Category Archives: Development

Realistic Expectations for the Four-Year-Old

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Four is a great age:

For sitting on laps!

For snuggling together!

For telling stories!  Rhymes!  Silly stories and silly poetry!

For exploring nature together!

For practicing gross motor skills!  Running, climbing, walking foot over foot up and down steps, standing on one foot, skipping on one foot, running or standing jumping, jumping off of things with feet together, hopping on one foot, riding a bicycle with training wheels, catching a ball, sliding down a slide, digging in the dirt or sand, lifting, tugging and pulling!  Stirring. crawling, crab crawling, playing wheelbarrow

For practicing fine motor skills!  Buttoning, unbuttoning, lacing shoes, stringing beads, pouring and carrying water, drawing, coloring, painting, modeling

For doll play, dressing up, building

For encouraging creativity! 

For music!

For sensory input!  Rolling down hills, kneading bread dough, sand play, making mud puddles, playing outside in the rain,

For close supervision – many four-year-olds are destructive in their own environments just through innocently exploring and not having a great idea of the consequences of their own actions.  And why should they be able to predict the consequences of their own actions at this young age?  That is your job!

For snuggly co-sleeping – but also can be a great age to try sleeping in their own bed around four-and-a-half or so.

Having a quiet time each day – four-year-olds need this as they play and run so hard all day long!

 

Four is not a great age for:

“Field Trips” – This is an area where people will disagree with me.  Four-year-olds love “new” and going “new” and “special” places.  However, in my experience with many different  four-year-olds over the past ten or twelve years, most four-year-olds are interested for about 10 minutes in whatever you are looking at, and then the importance of the tiger at the zoo or the shark at the aquarium and the pink shoes of the child next to them and that child down the row who is eating something registers about the same on the scale of awe and education.   And then they are hungry and need to use the bathroom and are ready to play.   They could be just as happy with a field trip to somewhere within your own neighborhood that is “new” and “special”.

Expecting a child to do things alone without you being right there to direct or supervise.  Some four-year-olds do a great job at this –they can get up and go to the bathroom alone and get dressed, (and I would say for the most part this is the quiet, mature, less physical little girls who are first born)  and some four-year-olds really cannot do much  unless you are physically present because they just sort of forget what they are supposed to be doing or find something more interesting along the way!

Leaving a four-year-old with younger children without close supervision

Playing well with others (in general – again always exceptions) – Friendships are important at this age, they love to play with other children generally, but still need your help.  Do not tell two four-year-olds to “work it out”!  Help them!

Answering things in a scientific, logical way – if they ask you a question about the world, they are not looking for the ADULT, DRY, LOGICAL explanation (unless this is the way you have always talked to them and they play all those verbal games with you!).

Competitive games

Dragging them on endless errands.

Expect them to cooperate while you are on the phone!

Don’t expect them to stay dry through the night – girls might, but perhaps not!

Sitting through a whole meal without becoming restless!

Pushing academics!  The Gesell Institute in their book “Your Four Year Old” says on page 81, “Especially, do not feel that you must teach your preschooler to read.”  Waldorf Education begins reading around the age of six and a half or seven, and many countries around the world also do this.

 

Ways to connect to your Four-Year-Old:

Listen to them!

Love them!

Be silly with them!  Play! Have fun!

If you have a very active four-year-old, try to enjoy it rather than feel as if you are suffering along and waiting for them to “calm down”.

Leave your lectures and guilt trips behind!

Let your child know you love and appreciate them for who they are!  Active or not, shy or not, able to fall asleep well or not – be warm and loving!

Set loving boundaries in a gentle way – an out-of-bounds four-year-old is really going to feel more secure if you do this!

Avoid moral judgments of your child – just because they love potty talk now does not mean they will love potty talk when they are 15!

Structure your environment so you are not always saying “no”

Show them how to do things, have special times to show them how to use art supplies nicely, how to create a card for Grandma

“I’m Homeschooling My Four-Year-Old”

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We often say this out of convention, right?  Well-meaning people ask, “Oh, is your four-year-old going to preschool?  Where do they go to school?”  and we answer something to the effect of, “Well, we are homeschooling.”

However, I think we need to be very careful and clear within ourselves as to what we mean when we say this if we are Waldorf home educators.  Waldorf Early Years is about bringing warmth to our child, love to our child, rhythm to  our child with a strong cornerstone of rest and sleep, helping to foster imaginative play, working together on practical things that create an ensouled home, singing together, and fostering a love of nature and reverence and respect.  It is not at all about direct academics at this point because children under the age of 7 are living in their bodies, in their motion, in the movement of the moment.  They are not living in their heads.

This is,  of course, difficult to explain to well-meaning strangers.  However, when one joins other Waldorf homeschoolers and talks about “schooling” their four and five year olds, I think we all need to get clear.  The Early Years is not about academic preschool skills the way conventional schooling is.

However, it is also not about doing NOTHING, which is what many parents conversely seem to think.  There should be a strong rhythm to your day, there should be times of out-breath and exploration in nature, times of fostering quieter reverence for a special told story.  Waldorf Kindergartens in Waldorf schools often make the day look seamless – outside play or walk, practical work for the day, preparing for snack, having snack and clean-up from snack, special songs and a story, rest time, more play in nature; and all the while the adults are engaged in strong practical work with their hands –  but the reality is that is takes quite a bit of planning to make this come off as easily as it looks!

Many mothers of Kindergarten-aged (and remember while Waldorf schools plan for children ages 3 to 6 in Kindergarten your child will most likely be five and six before having great attention for festival preparations, bread baking and etc without a peer group to carry them along) ask about planning.  Less is more for the Kindergarten-aged child.  Seasonal stories and verses can be simple and revisited year after year.  Craft ideas can also be re-done year after year.  There is comfort to the child in knowing that there is dragon bread on Michaelmas,  lanterns are made around the time of Martinmas. 

Many mothers collect songs and verses and stories by season on their computer in files and then take the time to organize it by day over the summer either by writing it down by hand in a spiral notebook or in a computer file that is printed out.  It takes time to collect verses, songs, stories, ideas for festival preparations and gardening.  This is the time for you to really sharpen your own skills – learn to play that blowing instrument, learn to garden and identify some plants, learn to knit.  Check out all the Waldorf Kindergarten posts on this blog, they will hopefully help guide you as to what you should be doing and what a typical Waldorf homeschooling Kindergarten day might look like.

The day should be short in terms of attention for practical work and the circle/story.  Steiner said if we got just 15 minutes of work done that the child could observe that that was wonderful.   He didn’t say hours of work, and in a Waldorf Kindergarten school setting there are multiple teachers and assistants and older children to help carry the group along. 

Mothers say, “Well, my child doesn’t want to do beeswax crayoning, they just do a scribble and run off.”  The point is that YOU do the activity and model it for them.  Children are notorious for not liking their mothers to sing or do whatever, and then lo behold, there the child is singing the song you were singing this morning!  The one they hated and ran away from.

You can work in a two-pronged manner:  stories and songs and activities that are interesting to the child within the realm of practical work for the day, and also by NOT forcing the child.  The child is free to weave in and out and just watch what you are doing.

Your child IS learning academic skills, believe it or not.  Many nursery rhymes and songs have letters and numbers in them, many things about science can be learned by fostering a connection with nature, many fine motor skills needed for handwriting and other things can be learned through arts and crafts and festival preparations.  You may find your child easily meets the PreK and Kindergarten requirements for your state with no direct academic work at all!

Get clear with yourself; there is a reason for the first seven years to be one of movement and will and not regurgitation of dry facts.  In fact, children who are treated to just dry facts by the age of 7,8, and 9 often seem to rebel against this and need more imaginative stories, more sensory and active movement.  Perhaps this is because this stage was missed earlier, and perhaps because even a 7, 8 and 9 year old needs to learn in this manner.

Four is a great age for sitting on laps, four is a great age for loving each other.  Do not underestimate the most important goal for homeschooling:  spending warm, loving time together and fostering close bonds between siblings.  This is the real and true goal of homeschooling.

So, if someone asks you if you are homeschooling your four-year-old, just know and be clear within yourself that you are giving them the foundation that will make academics even better later on, that you are giving them the foundational skills for relationships they will need later on.  Be clear that you are giving them the best education possible by the things we do every day as Waldorf home educators.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Nokken: A Review of Two Books and A Few Thoughts

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(Post updated 6/28/2012)  Nokken has come up on almost every Waldorf Yahoo!Group and Waldorf forum I am on, so I thought it was about time to address the work of Helle Heckmann.  More and more, Nokken is being held up as an example within the Waldorf community of what to do right within child care for young children, and as an example of the value of outdoor play and outdoor time and connection with nature for young children.  For this post, I read both “Nokken:  A Garden for Children” by Helle Heckmann and “Nokken:  A Garden for Kids September 2003 Celebration Edition.”  I hear there is also a lovely video about Nokken that I have not yet seen.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Nokken, Nokken is a Danish approach to  Waldorf-based childcare in Copenhagen, Denmark.  The minimum age for children to enter is walking age.  Helle Heckmann writes, “The child must be able to walk away from her mother and into the world on her own,” on page 26 of “Nokken:  A Garden For Children.”  The center is open for six hours a day only, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  “Our idea is that we share with the parents,” writes Helle Heckmann on the same page.  “We look after the children for six hours, the parents have them for six waking hours and the children sleep for twelve hours.  In other words, the family will still exert influence on the child’s development.”  The staff at the center does not change during the day, unlike child care centers in the United States that are open for long hours that necessitate shift changes.  The children are together in one group from walking age to age 7, and sibling groups are welcomed and kept together, which is again different from the vast majority of child care centers in the United States.  Most Americans would agree this is a huge and vast improvement over the majority of daycare centers in the United States.

Helle  Heckmann writes on page 27 of Nokken,”  It is obviously difficult.  Parents often need longer opening hours, while at the same time they want the world’s best early-childhood program with a motivated and relaxed staff.  This is a difficult task, and knowing that we cannot accommodate all needs, we have chosen to favor the children.  It is a conscious choice we have made as a child-care center. Most of our parents also have to make a choice.  They change jobs, reduce their working hours, or work flexible hours:  the solutions are many and varied as they consciously choose to spend a lot of time with their children.”

She goes on to write that the role of child care has changed; in the past it was for primarily for social stimulation and now,  “The centers must teach children the basics to help them achieve the necessary skills to choose their life style at a later stage.  The parents’ role is mainly to stimulate and organize activities of a social and/or cultural interest.”

Ouch.

Okay, I guess since I am home with my children, perhaps I have a different perspective on this as a homeschooling mother.  Why as a society do we throw up our hands and say, this is the way it is?  People have to work, people have chaotic home lives, so the children are better off in child care than with their own families?  Why are we not coming up with more ways to support and develop parents?  Why in this age of abundant information (yet, often contradictory and just plain wrong information!) are parents feeling so confused and isolated as to what children truly need?  Why is there not more understanding of children as children and childhood development and such as opposed to treating children as miniature adults?

Back to the things that are good about Nokken.  On page 31 Helle Heckmann writes, “Our first priority is to spend most of the day outdoors.  We spend five out of the six hours we are together outdoors.”  The children and staff walk daily to a park with open natural spaces and also have a garden with many fruit trees, berry bushes, sand pits, a hen house, rabbit cages, a pigeon house, a vegetable garden, a herb garden, flower beds and a laundry area.  The children who are younger and need to nap sleep  outside in an open shed, which is common in Denmark.

Children are met in the morning with a handshake, which I find uncommon for Early Year Waldorf programs in the United States.  This seems very awakening for the child, and something I truly only hear of teachers of Waldorf Grades doing with their students in the United States.  Perhaps my Danish readers can tell me if this is a cultural difference?  My husband’s family is from Denmark but have not lived there for a long time, so I have no one to ask!

The daily schedule is something that is lovely and takes into account the ages of the children.  On page 60 of Nokken, Helle Heckmann writes, “We are careful not to let the youngest children participate in story-telling.  If it is a long story, the three year olds sit in another room and draw, because in my experience it is important not to engage them in activities for which they are not ready.”  She also talks about how festival celebrations are mainly for children over 3 as well.  I love this.

The part I have the most difficulty with however, outside of the few things I mentioned above, is the perspective of child development based upon the work of Emmi Pickler and Magda Gerber and their Resources for Infant Educarers.  I realize this puts me outside of most in the Waldorf community, which has embraced RIE.

I liked Helle’s description of the need of the infant to cry as a form of communication.  However, much of the thrust of her perspective of infant care seems to be “to leave the infant in peace and quiet to sleep or, when awake, to get to know herself without constant intervention from her surroundings.  Often it is difficult to show this infant respect and leave her alone. Constantly satisfying your own need for reassurance and your need to look at your beautiful baby will often influence the infant’s ability to be content with herself….By giving the infant peace and quiet for the first months of her life, she will get used to her physical life; the crying will gradually stop, and the baby may start to sleep during the night without waking up at all hours.”

As an attached parent, I believe I can respect my child and still enfold her within my protective gesture and be physically close.  I believe I can still carry her in a sling and nurse her and  have her act as a (passive) witness to my life without overly stimulating her.  I believe in our particular culture at this particular time, parents need reassurance to enfold their child within themselves and their family unit, not to separate their children in their infancy to be independent.  Perhaps this is a cultural difference than Denmark, I don’t know.

However, I also have to say that I  do not believe baby-wearing is an excuse to take my children everywhere I went before I had children.  I believe in protecting the senses but doing this in an attached way.

I do agree with some of Helle Heckman’ s statements regarding infants, including her statement on page 17 of Nokken that, “The more restless the adults are, the more restless the children will be.”  However, statements such as “The less we disturb the infant, the better chance she has of adapting to her life on earth,” rather bothers me.  I agree in not initiating the disturbance of  the infant, but I fear too many parents will take this as license to just set their infant down and let them cry or to keep them passively in a crib.  I do  agree with Helle Heckmann’s assessment that it is difficult to care for children under walking age within a child care setting  because of the high needs of care and because infants need peaceful surroundings.

As a homeschooling mother, what I take away from Nokken is the lovely thoughts of a forest kindergarten, napping outside, using action to communicate with small children and not words (see page 32 of Nokken), using singing as a way of talking to small children (page 51), Helle’s constant inner work and development, her obvious love of the children.

And as a homeschooling mother and attached parent, I don’t like the whole notion that is invading Waldorf Education that children under the age of 4 or 4 and a half should be out of their homes, I don’t like the notion that the child care center, no matter how outdoorsy “shares” the child with the parents, and I don’t like the idea that parents are not as empowered as they could be in childhood development.  Why are we positioning anyone but the parents to be the experts on their children and acting as if someone else knows better?    Waldorf schools are also taking children earlier and earlier into Kindergarten, and I also have an issue with that.   I would like to see more effort to again, empower and inspire parents within the Waldorf movement to be home.   The hand shaking to greet a small child with such pronounced eye contact also baffles me.

There are many wonderful things at Nokken, and many American parents who need child care would be thrilled to find a center such as Nokken in their neighborhood.  Many mothers attempt to create such an environment as part of their homeschooling environment or take in children from outside their family for care so they may stay home with their own children.  These are all realities.

However, I would love to see a movement toward empowering and inspiring mothers to be homemakers, to be truly spiritual homemakers, to encourage families to make tough choices to be home with their children,  because I feel this is where the power of the next generation is truly going to disseminate from.

Blessings,

Carrie

What Happens If I Don’t Keep My Child Warm?

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There has recently been an interesting thread over at the Mothering Dot Community Forums (on the Waldorf sub-forum)  regarding the importance of hats and warmth and what happens if warmth is not maintained.

Here are some articles regarding warmth to start you off:

This one is about dressing the Waldorf Baby:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/early-years-nurturing-young-children-at-home/the-waldorf-baby/dressing-the-very-young-child.html

Also this blog post by Donna Simmons regarding the importance of hats:

http://christopherushomeschool.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/lets_hear_it_fo.html

Here is another article about warmth and health of the young child:

http://tidewaterschool.blogspot.com/2008/12/warmth-strength-and-freedom-by-m.html

This is one of my personal favorites:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/sjohnsonwarmth.pdf

One point that Susan Johnson, the MD who wrote this article makes, is especially pertinent:

“Warmth is probably one of the greatest gifts we can give our children, not only the warmth of love, but the physical warmth of their bodies.  Children are developing their bodies especially during the first seven years of their lives.  An infant or a young child will always feel warm unless they are on the verge of hypothermia because they have an accelerated metabolic rate.  If we don’t provide them with the layers of cotton and wool to insulate their bodies, then they must use some of their potential “growth” energy to heat their bodies.  This same energy would be better utilized in further developing their brain, heart, liver, lungs and other organs.”

Here is a blog post I wrote regarding the 12 senses that points out the place of warmth within the hierarchy of the senses:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/22/the-twelve-senses/

I personally think the consequences of not being warm enough comes down to three separate things: one is the fact that then energy is diverted away from development of the inner organs and brain, the second one is that warmth is a gateway to the higher senses of the 12 senses and could possibly be related to the explosion of sensory processing disorders we are seeing in this generation of children, and the third thing is that lack of warmth (both physical AND emotional –always remember that warmth is about emotional warmth as well as the physical warmth) can lead to a literal freezing of creativity and lack of enthusiasm – the highest level of warmth in a human is enthusiasm!  Rahima Baldwin Dancy writes on page 48 of “You Are Your Child’s First Teacher”:  “The sense of warmth is very important throughout early childhood, for warmth is the vehicle through which the will penetrates the body.”

Edmond  Schoorel writes in his book “The First Seven Years:  The Physiology of Childhood” that “In the child, the warmth of the body is warmth of the head.  In the lower pole, we have to look for the warmth of will.  That has to do with an intentional, directed will that brings the child into a true relationship with his or her environment.  It is obvious that infants do not have this yet.  Most of their movements are chaotic and undirected.  During infancy, each directed movement is connected to reflexes, such as aiming for the nipple, sucking, or swallowing.”  Remember, sometimes nothing can calm a baby as a warm hat, warmth is important for good weight gain and for organization of the senses.

Therefore, it is a good idea to keep your child’s head covered throughout the first year and to really watch the layers of clothing a child wears up until age 9 or so.  Wool and silk are preferable coverings; some of my favorite caps for infants and toddlers  can be found here:  http://www.nordicwoollens.com/c188943.2.html

Stay warm this winter and all-year round,

Carrie

“HELP! My puppy is biting my toddler!”

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Today I have the great fortune of having a guest blog writer – my dear friend and expert dog trainer Samantha Fogg!  Thank you so much Samantha for this column and your expertise!  Here is what Samantha writes in response to a very common problem:

“HELP! My puppy is biting my toddler!!!”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten a phone call from a panicked parent who is considering sending their new puppy back to the breeder or to a shelter because the puppy is biting them, their child, and they think that perhaps their pup is aggressive, or bad, or that they can’t handle a puppy in a house with children.  Sometimes the parent has contacted other trainers who haven’t offered any help, but who have said things like “never leave a puppy and a young child together unsupervised” and the parent took this to me that combining puppies and children is dangerous.  Puppies and children CAN co-exist in the same household, but it will take a bit of work and understanding, and yes supervision.  But really, I don’t recommend leaving young children unsupervised, whether or not there is a puppy in the mix.

Puppies bite everything.  Human babies do this too.  Remember when your child stuck everything into his or her mouth?  Puppies are learning about their world, and they are exploring, and everything, including your fingers and your child’s hands, are things your pup wants to learn about so into the mouth they go.  Puppies don’t have hands, so where your human baby patted things, and rolled things in his or her hands, your pup can only use his or her mouth.

It may seem like a cruel joke that puppies are at their most oral at the same time that their teeth are the sharpest, and yes puppy teeth hurt.  Dogs need to have exquisite control over their mouths.  They need to be able to exert the precise amount of control to gently lift and carry fragile items, and also to be able to rip and tear food.  Super sharp puppy teeth guarantee that the pup will get lots of feed back about how much pressure s/he is exerting.  When puppies play with each other they wrestle, and bite, and grab onto each other.  If one puppy bites another puppy too hard, the hurt pup will give a high pitched yelp and go a bit limp.  The biting pup should immediately back off.  If the biting pup persists with biting too hard, the one being bitten will refuse to play with the biter.  Thus puppies learn exactly how hard they can bite each other without hurting, and they gain control of their mouths.

The longer a pup stays with Mom and littermates, the farther along in their bite inhibition training they will be, but even a 12 week old pup won’t have mastered his or her mouth so you’ll need to take over where Mom and the littermates left off.  Some people punish a dog for using his or her mouth, and while in the short term this may solve the problem of sore hands, in the long term, the dog doesn’t learn sufficient bite inhibition.  Hurt dogs defend themselves by biting, and if something terrible happens, say your toddler hurts your dog badly, you want the dog to know that humans are fragile, and to be able to restrain himself and only put his mouth on your child, and not scar your child.  Bite inhibition is critical.  To teach this, you (depending on the age of your children, you likely do not want them to do this)  want to solicit play with your hands.  When the puppy bites you too hard yelp like a hurt puppy and let your hand go limp.  Your pup should immediately back off.  When the pup backs off, start the game again.  If the pup is over-stimulated, or overly tired, the pup may have a bit of a temper tantrum, and may repeatedly bite too hard.  If this happens, your goal should be to calm your pup down, perhaps by giving the pup some time away from people, or using gentle friendly restraint.  When you yelp, a small percentage of puppies will react as though your hand is prey, and will attack more, if this happens, cease playing with the pup and ignore the pup for a couple minutes every single time the pup bites too hard.  As with most things in dog training, repetition is important.  The more frequently you work on this with your puppy the sooner your puppy will learn to control his mouth.

Once your pup is able to play with you gently, it is time to let the puppy know that they can only play with your hands if they are invited to do so.  If the pup isn’t invited to play and grabs at your hands, either yelp like a hurt puppy again, or simply walk away.  In the beginning you’ll want to initiate the game a lot so that your puppy can learn the difference between being invited to play (puppy gets to play), and not being invited to play (puppy doesn’t get to play).  Once your pup understands that teeth can only touch human skin if invited to do so, you can gradually stop asking your puppy to play this game at all.

In addition to teaching your pup about bite inhibition, you want to provide your puppy with plenty of puppy-safe toys to chew.  Stuffed kongs, especially ones that are frozen, are a great toy for pups, but take a look at your local pet supply store, and try things out (see www.kongcompany.com for kongs and stuffing ideas!).  Ideally you should get enough toys so that you can rotate the toys out.  Toys that a dog hasn’t seen in a couple weeks are far more exciting than toys that the dog sees on a daily basis.  Remember — puppies NEED to chew, so if you don’t provide things for the pup to chew on, your pup will find things to chew on, and you won’t like your puppy’s choices.

Depending on the age of your children, you’ll need to involve them in this process to a greater or lesser degree, but unless your child is a baby, your child will need to participate in the bite inhibition training.  Fortunately for many children their initial instinct when nipped by a puppy is to scream in a high pitched voice, and to refuse to play with the puppy.  But you still want to practice.  Start before your puppy arrives (or if you already have a puppy, start with the pup out of the room).  Have your child practice yelping like a hurt puppy.  Make this a fun game.  Also have them practice freezing, and going limp.  Make sure that your child does NOT hit the puppy, or get aggressive toward the puppy.

More important than teaching the child what to do when nipped, you want to set puppy and child up for successful interactions.  A great game to help with this is the Invisible Dog Game. You’ll need lots of dog treats for this.  The rules are as follows:

1. Dog must be on a leash no longer than 6 feet, and the leash must be held by an adult.

2. Dogs who are in a down position are VISIBLE.  Dogs who are doing ANYTHING except lying down, are INVISIBLE.

3. Dogs who are VISIBLE can be patted, talked to, and given treats.  Dogs who are INVISIBLE must be ignored.

4. Don’t talk to the dog or tell the dog what to do.  Just stick to the above rules, your dog will figure it out.

When you first play this game, your pup may have a hard time coming up with the idea to lie down.  That is OK, but you want to make sure that your child stays engaged, so talk to your child about how the dog is invisible and where is the dog, and so forth.  Try to avoid becoming so animated that the dog has fun with this.

As soon as your dog becomes visible (lies down), make a big deal about it.  “Oh, there is the dog!” and immediately give the dog treats.  If the dog leaps back up — and many will in the beginning — the dog is invisible again “where did the dog go?  Wasn’t the dog just here?”  As your dog gets the hang of this, your dog will spend longer, and longer in the down position and you’ll have the opportunity to do things like — “where is the dog’s tail” and as soon as the child touches the dog’s tail, give the dog a cookie, and “how many paws does the dog have?” and give the dog a cookie each time the child touches a paw.  When the dog gets even better the child can sit with the dog, patting the dog and telling the dog stories.

Quit the game before dog and child get tired of the game.

Of course, puppies are learning a lot more than just about how to control their mouths, and puppies, like small children, can have temper tantrums or lose control of themselves.  Puppies who get overly tired, or over -stimulated, may nip more, may fling themselves about, may even air snap.  Puppies benefit from having a rhythm to their days, and to having plenty of nap time.  Puppies tend to be energetic in bursts, and then need to sleep.  Puppies who miss naps are often fussy, and grumpy.  Make sure that your pup is getting plenty of down time.  Puppies who don’t get enough exercise also have trouble controlling themselves.  You don’t want to go on overly long walks, or runs with your pup, but you do want them to have plenty of off-leash play time.

To recap — spend a lot of time teaching your puppy about bite inhibition, give your pup plenty of things to chew, teach your children what to do if the puppy nips them but try to avoid the pup nipping the children as much as you can, play games that teach positive ways for child and pup to interact, have a rhythm to your day that includes both active times and quiet times for the puppy.

Samantha Fogg

work+play positive dog training

Atlanta, GA (The next Babies+Dogs class will start in October!)

http://workplaydogs.com

Thank you again, Samantha!

Carrie

Helping Young Children to Play

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As promised, here are a few more thoughts regarding how to help young children play.

The number one thing is to know that in order to help your child to play, you need to understand the stages of play development.   Realistic expectations are very important!

From Ages Newborn to Two and  a Half:  Not many toys are needed.  A special doll, (arms and legs are not necessary), wooden spoons, pots and bowls are all lovely, along with baskets to fill and dump.

Barbara Patterson and Pamela Bradley write in “Beyond the Rainbow Bridge:  Nurturing Our Children from Birth to Seven”:  “We may not be able to complete our tasks with a child around, but HOW we do our work is more important than what we accomplish.  If we are only able to do fifteen minutes of concentrated work when a child is present, it will be fifteen minutes well spent.”

Notice there is NOT talk of sacrificing time with your child to do work, but that the work enlivens the life and energy of the child and the household. 

Two and a Half to Five Years:  The first bit of fantasy play emerges around the age of three – so if you are expecting your  two-year-old child to just take off and play a game they make up, this may be unrealistic.  Likewise, if you have a four and a half year old who cannot create any kind of games with toys, then you may need to help them catch up where they should be with play. 

So, around three years of age comes “let’s pretend”.  Reality and fantasy are the same and are not separated.  This is the stage where open ended toys are so important, because the play can shift dramatically from minute to minute and the toys need to keep up!  Baskets of silks, crystals, pinecones and such are all great things for this age group to create with. 

Children of this age generally do NOT share toys well.

Five to Seven Years:  Children are very involved in the creation of the game (which really is the whole game, not so much the end product).  For example, if children of this age are playing restaurant, the play may be all about deciding a menu, “writing” a menu, gathering things, setting up tables, and the “real” restaurant part where people sit down and order and someone plays the waiter may not happen. 

Children of this age enjoy dolls with arms and legs and clothes to dress and undress.  Simple arts and crafts are wonderful as well.  The six-year-old who is going through the six-year-old transformation and is restless and “bored” may  not need more play, but instead practical work until they are ready to  play again.

The notion of practical work brings up an important point.  As always,  start with yourself and what you are modeling for your child to imitate in their play.  This is one reason Waldorf in the Early Years has a great focus on practical work with the hands so your child can see that!  Gardening, knitting, baking, cooking, canning, music, cleaning things by hand, hanging laundry out to dry are all good places to start.

As mentioned, children need less toys than you think, but open ended toys are good.  People get very caught up in buying the silks and expensive wooden toys, but really homemade toys are the best.  There are a number of books regarding toymaking with children, one of my favorites is “Toymaking with Children” by Fraye Jaffke as seen here:  http://www.amazon.com/Toymaking-Children-Freya-Jaffke/dp/0863153674/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251158698&sr=1-1.  This would be a great book to get to make your children some gifts for the holidays!  You can start now and make some fabulous things!  There are also examples throughout this book showing playspaces that are set up with silks and open-ended toys so you can see how to do this yourself at home!

Create your playspaces close to where you spend your time – if you are in the kitchen, have a playroom near the kitchen or take a corner of your kitchen and have a play corner there. 

Involve your children in your work – your real work where they can contribute and feel as if they played a vital role.  Use singing, warmth, stories to draw your child in rather than commands to “help” which usually causes the child to run the other way!

If you are working and child has “nothing to do” or needs your assistance to start playing again, you can provide  them an opportunity to help you, you can essentially become “the old woman who stirs the soup while the train is coming to town” and provide a framework for play without being completely enmeshed and immersed in the play, or you can stop your own work for a few minutes and help solve the play problem by doing whatever the child is requesting you to do.

In these ways we are close to our children, we exude warmth and love for our children and welcome them with open arms for help with play.  We don’t push them away because we have our own work, but strive to include the child as we can and help the child in their important work, the development of play!

Peace,

Carrie

Waldorf and “Addictive Behavior” in Children

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I recently have had questions from mothers regarding their small under 7 children and the children’s behavior or tendency to 1 – “wanting to sit around” all day rather than being physically active; 2- wanting to sit and look at book after book after book after book and 3; wanting to sit and have the parent tell story after story after story after story after story and 4; wanting the parent to play all day long with them.  In many cases this is an older child or an only child with no siblings to play with, but I have also seen this happen with restless children who are just not peaceful yet.

Part of the view of Waldorf education is that children under the age of 9 are prone to “emotional excess” for lack of a better term:  they are sensitive to the environment, the stimuli of the environment and are in the stages of learning about themselves.  The children are viewed as starting to view themselves as separate from the environment, their parents, etc around the age of 9.  I am sure we can all recount the four and five year olds who want to grow up to be an animal, a rock, (and at the same time a doctor or artist or whathave you).  That is a good example of the consciousness of a four or five year old.

If a child has a tendency (and we don’t look at temperament until they hit 7, so please don’t say they their behavior is due to their temperament quite yet!) to just sit, or want to hear stories over and over, or needing a parent to play all day long with them, please go back and do the following:

1. – Look at yourself!  Sometimes it is very hard with only one child.  Are YOU physically active outside?  Is that part of your daily rhythm?  Do you garden, walk, hike weekly, go swimming?  Your example and working this into the rhythm will be of utmost importance for this child.

2 – Look at your rhythm!  There should periods of in-breath, of out-breath, periods of being inside and quiet, periods of being outside and running around, there should be time for spontaneous stories but also for that one special story with a candle

3.  Small children under the age of 7 may need your assistance in playing.  Children of this age learn through imitation, and therefore may need your help.  However, this does not mean you need to sit down and play with your child non-stop.  You can start a child with a scenario and help them set up things for them (or set up things for them the night before), and you can move toward being “the grandmother who does the dishes where the train  is going through the town” or some other minor role.  You can help the play get “unstuck” but it is part of our job to FACILITATE play, not completely organize and lead it and be an equal playmate.

4. Have some times when you are UNAVAILABLE.  There may be times where you just need to wait “for the story fairy to bring you a story, but right now is time to peel the carrots for dinner” and hand them a peeler!

5.  Which brings us to an important point:  do not underestimate the importance of getting your child involved in helping with the chores of the day.  Practical work is the heart of the home.  There should be daily chores that are done every  day, and also focus activities of each day.

6. If your child is restless, whiny, etc do not feel you have to fix it.  If they do not want to peel the carrots, YOU go on and peel the carrots and sing a song.  If your child is frequently “bored” (and yes, I have heard very small children use this term), tell them it is okay to do nothing and some idea will come to them through the angels or the fairies.   I reassure my children that sometimes I feel like that, but mainly I can always think of some handwork or cooking I would like to do.   If you have time, you can always take a quick walk and change the scenery. 

Look for a post coming regarding facilitating play in children to come soon.  In the meantime, here is an old post I wrote regarding “Fostering Creative Play”: 

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/10/29/more-about-fostering-creative-play/

and here:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/10/05/fostering-creative-play/

With children under the age of 9, it is our job to help them curb their “excesses” by using our rhythm, our calm presence, our help to enfold them in our love and warmth and to MOVE THEM FORWARD.  If you let your child sit and look at book after book for two hours a day, is this moving them forward in their creative thinking, their play, their prowess in moving  their bodies (which is a hallmark of what children under the age of 7 should be doing!)  Have your big picture for the first seven years in mind so you can tailor your decisions around that!

Much love,

Carrie

“How Do I Take Off One of These Hats?!”

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In one of my previous posts entitled “Raising Peaceful Children” found here  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/08/17/raising-peaceful-children/, I put forth my theory that too many women are just doing too much by themselves.  They are wearing more hats than any one person can possibly wear, and the result is a stressed-out mommy and then, accordingly, anxious children. 

This, of course, behooves the question: Well, how do I get rid of some of these hats?

This is such an individual thing, difficult to discuss in a blog forum for sure, but here are some general suggestions where you can take what resonates with you:

Sit down WITHOUT your children running around,  with paper and pencil in hand and write down your top three goals for your family.  (If you have a family mission statement, that really does help.  See this post about The Family Mission statement here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/05/08/creating-a-family-mission-statement/).

Write down all the activities that you are doing inside and outside your home.  Could you narrow your activities so they support your top three goals for your family?  Can you and your spouse dialogue about this? 

If you feel you are wearing too many hats due to the economic crisis and financial strain, is there any way to lessen that?  It could mean painful choices in order to reach your top three priorities.  I know families where one of the top three priorities is for the mother to be able to stay home and homeschool, so they sold their homes and moved into a rental unit.  They sold off many things.  And mom could stay home!  I know families who sold one car, so the family has only one car that the mother takes one day a week.  This means the children only “get out” one day a week.   I know families who moved so they could walk to things instead of being in a car. 

If your strain is due to having too many very worthwhile and positive activities, one piece of advice a friend gave me is to contact all these organizations and tell them you are taking a break for 18 months at which point a re-evaluation will take place.  Many times no one will step up to volunteer until someone has stepped down.  The other issue as well is that if whatever thing you are doing falls apart because you are no longer doing it, perhaps that means that it is not the right time in the right place within your community for this activity to happen. 

What would happen if you took out a period of three to four months with no outside activities and mainly stayed home?  What would life look like then?

These are just general suggestions, but hopefully enough to spark some thoughts in you.  If you have gotten off the hamster wheel of too many commitments, too many hats and would like to share, please do post in the comments section – many harried mothers would welcome the input!

Many blessings,

Carrie

Movement For the Child Under the Age of 3

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A very interesting article available through www.waldorflibrary.org at this link:

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW55breipohl.pdf

Happy Reading!

Carrie

The Habit of Happiness

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To me, happiness is a habit.  Happiness is not something that comes from external sources – ie, the whole “this made me happy today” and “this made me sad” and “this made me angry”.  Yes, things happen and we sometimes feel happy, sad or angry as a first reaction – but with time and practice, we can learn to modify our inner landscape and choose how to react, help rid ourselves of stress, worry and anxiety and put in its place a sense of peace instead.  Peace, to me, is the Real Deal of Happiness.  Peace is that inner quality that occurs no matter what the circumstances of life surround you.

The way to this path is to choose to be happy and peaceful as your journey, as a conscious step every day, and not just viewing happiness as this elusive goal.  Here are some thoughts for how to do this:

1.  Practice basic meditation – Steiner has some great exercises for anthroposophical inner work and if you go here you will find the inner work of the day posted:  http://www.rsarchive.org/

2.  Do your best to not model worry, anxiety and guilt for your family members.  I would venture to say that many of us have worried, anxious and guilty thought patterns because this is what was modeled to us as children.  It is an easy thing to pass on to the next generation.

3.  Limit your hurrying:  being hurried and overscheduled can lead quickly to feeling overwhelmed, guilt-ridden and anxiety-ridden.  As homeschoolers, many of us could be so booked with activities we could be out of the house every day, morning, afternoon, and night.  Pick and choose and realize  that homeschooling can be about, and should be about, being in your home.

4.  Religious practices can provide peace – easy to knock it until you try it and create a practice.  Many people are very cynical regarding organized religion, but I urge you to investigate this if this is a stumbling block for you.  Find the religious path that works for you and work at it.  Certain faiths, such as the Catholic faith and the Episcopal faith, have a “Daily Office” where prayers are said at certain times of the day – this can be a very grounding experience to help you focus your attention off of yourself and onto something higher.  To my Orthodox readers, does this also exist in the Orthodox Church as well?

5. Exercise.  Walk, bike, swim, take the time to go to the gym if you have the financial luxury to be able to afford a gym, walk on some nature trails, do some yoga.  Make this a priority for yourself and for your children.  This is very important for dealing with depression and anxiety, and to help feel more  peaceful. 

6.  Re-frame how you look at  things, and how you say things.  Watch your words like the pearls you are, because the words you say are the reality for your children.

7.  Forge as close and intimate a relationship as you can with your spouse or partner.  Your children are NOT a substitute for the intimacy you should be experiencing with your adult partner, and your children will be better for it to see this wonderful, healthy relationship between two adults who can laugh and have fun together.  Having this relationship as a bedrock in your life will provide you with peace!

I think creating a habit of happiness for your inner work is this coming school year is very important.  I hear so many mothers who tell me up and down how fortunate they are to be able to be home during this economy, how they like being a stay-at-home mother but yet all they do is complain about their husbands, their homes, their weight and body image, their children’s behavior and themselves. 

Stop complaining; choose peace and happiness instead.  Start with yourself in small steps and model this for your spouse and your children; you may be surprised with the wonderful results!

Many blessings,

Carrie