Where Do I Go Now?

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What do you do when you realize your method of homeschooling has been more detrimental  than the goodness you thought it was bringing to your child? Or that your child just has tremendous imbalances between their body, their head, their social and emotional skills?   I am talking about parents of very,very bright children who were reading at age three fluently, the very smart child who is so incredibly “gifted”, the children who are so ahead of themselves and so logical…..

Until the parent begins to notice that this very bright child can relate to no one of his own age at all.  That the child has poor gross motor skills.  That the child is only drawn to books and textbooks and such.  That this child has very little creative ability, is very serious, has difficulty playing.  That the child seems very in their head, worried about adult things, in fact seems more like an adult than not…..

In my experience many of these children do  feel isolated, depressed, anxious – and they are still children and whether they can verbalize it or not, they are looking to you to take the lead, to make it better.  They are still small, they still need your protection.

And the parent is thinking now this child is 7,8 or 9, what to do, what to do?  Can Waldorf education help this child?

My first recommendation is this:  Call one of the national Waldorf consultants for a consultation.  This is important, because  sometimes you are dealing with an out of the ordinary situation, not just where the child is coming in late to Waldorf, which also may have its own challenges, but there may be therapeutic issues to be dealt with.   Here is the link with all the names of consultants I know:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/01/03/waldorf-consultants/

My second recommendation is to look at yourself!  This will take hard work, change, motivation, being matter of fact and peaceful with your child as things change and they complain about the change!  Can you:

1. Stop talking and putting adult decision making on them?   Do not ask them if they want to “do Waldorf homeschooling.”  It is not their choice at this point.  They should have completely limited choices at this point on life issues.  They already have had enough pressure and the decision making process has worked on their psyche to the point where they are no longer children.  Help them reclaim their childhood by being the Authentic Leader in your home. You set the tone right now.

2.  Can you read some of Steiner and really penetrate what teaching first, second or third grade is  about?  What level these children are normally at in these grades in Waldorf? And there is more than academics at stake here – where are they gross motor wise, emotionally, socially, artistically, fine motor wise?     It is probably going to be very different than what you are used to.    Can you be okay with that while you take a year to heal and to shift toward balance?

3.  Can you be okay with balancing the child without the use of textbooks in these early grades, with the use of outside time, hiking, gardening, being in nature without identifying trees and bushes to death?  Woodworking, knitting, dyeing things, having an aquarium without all the plant and fish identification, having an art farm or worm farm, looking at the stars with the naked eye with Native American legends and stories as the backdrop would all be healing.  Apple picking, berry picking, making jelly, going to the zoo and aquarium (without writing reports or taking one of the those damned nature journals around with them to draw and identify everything by the latin name? just looking and being and seeing how those animals move), swimming, singing and jumping rope would all be very healing.

4.  Can you show them how to play by setting up stations for playing in your home?  Most eight year old girls still like to play with dolls.  Maybe your child has forgotten how to play!  Copious outside time will help.  Can you set up a woodworking bench, a knitting area, a sewing area, an area for art?  Can you work on some handwork yourself for an hour in the afternoons and set up that model, that expectation for your son or daughter?

5.  Think about warmth – less words, stop explaining, can you show your delight in your child WITHOUT words at all?  Smiles, hugs, fun!  Can you as a family go and have fun?  Hiking, ice skating, roller skating, picnics, – is this child’s seriousness coming from you?  This child is small and needs to be joyous!

6.  Think about early bedtimes, consistent meal and snack times with warm food.  Lots of fresh air and fresh unprocessed foods.

7.  Bring in stories to heal your child’s soul – fairy tales, legends, nature stories, stories from your childhood and from when your child was very, very small.  Lots of storytelling.  Remember, the academics in Waldorf can be adjusted to where your child is, but the stories for each grade is designed for the child’s soul development.  And while we would want to focus on what a child needs for that age, and not go backward, I see nothing wrong with lighting a candle and telling a fairy tale at night to a third grader!  Adults love fairy tales too!

8.  Can you bring in music?  The joy of having music as a family?  This is so important.

9. Can you make a big deal about preparing for festivals where school does not go on as usual?  Festival preparation is an integral part of life for the Early Grades child.

Your Waldorf consultant will have other suggestions based upon your child’s needs.  Waldorf is a healing method of education, but it takes commitment and a matter of fact peaceful kind of energy.

Peace and may goodness go with you,

Carrie

Does Your Child Know What Is Best?

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Okay, nationally syndicated family psychologist John Rosemond and I do not agree most of the time when I read his column and approach.  (Sorry, Mr. Rosemond, I am not sure if this is because of a gender gap or a generational gap or what).  But, as I read his column in my local newspaper  this past Saturday, I had to agree with him.

Here is something he wrote that I think is excellent food for thought for today’s parents:

“A child, lacking farsightnedness, does not know what is in his best interest.  He is apt to prefer that which is bad for him and reject that which is good for him.  His parents and teacher must provide the restraint and direction he cannot provide himself.

Proper restraint and direction are essential to turning the anti-social toddler into a disciple who will trust and look up to his parents, follow their lead and subscribe to their values.  And “proper” means with lots of love.  (My bolded added), (and yes, I wince I bit with the whole “proper restraint “ phrasing but do read on and here is the punchline……).

…..In this regard, all too many of today’s parents are trying to pull the horse with the cart.  They think discipline is all about shaping proper behavior by manipulating reward and punishment.  That’s not discipline; that’s behavior modification.  Discipline is the process by which a child is taught to think properly.  A child who thinks properly will behave properly, but the converse is not true.  A child who only learns what behaviors are appropriate to what situation may become nothing more than a clever manipulator.”

He goes on to say, that in effect, until the child’s values are formed, the child has to be guided and directed.

Okay, so I don’t always agree with Mr. Rosemond’s wording, but I agree in some sense with the spirit of what he wrote.

There are several  challenges  that I see with parents and their attempts at guiding their children  today. One is that parents frequently over-explain themselves and in essence try to guide their three, four, and five year old by speaking to them in  they way they should be speaking to a ten year old.  It is a real problem that I see.  The explanation is essentially, many times, not just a reason for doing or not doing something, in a short sentence,   but in essence a long debate trying to garner the child’s agreement with what the parent needs instead of just being kind, being gentle, but sticking to what the parent said in the first sentence.  The children  really don’t need the essay!  It does not mean you are not loving, kind and gentle – but you can do this without so many words!  Be warm, use humor, SMILE!    I know you can!

The other challenge that I see is that parents have no grasp on developmental stages.  “Why won’t they listen?”  “When do they understand no?”   comes up all the time on the gentle discipline boards I am on for children under the age of 7!    Waldorf understands this so well, and has so many gentle techniques to assist in non-wordy guidance for your small  child.

You must have the gentle, physical presence and follow through with a small child, and even for the very ephemeral, short-memory, easily distracted seven year old.  Steiner’s stages of development were right on, and if we think of seven and eight year olds at at the beginning of a new stage and  not so much as the “old school aged” children we will do much better.

The last challenge I see is the reluctance of parents to set any boundaries at all.  There has to be boundaries, as this is the only way we can all function in a household together, and boundaries help a child learn how to function in the society we live in where it will not be all about them.    And guess what, because you are the parent, because you have the most experience in life, because you bear more responsibility for the things that happen in your household, you get to set the boundaries.  Step up to the plate and set the boundaries in a loving way!

None of this means we don’t listen to our child, that our child doesn’t have input, that our child is not loved and cherished.  But it does mean that we understand the process by which a child develops, that we understand the process by which a child develops values and develops morality is not all at once, and we cannot speed up this developmental process by talking a child’s ear off anymore or providing punishments and rewards any more than we can speed up when they are mature and capable enough to drive a car.

A few thoughts,

Carrie

“I Got My Son Back!”

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The decision to pull a teenager out of high school and to homeschool instead can be a difficult one.  I have a friend who did just that, and it has worked out splendidly.  Her son was depressed, sullen, angry and failing when he attended school.  Now he is now a boy who not only gets all his work done but works ahead.  He reports to his friends how much he likes being homeschooled, and how ”it’s like college, because it is all on me to get it done.”  His friends now would like to be homeschooled!

His mother reports he is now pretty cheerful, happy and is once again loving toward his family.  She wonders if he had been bullied at school, but he won’t talk about that yet.  She wonders if he fell in with the wrong crowd, or just trying to be part of the culture where being a “smart boy” was not cool.  It was much more cool to not care and to fail.  All she knows is she is happy that she did not listen to her fears about homeschooling and went ahead.  She says it is the best thing she ever has done and wishes they had done it long ago.

What is holding you back today?  What fears are you holding onto?  What do you need to let go of in order to be the best parent and homeschooling teacher you can be?

Food for thought,

Carrie

Housecleaning and Homeschooling

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Lovey over at Lovey-land (http://lovey-land.blogspot.com/) lent me a few fabulous books regarding decluttering and housecleaning.  I am no stranger to these areas, because having clean spaces is very important to me, and living simply without too much stuff is also important to me.  However, these books were very helpful to me because one book laid out decluttering projects with estimated amounts of time, and the other book really clarified what should be cleaned daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.

I do think that having a clean and orderly house is part of homeschooling.  First of all, it can be hard for some if not all children to function in a cluttered environment because they are just being constantly distracted.  Secondly, having a clean house is important from a health perspective.  Thirdly, I find most women who are feeling completely overwhelmed with their house also are feeling overwhelmed with homeschooling, with life in general, and are sometimes dealing with depression or other things going on. So I think your home is sometimes a barometer of where you are and how you are feeling.

Most importantly, housecleaning, laundry, getting meals on the table and such all still have to happen even with homeschooling!  You are still the leader for your home! So the question becomes how to figure out how to make this happen.

If you are in the beginning steps of decluttering and getting your house in order, bravo! You may want to check out www.flylady.net if you are not already acquainted with that website.  It is very helpful to those of us who have to work at being organized. 

Here is my own personal list for daily, weekly cleaning:

Daily-

Clean the bathrooms

Air out the beds after we get up and open windows to air everything out, make beds after 30 minutes or so

Keep kitchen clean, put out clean towels every day in kitchen (countertops I do every day, outside of cabinets once a week)

Vacuum/dust mop  daily (did I mention we have a large hairy dog?)

Empty trash cans if full

Weekly

Change bed linens, including putting pillows in dryer for 15 minutes to kill dust mites

Change bath towels 2-3 times a week

Dust

Wipe down doorknobs, light switches, etc ( I admit I may do this more than once a week)

Wipe down baseboards (again due to big hairy dog) and doors and door hinges

Clean oven and refrigerator (including taking shelves out every 1-2 weeks and washing the shelves off).

Wash and sanitize garbage cans

Vacuum upholstered furniture every 1-2 weeks.

Sweep outside patios and walks a couple times a week.

Clean out pantry if needed

Yearly

Painting as needed

At least two times a year pressure wash house, outside windows

Condition wood furniture

 

Every family has their own way of doing things based upon the climate in which they live, the size of their house, etc.  I am just sharing some of the things I do. 

Peace,

Carrie

Happy Mother’s Day

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there; I appreciate the time all of you take in reading this blog.  This blog is currently getting somewhere between 300-500 hits a day!  Thank you for all you do for children, for all the thought and care you give to your family life.  You all are such an inspiration to me!

Happy Mother’s Day,

Carrie

Flow of the Day in A Waldorf Home

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Keep in mind this would be an ideal day in our house with a Kindergartner and an Early Grades kiddo, but maybe it will help give someone an idea of how to put it all together. Modify, change, take what resonates with you and your family and where you live.  There is no one right way to do this!!  We are at home and not at a Waldorf school!

Here is a day in the life:

  • Up, air out beds while taking shower, cleaning up bathroom and getting dressed
  • Make all beds with children’s help
  • Breakfast with blessing, religious devotional;  clean-up after breakfast including wiping table and sweeping under table
  • Help children with dressing, hair brushing and teeth brushing
  • Throw in laundry
  • Go for walk with children and dog or gardening tasks
  • Snack
  • Call to school with Song of Month on pennywhistle and any festival songs we are learning, light candle, say morning verses  (we may school outside or inside)
  • Circle time or seasonal finger plays for Kindergartner
  • Story for Kindergartner/Activity after story – every week we include modeling of some type and kind.  We also use drama, puppets, drawing, and other things to bring the story alive over a period of two weeks to a month for each Kindy story.
  • Active Math practice for older child if not in a Math Block or pennywhistle and more singing practice
  • Main Lesson for Grades Child – three day rhythm here……  An hour is a long time here for a First Grader!
  • Foreign language two days a week (German on Mondays with arts and crafts for the younger child, cooking on Tuesdays, Wednesdays Spanish with free play inside for the youngest child) (And yes, amazingly, this time period may involve more eating and snacking :))
  • Outside play while I do some more cleaning, lunch preparation
  • Blessing, lunch; clean-up
  • Quiet time
  • Handwork alternated with arts and crafts or wet on wet painting is ideal

The afternoons we spend outside playing or just creating.  I like to garden or read while the children play.  Time to “just  be”  is important to us.  We do grocery shop on Thursday afternoons in general.  Some weeks we have allergist or chiropractic appointments to work in as well.  I try very hard to keep us home a lot, which means saying NO to a lot of   things.  🙂

Fridays look a bit different in that our typical school day is usually either a fast finish up of the only the academic piece of the Main Lesson (without the Kindy stuff or math practice).  We usually then do  a short  Peace Circle (this idea was inspired by  the Winter Seasons of Joy booklet by Annette  – you can see her website here about ordering: http://natural-childhood.blogspot.com/ for Annette’s example)   I have made my own Peace Circles (and taught hymns or other spiritual songs and verses) and a religious study.   This year we have been discussing one Fruit of the Spirit a month through a bible story, coloring, games or whatever else I can think of (there are nine Fruit of the Spirit  so this happened to work out well for us).  And then generally we clean and play and get the house ready for the weekend!

Every Waldorf homeschool will look different; it will also look different at different stages as your children grow and mature.

I hear so many mothers who have three children or more under the age of 5 and they are so hard on themselves that they don’t have this wonderful rhythm with all these activities going on; please do be easy with yourselves out there!  Sometimes it is just getting through the day and small things at that point with building up to the bigger things as the children grow and mature!  Take it easy if you have multiple children under the age of 5; remember Steiner thought is was beneficial for a child to be able to see even 15 minutes of real work done by your warm hands.  Go through the back posts on this blog about rhythm and start small – awake times, bedtimes, mealtimes.

Be easy with yourself and others as we travel this homeschooling road together,

Carrie

Creating A Day of Rest In Your Week

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Many spiritual and religious traditions include having a day of rest.  Even for those of you  without a specific spiritual or religious path, wouldn’t a day of rest a week sound wonderful?  Perhaps you would like to have a day of rest once a week to go have a picnic by a lake with your family, or a day up in the mountains. 

Of course, the question is how to make this happen!

This is something I am working toward and can only share my progress and plans.  To me, there needed to be several things in place before I could have a day of rest.  These things included 1-all the housework and laundry done beforehand, the refrigerator full, errands done 2- a plan for meals and advance meal  preparation for our day of rest to also include a special dinner the night before our day of rest  3- a plan for that day for my family, including  perhaps a special box of things that only come out on that day for the children to play with in the morning  and also notions on  how we would spend our day.

My plans so far include doing things each day of the week to get ready for the day of rest, and using the two days before the day of rest as more serious preparation days.  This past weekend we experimented with easy meals/meals made in advance and found that satisfactory.  Having a plan to get housework, laundry, errands, grocery shopping all done and in place has also been a huge help.

Just something to think about and see if this appeals to you,

Carrie

Creating A Family Mission Statement

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My husband and I are in the process of writing a mission statement, has anyone out there ever done that?  It is a truly interesting process, and for those of you who are interested, I thought I would outline some steps regarding creating a family mission statement of your own.

First of all, sit down with your spouse or significant other and talk to them about this.  Discuss with each other the fundamentals of life, such as:  What are the attitudes in our family regarding money?  What do we feel the place or importance of education is in our family?  How does our family regard religion or spirituality, and how does this play into our everyday lives?  What is the role of activities outside of our family?  Is the environment extremely important to us and how do we reflect that?  Is helping other people or participating in our neighborhood, church or synagogue, or community essential?  For those of you who are parents, do you have a view of childhood development or loving guidance that really plays center stage in your daily life?

It is an eye-opening experience to have these conversations with your significant other!  It can also take a long time, and this is not a step to be rushed.  Really talk about these things, and think about them and ponder them. What is most important to you both as you shape your family? 

Then talk to the other adults in your house if you have extended family living with you.  Some sources say to then sit down with your children  with the value statements you and your partner came up with and see what they have to say.  Some mothers I have spoken with talk about how you can ask your children for adjectives that they would use to describe the family, what the children think  is most important to mother and father, what they think about their family. 

I think this step could be quite head-oriented and somewhat difficult to grasp for the under –nine crowd.  Perhaps something better for you and your partner may be  to set your mission statement as you together create your family environment (and then change the mission statement to include your children’s ideas as they grow and mature, of course!)  So I guess the inclusion of children, for me personally , would really  have to depend on the ages and maturity  of the children involved.  Some older children may have valuable input, or at least a specific idea or example of something where you could tie this to a bigger value for your mission statement, whereas a three or four year old probably will just parrot whatever  their big brother or sister has to say!  I know this is not a popular view nowadays, in the age of democratic and consensual family living, but I thought I would throw it out there that you really are in charge of setting the tone for your own home first and foremost!  As always, take what resonates from my writings and ideas and adapt it to your own family.

However you decide to do this process, you would then write down the value statements or ideas that family members come up with in sentences, as many sentences as you need.  You could then see if any similarities exist among the value statements where you could group them under one heading so to speak.  For example, “health” to you may include physical health, spirituality practices, alternative health care, eating styles and communication styles, breastfeeding and attachment parenting.  

For older children some families provide follow-up sentences to each value sentence that explains how this value would be implemented – for example, if living simply is a strong value, perhaps examples of follow-up statements would include buying used whenever possible, considering the reduction of packaging in purchasing decisions, treating the earth kindly, involvement in environmental justice kinds of activities, etc.

Once you have your family’s mission statement you can put it somewhere and frame it for easy reference – do not just tuck it away in a drawer!  This should be the touchstone of discerning what is essential for you and your family.  It should help you determine what you will participate in and what you won’t, and how you will live. 

Mission statements are living documents that need to updated as your family members grow and mature; set regular dates to review, revise, re-frame your thoughts.

Perhaps all or part of this process may appeal to you and your family; please leave a comment in the comment section below !

Peaceful family living to you and yours,

Carrie

Making Yourself A Priority in the Parenting Equation

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Have you grown to feel resentful of your child and the lack of boundaries, the lack of  time for your own dreaming, the lack of time for planning?

It is time for a CHANGE!

First of all, have you ever just congratulated yourself in the excellent job you have done being a mother?  It is difficult in those early years to learn how to surrender your time, your body, your breasts, your bed and your bath to a little baby with such intense needs.  Those days where  baby or even small toddler  and you are together, a beautiful open oneness.

Until the day comes that perhaps you realize your child is changing and you realize that your child is not just a reflection of you, a part of you, an extension of you.  They are their own wonderful, unique separate human being!  A marvelous being who is completely different from YOU.  You are not the same as your child.

So how do we regain some balance in our homes and in our lives?

First of , we do accept that if we have a baby, our baby’s needs deserve to be met and we are CHOOSING to meet them in the way we are responding to our baby.  We also accept the fact that  our parenting must change as our child grows and goes through different stages.  If you need help knowing what is appropriate when, please do look through past posts on this blog regarding the developmental stages of the three, four, five, six and seven-year-old. 

Secondly, we accept those moments in parenting that are a challenge.  In the book “Everyday Blessings” Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn write that,  “Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart. Each time I come to understand something about one of my children, I also learn something about myself and the child that I once was, and that knowledge acts as a guide for me. When I am able to empathize and feel compassion for a child’s pain, when I am accepting of the contrary, irritating, exasperating behaviors that my children can manifest, try on, experiment with – the healing power of unconditional love heals me as it nourishes them. As they grow, I grow. My transformations are inside.”

We start to look for ways of balancing not only the needs of our child (once our child is old enough), and the needs of ourself and our family.  Here are some suggestions:

1. Practice Mindful Parenting /Being in The Present–

Ask yourself, “Is this establishing connection and trust with my child?” “Is this a respectful way to treat my child?” Ask yourself, “Is this a short-term solution that has really bad long-term consequences?” Ask yourself “Is this about my inner balance? My own stuff?”

2.  Practice Acceptance –

In Everyday Blessings, Myra and Jon Kabat-Zinn write that acceptance is an inner orientation which acknowledges that things are as they are, whether they are the way we want them to be or not.

“How I respond to this episode is determined by how I see or don’t see my child in that moment.”

“There are so many different ways to view what we often call “difficult” or “negative behaviors” in our children. What might be completely unacceptable to someone else might be normal behavior to me, and vice versa.”

They suggest practicing in these ways:

-Try to imagine the world from you child’s point of view, purposefully letting go of your own. Do this every day for at least a few moments to remind you of who this child is and what he or she faces in the world

-Imagine how you appear and sound from your child’s point of view, i.e., having you as a parent today, in this moment. How might this modify how you carry yourself in your body and in space, how you speak, what you say? How do you want to relate to your child in this moment?

–There are very important times when we need to practice being clear and strong and unequivocal with our children. Let this come as much as possible out of awareness and generosity and discernment, rather than out of fear, self-righteousness, or the desire to control. Mindful parenting does not mean being overindulgent, neglectful, or weak; nor does it mean being rigid, domineering and controlling.

3. Acceptance is Easier If We Know and Understand Normal Breastfeeding Behavior and Normal Developmental Stages….

4. Stop describing yourself as busy  because this is viewing a situation as negative and it is not helpful to you! ( from the book The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood, page 15)   Try re-framing your thoughts!

5. Guard Your Mind (pg. 15 from The Hidden Feelings Of Motherhood) “Pay attention to what you watch, listen to, and read…Try to be selective and look for material that builds you up and nourishes your spirit.”

6.  Take Care of Your Body (pg. 15 from The Hidden Feelings of Motherhoood) “You need to consider it a priority to eat well, exercise, sleep and get regular physicals.”   Those of you out there struggling with low milk supply and nursing, do know that anemia, hypothryoidism and other physical factors can impact milk supply!  Get checked out!

7.  Be Unavailable at Least Some Time Every Day.

8.  Plan Restorative Vacations at home – time to do the things that would make you feel better!

9. Practice Being Grateful for What You Have

10. Laugh more – do not take everything in mothering so seriously!  There are many things that three, four, five and six year olds say that do not need to be given such all-serious weight!

11. Seek out a mothering mentor –someone who is POSITIVE

12. Cultivate a spiritual life and seek out the beautiful in life!

13.  None of this is helping –Consult with a professional right away!

  1. Baby Blues – Usually occurs days three to 7 post-partum
  2. Post – Partum Depression – Depressed mood continuing past the “baby-blues” time frame of three to seven days postpartum, suffered by at least one out of every 8 mothers. Often accompanied by severe anxiety/panic, spontaneous crying, agitation, insomnia, obsessional thoughts, disinterest in baby, suicidal thinking.
  3. Depression = social isolation is a contributor to this! Feelings of extreme sadness or despair lasting two weeks or longer, accompanied by feelings of hopelessness, fatigue, disturbed sleep or appetite, poor concentration, difficulty making decisions, feelings of worthlessness, withdrawal from friends or family, suicidal thinking.

From page 26 onward “The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood” talks about being committed to getting well, ruling out physical causes, knowing your treatment options, getting good nutrition, nutritional supplementation, exercise, use of cognitive behavioral therapy (which is the only talk therapy that is as effective as medication for treatment of depression and anxiety), use of herbs and antidepressants.  This is a great book, please do check it out!

  1. Burn Out – feeling negative (sad or angry every day), interpersonal problems, health problems, loss of enthusiasm and feeling meaningless, substance abuse. Kathleen Kendall Tackett advises us to stop denying, get reconnected (people have a tendency to withdraw when they are under stress), set boundaries, get some help with your work, get treatment for depression.
  2. “Depleted Mother Syndrome” from the  book  “Mother Nurture” has a checklist on page 28 regarding possible areas where demands are placed on you, and has short-term and long-term stress relievers.
  3. What about ANGER??   There are posts on this blog regarding anger, please do go to the tags box and look them up!

The book “Mother Nurture”  suggests stopping things from building up- defuse BEFORE you blow up. Do not over give, blow off steam as you go along, take a break before you get to the breaking point.

Mothers who feel “manipulated” by their children often feel angry – check out normal development again!  See the fast little “quiz” below – can you guess what developmental behavior comes when?   Children below the age of 7 do not have the logical and cognitive abilities to be “deceptive”. Are you prickly to “challenges to your authority”? Is your own childhood getting mixed into your family? Are you taking it all just way too personally? Understand the way you are perceiving things is the true source of anger…..What is beneath the anger?

Check out NonViolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg or Love and Anger by Nancy Samalin for further   help!

Everyday Blessings talks about when your children are babies and toddlers, the struggle for balance takes the form of continually tapping our own resources to provide intense care-giving.

 

 

Quick Quiz!

My baby… My baby is “X” weeks/months/years old
Is breastfeeding 8 to 12 times in a 24 hour period Newborn to ????
Nurses once every 24 minutes for about three minutes Newborn to ??? in countries where baby is carried while mom works
Has six or more wet diapers a day, and at least three bowel movements a day. After mature milk comes in
Breathes with regularity, has a steady heart rate, no longer has an erratic temperature (4 weeks)
Has preferred positions to lie in, and loves to sit supported and look at the world (16 weeks)
Coos, laughs, chuckles out loud (16 weeks)
Prefers to sit and can maintain it, and loves to have something in his hands. ( 5 to 7 months)
Cries at the sight of strangers (32 weeks and 44 weeks)
Darts and dashes and flings things (15 months)
Gets into everything (15 months or once walking)
Will climb stairs endlessly (18 months)
Says “No” to everything (18 months)
Is loving and affectionate and warm to other people (2 years)
Is rigid, inflexible, wants everything exactly how she wants it, domineering, demanding, wants the exact same routine every day (2 and a half years)
Loves to be a “we” with Mommy (3 years)
Has poor coordination, stutters, has hand tremors, blinks her eyes, bites her nails, frequently cries, whines, questions Mommy, is bossy. (3 and a half years)
Out of bounds – hitting, kicking, throwing, loudly laughs, fits of rage (4 years old)
Loves to know about the details of things, better can deal with his frustrations, (4 and a half)
Thinks Mommy is  the center of her world (5 years old)
Loves Mommy one minute and hates her  the next, is demanding and rigid and inflexible, is very negative, has to be praised, has to win. Fights with his words and his fists. (5 and a half, 6 years)
Is moody, morose, mopes and is fatigued a lot. Says no one likes him. (7 years old)
Is expansive, speedy, starting a million different projects. He is interested in what Mommy thinks! Literally haunts Mommy and wants to be around a lot. (8 years old)
Is much more interested in friends than family. Wants to have his independence, maturity and separateness respected. (9 years)
Really wants to be good and do what is right. (10 years)
   
Was a really poor eater, but we have seen a big rise in appetite (4 and a half to 5 years)
Can’t sit still at the table (6 years)
Is now an excellent eater! (8 years old)
Goes to bed willingly but has night terrors (5 years old)
Wanders around the house in the middle of the night (3 years old)
Could nurse 7 or 9 times a day, but we can also negotiate about when to nurse, nursing length may last about a minute (4 years old)  – from Mothering Your Nursing Toddler and studies of nursing habits of 4 year olds in Bangladesh.
Nurses like a newborn again! ( 13 months to 18 months)
Nurses a lot, but my friend has a baby the same age who only nurses a few times a day and for naptimes and bedtimes (2 years old, 2 and a half)
Naturally weaned, nursing just tapered off and I don’t know when the last nursing was (4 or so and up, some sources say at least two and a half and up)
Can live with some limits on nursing (3 years old)  This is from “Mothering Your Nursing Toddler” published by LLLI

 

 

You are the grown-up, but you need energy infusions from family, friends, to keep going. When we are balanced, we can be child-centered, but not child-obsessed. We can be excited about our children, appreciative of our children, relate to our children, but not be over-involved and over-invested. We can set some boundaries and say them without being hostile or rejecting our children.

Lovingly yours,

Carrie

Wonderful Words From Marsha Johnson!

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This post is NOT by me, but by Master Waldorf Teacher Marsha Johnson, who lives in the Portland area.  She wrote this wonderful post this morning, I so encourage you to read it carefully, consider it, weigh it in your heart.  Please do go and join her Yahoo!group waldorfhomeeducators.  This is an excellent post, just excellent.  Please read Marsha Johnson’s wise words and enjoy!

“One recurring thread that emerges again and again in the various home schooling groups is the embracing of Info-Mation as Edu-Cation. This is an approach that relies on the passing along of facts and figures to the children, rather like filling up a blank sheet of paper with a long list of data. This kind of education is one that many parents themselves were exposed to as children in lower schools and is yet embraced by many institutions of higher learning.
I have jokingly referred to it as Information Vomitus. Particularly in graduate school, one absorbs mounds of information and must regurgitate it accurately within a time period, and those who can do this are considered ‘smart’.
As a species, some of us just love this habit. We have game shows where we love to quiz people on obscure and odd facts and see who can answer the most questions correctly. There are board games that focus on this aimless ‘art’, like Trivial Pursuit. That name does make me laugh at least the use of the word trivial. Small and meaningless.

As parents, we tend to veer unconsciously towards teaching our children in the way we ‘were taught’. This tendency is really one of the most dangerous and damaging stage in the life of the homeschooling family.

Why do I say this? Because the children of today, the millennial children, the Shining Ones, are very different than the previous generation of children, those born from the 1950s to the 1990s, when the Information Age really began to dominate. The idea was strewn about that one could improve a child’s IQ with exposure to this Factoid Education and that children were really blank slates whose minds could be sharpened and very soon after this time period began we started seeing massive testing of children as large population groups and lo and behold, a lot of stereotyping also began to show up in the statistics. All sorts of rather wicked and demeaning conclusions have been drawn from this kind of erroneous practice.

When we begin to ‘school’ children, and some are so anxious they start right away as soon as Baby can focus her eyes, we reach back into our own educational experiences and most often pull forward this kind of teaching that involves a lot of child sitting-parent speaking.

With a sense of humor here, often the children quickly teach the parent that this kind of education isn’t going to persist for too long. As children are naturally good and sweet and want to make us big people happy, they often accommodate us with love and grace, and put up with quite a bit of this kind of dreary boring presentation.

But some don’t. They rise up and run about and wiggle away, dancing, singing, going outside, done-with-that!, let’s have snack happy attitude that is probably the most logically kind response possible.

The type of education that really fits the developmental stage of the child most closely, from my own point of view, is Waldorf education. Within the very ‘bones’ of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophies we find the most wonderful comprehension of how children are, what children need, and why we must approach the education of the child with an imaginative, artistic technique. A warm and inclusive attitude. A whole-child, integrated program that moves smoothly from moment to moment to create a kind of living-dream, wherein the child floats, soars, rests, and grows.

And this is probably the very opposite of the Info-Mation protocol, which calls mostly on the forces of the nerve-sense pole, the head, the hearing and memory and goes down dry as a desert rock in late summer.

Will you provide an education that inspires your child and yourself? Can you take a subject and find the Alice-In-Wonderland Rabbit Hole that will allow you to enter in a playful and unexpected fashion? How much of the school time is spent sitting and listening, or writing or copying? How much is spent moving, doing, trying, inventing, creating, cooperating, considering, digesting?

I am struck again and again by how passionate and devoted parents can be to a style of learning that would, well, invoke passion and interest in someone 35 years old or older? (smiles here) But a six year old is in his first decade, not the fourth, and taking the dry factual program to this tender age should really be some kind of crime.

Destroying a child’s imagination and tramping through their fairy land of fantasy with the bulldozers of ‘real life’ is actually a crime against childhood. We are surrounded by immense pressure from commercial marketers, manufacturers, media moguls, and those who want to benefit from premature aging. It is unbelievable, a very sophisticated and invisible force to destroy childhood and create an endless period of ‘tween’ and ‘teen’. Did you know the average age of video game players is actually 29 years old? This means there many older and younger right around 30 years of age who devote most of their free time to staring at screens.

One of the easiest ways to judge how a lesson is being received is to keep a close eye on the recipient. Rather than lose your adult self into the lovely land of facts and transmitting these facts, say a few words and watch the child. Allow for pauses and wait a bit. Does the child keep her attention focused on you, do the cheeks pink up, do the eyes sparkle, doe he sit forwards towards you, hanging on your words? Or does she fidget, grow pale, look down or elsewhere, try to rise and leave? Observe the child closely during the day, during play, during rest, during active vigorous exercise. Learn the color patterns of the child’s skin, the facial and body gestures. Configure your lessons in such a way that the child’s response is one of delight, close attention, desire to participate, and shows a healthy age appropriate expression.

Young children naturally move and use their bodies to learn. Incorporate this into each lesson and every day in your home teaching. Sitting is only one of many types of positions that the young child assumes in the natural exploration of the physical world. Adults tend to sit for the vast majority of each day in both work and play. There is much to be gained from moving often and finding physical ways to enhance the learning experiences.

The old saying `give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime’, is a perfect mantra for teaching the young human born in the early 2000s. Consider subject matter from the child’s point of view, figure out what you can do in your lessons that allow the child to use the three elements of self: head, heart, and hands. One of the greatest errors in current educational practice is the sole focus on the head learning, forcing young children to sit at tables for long days, wearying their spirits and graying their outlook. Early academic fatigue syndrome is rampant in our country and fortunately, almost 100 years ago, Rudolf Steiner illuminated a brilliant pathway of education that is more relevant today than ever before. Living artistic age-appropriate lessons, every day, naturally engaging and guaranteed to engender a life long love of learning.

Marsha Johnson, Spring 2009”

Thank you Marsha, for these words that I am holding in my heart,  thank you for being here and sharing with us,

Carrie