanding indicating a disturbed sense of movement and balance. 
  • This is not the age to make children memorize things – building a rich array of language experiences through singing, verses and stories is important and children  obviously will be able to remember things, but to not force memorization.  The basis of learning at this point is experiential; hands-on.  Why we are losing this in US schools when every mainstream childhood development textbook points this out is beyond me.
  • Less talking about things and more doing, matter of fact responses and calm responses to about of bounds behavior and language. 
  • Children of these ages need hours and hours a day outside. You can view the posts on Nokken on this blog regarding the concept of a Forest Kindergarten.
  • Show the child practical work – de-mechanize your home as much as possible; do tasks and figure out what your child can do to help
  • Provide a bit of benign neglect – see back post on benign neglect
  • Help foster creative play – see back posts on fostering creative play
  • What are you doing to nourish yourself?  When are your breaks?  How does your spouse or partner play into this picture?  Are you on the same page?  If your spouse or partner cannot help you, would there be someone in your neighborhood who could come over and be a mother’s helper so you could still be home and yet do what you need to do for a few hours a week?  What artistic and spiritual activities are you doing to nourish yourself each and every week? 

In the fifth year, we also recognize that the child begins (BEGINS!!) to be understand a bit about what is right and what is wrong.  As the adult shows over and over what it means to be an upright human being, then faith develops in that adult.  Faith in an adult induces a feeling of authority, which is very  important as a child moves from the fifth year into the six/seven year transformation and the grades.

The next post will be the last in this series, and it will take a peek at how to support development during the six/seven year change.

Many blessings,

Carrie

How To Best Support Your Child’s Development Ages Birth Through Three

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I spoke last night at The Waldorf Connection regarding development from a Waldorf perspective within the first seven years.  I will be posting some notes on this blog from my talk because I believe it is helpful to hear things more than once and to see it in writing and to hear it.  The next step would be to take a piece of paper and a pen in order to write down your own thoughts and how you would work with some of these concepts in your own family.

Childhood in Waldorf Education  is considered those years of birth through age 21.  The human being is seen as a spiritual being who has come down from spiritual realms and one who takes time to get used to living here on earth; a being who is changing and evolving throughout the lifespan of being human in approximately cycles of seven years.  One can search this blog for a chapter by chapter look at the book “Tapestries” by Betty Staley as to characteristics of each seven year cycle from birth through adulthood.

As Waldorf parents and home educators, we are working with every aspect of the child – body, soul, spirit – as we consider the human being to be a whole three and four-fold human being.  We work with things from the most physical to the most mysterious and strive to be continually conscious of being an upright moral example that the child can imitate. We work  to provide an environment conducive to development, a protected environment for optimal development of the 12 senses and the child, but yet one where the child can develop unhindered.

In the second lecture compiled in “Curative Education”, Steiner talks about The Pedagogical Law in which it is who we are that teaches and educates, that children can perceive the gesture behind our words and how what we do matters more than what we give lip service to (my paraphrasing there, of course.  He says it much more eloquently. Smile).  Steiner lectured about the great responsibility we have as educators of small children (and this of course includes parents, as you are the first teacher of your child!) In “Soul Economy”,  one of my favorite compilations of Steiner’s lectures, Steiner said in the lecture regarding children before the seventh year:  ”Anyone in charge of young children – especially those who work in children’s homes- who is aware of the activity of destiny must ask, Have I been specifically chosen for the important task of guiding and educating these children? And other questions must follow: What must I do to eliminate as far as possible my personal self, so I can leave those in my care unburdened by my subjective nature? How do I act so I do not educate a child toward human freedom? “

These questions begin at birth…… The child comes to us with a head full of wisdom and growth forces that direct the physical body and help mold the physical body. The child imitates everything, and is a large sense organ. Steiner talks in “Kingdom of Childhood” about the affects of anger upon a child and other emotions because the impressions coming from the outer world directly affect the physical constitution of the body – the formation of the inner organs, for example. This is part of Steiner’s work that really unnerves parents because they feel as if they have done everything wrong and carry such guilt. Guilt does not move one forward in parenting, so I advise parents to try to let that go and start from now.

So, back to development..During the first three years, the spirit, soul and body are seen as being in unity and walking, speaking and thinking are unfolding.  First, the child attains an upright position.  And then from that, speech arises in the second year. In helping a child to speak we must be inwardly true, this is the time of TRUTHFULNESS , for those of you who have heard of Steiner’s truth-beauty-goodness. Truthfulness is the foundation of communication, even for infants. In true speech we use adult speech, not baby talk! Thinking then arises out of speech in the third year. Clarity from our own thinking helps our children’s thinking to be developed.

What we can do to support our children birth to three:

Heal our own past; recover from anything in our own childhood that is amiss. What are we modeling to our children and what are we passing on for our future grandchildren? What are our own patterns of behavior, our own reaction to stress.  Create truth in your life by aligning your values throughout every sector of your life.

Create a healthy attachment to your baby and toddler

Strive to work on ourselves in order  that we are worthy of this child to imitate our gestures, our movements, our work. In “Soul Economy”, one thing that Steiner said was, “…the children become perfect mimics and imitators. This imposes a moral duty on adults to be worthy of such imitation, which is far less comfortable than exerting one’s will on a child.”

Other ways to support children during the first three years:

We do not place the child into positions he or she cannot attain on his or her own, because the child is orienting themselves in the world through their upright orientation and their striving for that. Joan Slater talk about this in the book “The Incarnating Child”, this concept of  keeping infants horizontal until they can move into a position by themselves. This is important, because from this challenge and this struggle to attain an upright position and from that upright position comes speech and then thinking.

Protect the senses of the child and establish a rhythm to help support the etheric body of the caregiver and the child. Our growth forces are  tied to that of our small children and it is important that we  build ourselves up through rhythm, through warming foods, through warm clothes, through kind words and speech, through artistic endeavors.

Become a confident parent who can set boundaries with those who seek to undermine your parenting, including yourself if you are prone to negativity and doubt in your parenting.  I think this is key, as many parents today seem to meet parenting with increased anxiety and  fear and stress. In our generation, we really  have to find some way to meet that fear with joy and with love and with humor. We have to find a way to really put out warm thoughts for our children because our children develop from taking in the world and we are the ones creating their world.

Just a few thoughts; take what resonates with you. 

Other posts that may help you in this endeavor are these:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/10/13/back-to-basics-emotional-and-physical-warmth/

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/10/02/trust-your-intuition/

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/11/07/the-one-year-old/

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/03/22/the-twelve-to-twenty-two-month-old-a-traditional-perspective/

Many blessings to you,

Carrie