Course: Early Childhood Education"Waldorf Education is not a pedagogical system but an art - the art of awakening what is actually there within the human being." ~ Rudolf Steiner
The Waldorf early childhood educator works with the young child by creating a warm, beautiful and loving home-like environment, which is protective and secure, and where things happen in a predictable, rhythmic manner. Here she responds to the developing child in two basic ways: First, she engages in domestic, practical, and artistic activities the children can readily imitate (for example, baking, painting, gardening, and handicrafts), adapting the work to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. Secondly, the Waldorf kindergarten teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination by telling carefully selected stories and by encouraging free play. This free or fantasy play, in which children act out scenarios of their own creation, helps them to experience many aspects of life more deeply. When toys are used, they are made of natural materials. Wood, cotton, wool, silk, shells, stones, pine cones and objects from nature that the children themselves have collected are used in play and to beautify the room. Sensory integration, eye-hand coordination, appreciating the beauty of language, sequencing, and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic learning are fostered in the kindergarten. In this truly loving, natural and creative environment, children are provided with a range of activities to prepare them for later learning and for life itself. |
Course Outline
Early Childhood Education 1
Lesson 1: You Are Your Child's First Teacher Lesson 2: Home Life as the Basis for All Learning Lesson 3: Birth to Three: Growing Down and Waking Up Lesson 4: Helping Your Baby's Development Lesson 5: Helping Your Toddler's Development Lesson 6: Rhythm in Home Life Lesson 7: Discipline and Other Parenting Issues Lesson 8: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 1 Early Childhood Education 2
Lesson 1: Nourishing Your Child's Imagination and Creative Play Lesson 2: Developing Your Child's Artistic Ability Lesson 3: Encouraging your Child's Musical Ability Lesson 4: Cognitive Development and Early Childhood Education Lesson 5: Common Parenting Question: From Television to Immunizations Lesson 6: Help for the Journey Lesson 7: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 2 
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What Makes Waldorf Early Childhood Education “Waldorf”?
Is there a Waldorf early childhood curriculum? Are there specific activities—puppet plays, circle games, watercolor painting, for example—that are essential to a Waldorf program? Are there certain materials and furnishings—lazured, soft-colored walls, handmade dolls, beeswax crayons, silk and other natural materials—that are necessary ingredients in a Waldorf setting? What makes Waldorf early childhood education “Waldorf”?
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Early Childhood Education 1 - Lesson 3
Tasks and Assignments for Early Childhood Education 1 - Lesson 3
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Please study the study material/chapters indicated below. Feel free to use additional resources as wanted and needed. Once you feel you are sufficiently acquainted with the subject please complete the following:
1. Please share your own thoughts and experiences concerning the infant's path of incarnating into the body. 2. Create a plan of activities that address the child's early learning for the steps of learning to walk, talk and to think. 3. What is the difference between the young child's senses and the child's sense of self? Elaborate. Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email. 
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Study Material for Early Childhood Education 1 - Lesson 3
You Are Your Child's First TeacherCΗΑΡΤΕR 3 - Birth to Three: Growing Down and Waking Up
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We think of children as growing up, but we could also say that they "grow down" in the sense that they seem to gain control of the body from the head downward. First they gain control of the eyes and the neck, then the torso in rolling over, and finally the limbs in crawling and walking.
At the same time, they are changing from sleepy newborns to alert and lively toddlers who run circles around their parents. This change in consciousness from infancy to three years involves waking up, in the sense that the participatory consciousness of the newborn gradually becomes replaced by a strong sense of self (just try opposing the will of a two-year-old!). Before this strong sense of I can emerge, the child must first develop language, thinking, and memory.
Penetration of the body, which culminates in walking, is a fundamental task of the baby's first year. Talking is a key task of the second year. And thinking and memory are areas of tremendous development in the third year. All these fundamental milestones of the first three years occur by themselves, according to their own timetable. We need only provide love and nourishment, and refrain from doing things that hamper the child's basic pattern of unfolding.
This chapter presents a picture of the tremendous developmental changes occurring in the child during the first three years. The next two chapters suggest many practical things you can do as your child's first teacher that are consonant with healthy and balanced development.
GROWING INTO THE BODY
Control of the Head
A newborn's head is very large compared to her body, and her limbs are relatively undeveloped appendages, good neither for walking nor for eating as they are with other mammals. The image of "growing down" or penetrating the body also applies to how areas in the brain mature: developmental neuropsychologist Jane Healy reports that because the development of myelin in the spine proceeds from top to bottom, the mouth, eyes, arms, and hands are used adeptly before legs and feet. (1) In the newborn, after the mouth organizes itself around instinctual suckling, the first conscious control begins in the eyes. This is necessary because without a steady visual field, it would not be possible to develop the hand-eye coordination and balance that are necessary for crawling and walking. When a baby is born, her natural focus is about ten inches away—just the distance between a breastfeeding infant and her mother's face. Next the baby learns to follow something with her eyes when it comes into her range of vision, which extends to about twelve inches at two months of age. She may begin to turn her head toward a sound if it comes in one ear more strongly than the other. She begins to be able to hold her head up off the mattress when on her stomach and to turn her head more toward the midline when on her back. But it will be many more months before sufficient head and neck strength will be present for her to sit unassisted.
Around three months she will be able to prop herself up on her forearms with full head and neck control. Consonant with our image of growing down," we see that control of the upper arms comes before control of the lower arms, control of the wrists before the fingers, of the legs before the feet. During the time from six to fourteen weeks, the muscles in your baby's legs are strengthening by kicking out and being held slightly flexed, but there is no real leg control.
Control of the head also manifests in visual ability, which increases rapidly and is nearly completely under control by three and a half months. Once your baby can focus clearly on nearby objects and create a single image of them, she will discover her hands and stare at them— sometimes for five or ten minutes at a time. Between six and fourteen weeks her hands will no longer be held in a fist most of the time, and she will start bringing her hands together and clasping them. Eye and hand convergence is something only primates and humans have, and it is an important step in the development of intelligence.
You will see eye-hand coordination developing as your two- or three-month-old swipes at an object and later brings it to her mouth. This coordination increases with practice and maturation, so that by six months a baby usually has complete control of the use of her hands.
Reaching is an important developmental skill, one of the major ways that children begin to explore the world and build the foundations of intelligence. Your baby will almost always reach for anything that is nearby and will either bring it to her mouth or look at it, sometimes moving it about or passing it from hand to hand.
Control of the Torso
As the months go by, your baby gains increasing control of her body from the head down. Sometime between two and six months she will probably succeed in turning from her back to her stomach, followed a few weeks later by being able to turn back the other way. The first time is often a surprise—even to the baby—so be careful not to leave her unattended on a changing table or bed where she can flip off! Even a much younger baby can sometimes unexpectedly succeed in turning from back to stomach through powerful leg thrusts, especially if she is angry.
Further control of the muscles of the torso will result in your baby's being able to sit up unassisted, usually between six and eight months of age. This first achievement of an upright posture marks a significant maturing of the muscles.
Once your baby is adept at turning over in both directions and can sit alone, she will try to bring herself from a lying to a sitting position. This new ability is usually accomplished by around eight months of age.
Control of the Legs
All of the movement and kicking your baby does helps strengthen her legs. Sometime around four months of age she will discover that she has feet, because her eyes had been unable to discern them earlier. But she won't be able to use her legs in a controlled fashion. That changes around eight months of age, when she learns to creep and crawl. Some babies are eager to go and may even be frustrated by their inability to get things they want; others are happy to sit and watch the world go by, and they may first crawl four or five months later than the "ear"' ones. The normal range is tremendous, so don't compare your baby with the neighbor's! Insights into later character traits can sometimes be gained by observing how your child learns to crawl and walk. Simply observe and encourage your baby and trust that she is developing according to her own timetable. If you have questions about how your child is developing, seek answers to them rather than worry!
Physical therapists now tell us how important crawling is in later development. The rhythmical pattern of cross crawling is significant not only for the development of proper physical coordination, but it also affects the development of the brain and how a child learns. Some learning and emotional disabilities are related to a lack of crawling or can be helped by sensory integration or other systems of therapy. (2) For this reason, anything that shortens a baby's time spent crawling (baby walkers, leg splints, or braces) should be avoided during this critical period.
Crawling is followed by the baby's ability to pull herself up while holding onto a table or sofa. The ability to walk while holding onto things is followed by increased balance and coordination and the wonderful first steps alone.
Once your baby can crawl, you will find everything changes! Because crawling is such a momentous change for parents and walking is such a momentous accomplishment for babies, I want to discuss parenting the baby up to the age of eight months before going on to discuss walking.
WHAT IS YOUR BABY LIKE BETWEEN SIX WEEKS AND EIGHT MONTHS OF AGE?
We can say that babies "grow down and wake up," for while they are growing and developing physically, they are also becoming more alert and more interested in the world around them. We have seen how they develop physically; let's explore how they behave as they become more "present" with each passing day.
Your baby will sleep less as the weeks go by and will pay close attention to what is going on around her. Once she discovers her hands, she will use them whenever possible to grasp and explore objects with her eyes and mouth. The tongue and lips are sensitive organs of exploration, and when your baby starts to teethe during this period, counter-pressure can sometimes help sore gums. There are many teething rings on the market, some of which can be put in the refrigerator to chill. I especially recommend Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets, which, amazingly, are sold by many major drugstore chains. Being homeopathic, they present no danger of overdose or side effects. It is not unusual for babies to be fussy while they are teething, or even occasionally to have a fever or runny nose.
By three months your baby will probably be smiling regularly at anyone who gets her attention. Three-month-old babies are delightful to be with, and most of our images of babies from television or advertising are of a three-month-old rather than a newborn. We now have much more of a sense that there is a real person present, someone who seems to respond to us. Indeed, a baby does begin to show more special behavior, such as smiling more with her parents or primary caregivers from the fourth month on. But there is still openness and friendliness to all people at this age.
The baby's sense of self and other is slow to emerge, for the consciousness of a newborn is very diffuse. It is as if there is no inner or outer. As we watch the baby slowly distinguish between parents and others, we have the sense that she is more present in her body. It is interesting that you cannot elicit a tickle response from a baby before about fourteen weeks of age. Burton White postulates that tickling depends on the "ticklee" perceiving that another person is producing the stimulation (you can't tickle yourself). He states, "The child younger than about fourteen weeks of age is probably not well enough developed socially to have reached whatever awareness of another is necessary to make the tickle functional." (3)
This is consonant with Steineds idea of the gradual incarnation of the I and the slowly developing consciousness of the self, which is necessary for any perception of "other." Steiner described babies as "sleeping" in their consciousness, "dreaming" in their emotions, and most "awake" in their willing, which manifests in the body. We can see the strength of this willing in the tremendous growth and movement of the body and in the insistence with which a baby demands that her physical needs be met. Try to argue with a crying baby that she's not really hungry and she ought to be able to wait! The force of will behind the physical functions of a baby does not respond to reason or consolation—only to physical activity such as eating, sucking, or rocking.
The next step in the differentiation of others is evident in the common phenomenon known as stranger anxiety. Sometime in the first year, four out of five babies start reacting with hesitation and fear to anyone who is not in the immediate family. This reaction can start as early as six months, and it is not a sign that anything is wrong. Aside from becoming wary of people who aren't familiar, most babies enjoy themselves most of the time during the first year. They are basically happy, curious, and growing throughout this time.
LEARNING TO WALK
During the period from eight to sixteen months of age, most children master their physical body and learn to walk. Note that there can be as much as eight months' difference between early and late walkers.
Children learn to walk through practice and through imitation. It has been found that in the rare cases in which human babies have been reared by animals in the jungles of India that the child never achieves a truly upright posture. There is a strong inner drive in children to stand and to walk, and to be like the people around them, It is something inherent in children and does not require baby gymnastics or mechanical devices to aid its progress. Baby walkers do not lead to early walking; in fact, many physicians now believe that infant walkers may adversely affect muscle development and coordination and lead to a delay in walking. (4) Due to the large number of accidents involving walkers, the Canadian Medical Association has asked the government to ban their sale. (5) Time spent in walkers also takes time away from opportunities to creep and crawl and can affect coordination and balance.
Nor do infant walkers lead to increased social and explorative behaviors, as their proponents say; studies have found no difference in these behaviors for infants in or out of walkers. They may give parents some free time, but not without physical and developmental risks to the baby. (6) There is similar concern about baby bouncers (cloth seats suspended by a spring hung over a doorsill) by many pediatricians because of potential damage to the baby's bones or joints if they are used on hard floors. (7) In general, it's best not to use mechanical aids to produce positions or activities that the child can't attain on her own.
Watching your child learn to walk on her own can sometimes provide insights into character traits, because walking is something the child achieves through her own efforts. Is there a driving will to move, or a great solidity and contentment in sitting? Are falls taken in stride, or are they discouraging? Keep watching and see what your child "tells" you. All you need to do is be there to encourage and share your child's pride in those first steps.
It is valuable to watch the process of learning to walk for what it can tell us of the child's nature and the incarnation process of the I. Steiner states, 'Walking does not merely mean that the human being ceases to crawl and acquires an upright position. It means that the child attains the equilibrium of its own organism within the cosmos, learns to control its movements and acquires a free orientation." (8) He continues, "And for anyone who is able to observe such a matter in the right way, the most remarkable and most important of life's riddles actually find expression in the manner in which the child progresses from creeping to the upright position, to the placing of the feet, but also in addition to holding the head upright and to the use of arms and legs." (9)
To explain this further, once the baby achieves equilibrium in the upright posture, Steiner observes that the hands and arms are freed to serve the inward life, while the legs serve for bodily movement.
The liberation of the hands and arms affords the possibility for the soul to find its equilibrium. The function of the legs, the treading, the raising and bending, the harmony between right and left, brings about a relation to what is below us. It has the effect of bringing into the life of body and soul the element of rhythm, of measure, the caesuras of existence. The soul elements which live in the hands and arms become free; this introduces an element of melody, a musical element into the life of the child. (10)
Watching a young child with awareness that more might be going on than meets the eye can make us more open when we are with young children. Even though I can't articulate any great insights I've had, I know that those times of openness and remembrance seem very valuable for me, for my parenting and for the child.
THE SECOND YEAR: MASTERING LANGUAGE
A child's first birthday is as much an anniversary for the mother as for the baby. Exactly one year earlier she was going through labor, and she remembers vividly what she felt holding her baby for the first time. As dramatic as the changes in the baby were in the first year, they will be equally dramatic in the second. By the time a child is two there is much greater distance from the dreamy dependency of infancy and a much greater sense of who this person is in her own right.
Just as mastering the body and learning to walk were the dominant activities of the first year of your baby's life, so mastering language and learning to talk are the major tasks from age one to two. Language development consists both of comprehension, which develops first, and the ability to speak. Learning to talk, like learning to walk, seems to involve both an innate capacity of the brain and a need to encounter models in the environment. Because language comprehension is so fundamental to all later learning and to good social development, it is valuable to consider it in some detail.
Language Comprehension
I hope you have been talking to your baby since her birth as if she were a person worthy of respect. This attention and respect not only increase her sense of self-worth and her loving interaction with you, but also by using proper language rather than baby talk, you are providing a model worthy of imitation.
There are approximately six thousand languages in the world, and your newborn is equally fluent in all of them! But she quickly learns to distinguish between phonemes through staying attuned to whatever sounds the speakers around her are using. By twelve months, an infant's "auditory map" in the brain will have been formed. She will be unable to pick out phonemes that she has not heard thousands of times because no clusters of neurons will have been assigned the job of responding to that sound.
The next step in decoding speech, after recognizing phonemes, is to start recognizing words from the run-together stream of sounds that we register when we hear a language that is foreign to us. Early on babies start to become accustomed to how sounds are used to start syllables in their mother tongue.
Once children start to recognize and play with syllables, they become attuned to metric patterns as well. Peter Jusczyk, a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University, showed that between six and ten months, American babies develop a clear bias for words with first-syllable accents. (The majority of English words, and virtually all the Daddy-baby-birdie diminutives we use with babies, are accented on the first syllable. French words, by contrast, typically have the accent on the last syllable.) His work implies that children less than a year old hear speech not as a blur of sound but as a series of distinct but mostly meaningless words.
The first unmistakable signs of word recognition usually occur around eight months of age. If someone says, "Where's Mommy?" while several people are in the room, a child will turn toward her mother when she really knows that word. That depends, of course, on the mother having referred to herself as "Mommy" or "Mama." If all the child ever hears is her father referring to her mother as "Jenna," she will also call her mother by her first name. There is something to be said for having your child refer to the two of you as "Mommy and Daddy," "Mama and Papa," or some such words because the sounds of these words are appropriate and easy to learn, and because it expresses relationship (parent and child, family).
One of the best things you can do for your child is to talk to her. Talk to her while you are changing her diaper or giving her a bath. She will usually appreciate the attention and, as a knowing being, will appreciate being treated as a person rather than as an object. And you will be helping not only her language development but her brain development as well. And please sing to your child, beginning when you are pregnant and continuing throughout childhood! The melodic quality of language and the emotions expressed through a lullaby or a nursery game are very valuable for your baby's development. Comprehension is not the only part of language, although it tends to be overemphasized by our intellectual adult nature. Nonsense rhymes and action verses such as "To market, to market" become favorites of the toddler and teach the melodic quality of language. This kind of interaction is not only valuable for the developing child, but it can also make parenting tasks go more smoothly. For example, getting into the habit of using songs for activities such as washing her hair or going to bed can melt away the resistance of a willful two-year-old. Many other examples are contained in Shea Darian's book Seven Times the Sun. (11)
Because so much depends on the development of language, it is important to watch your child for hearing disorders. If your baby is having frequent ear infections, it is advisable to look for allergies or other possible causes of fluid buildup in the ears. Impaired hearing can impede development in many other areas during these critical years of early childhood, so try to find a diagnosis and plan of treatment that you can support.
As your child comes to understand specific words, she will begin following simple instructions, like waving bye-bye or sitting down. Once your child starts to walk, she will frequently be coming to show you things or ask for assistance. Such times, when her attention is clearly directed toward you, are excellent times to talk about what is at hand and then to act on it. Many parents underestimate what their child can understand at this age. This does not mean that you should explain everything to a one-year-old! It does mean that you should talk intelligently about what is happening in the present—what the child is seeing and doing. Between the first and third birthdays, language comprehension explodes to the point where most children understand most of the words they will use in ordinary conversation for the rest of their lives!
The Ability to Talk
The ability to produce language proceeds much more slowly than the ability to understand it. While your child will show increasing understanding of words before her first birthday, very few children speak before they are one. The reason for this, according to Steiner, is that language development grows out of movement and the ability to walk. Modern neurolinguistic work supports the relationship between learning to walk and grasp, and learning to speak. With this in mind, we can watch not only how our children learn to walk and the quality of their movements, but we can also observe the quality of their speech as it develops over the years and see if there is any discernible relationship between the two. Certainly physical and speech therapists—both conventional ones and those working out of Steiner's indications for "curative education"—can see it. In such curative settings, movement and sound are often used separately and in combination to help overcome developmental difficulties.
A child's vocabulary increases slowly at first, from an average of three words at twelve months to twenty-two words at eighteen months of age. But around a year and a half, children's language abilities explode, so that most start acquiring new words at the phenomenal rate of one every two hours. By their second birthdays, most children have mastered one thousand to two thousand words and have started stringing two words together. (12) How much language is in the child's environment makes a huge difference in how much vocabulary she acquires:
Studies have shown that the size of a toddler's vocabulary and the complexity of her sentences are strongly correlated with how much a mother talks to the child; however, only "live" language, not television, produces these vocabulary and syntax-boosting effects. Why doesn't all the gabbing on TV stimulate language development? Researchers suspect that "language has to be used in relation to ongoing events, or it's just noise." (13)
In other words, language needs to come from a living source and be related to events, emotional contexts, and cause-and-effect relationships in a child's life in order for the synapses to register in meaningful ways that the child will remember. So much for educational TV and preschoolers' language development!
Developmental rates can vary among children by a year or more, and the majority of late talkers are boys. However, there is no evidence that late talkers end up less fluent than early talkers. Where there are speech or other language problems, the pros and cons of early intervention versus waiting until age five to intervene are hotly debated, but the pendulum is swinging toward earlier intervention. In contrast, not hearing what is being said and being slow to develop understanding are both serious conditions, and experts suggest being on the watch for the following red flags:
0—3 months. Does not turn when you speak or repeat sounds such as coos.
4—6 months. Does not respond to "no" or changes in tone of voice, look around for sources of sound like a doorbell, or babble in speechlike sounds such as p, b, and m.
7—12 months. Does not recognize words for common items, turn when you call her name, imitate speech sounds, or use sounds other than crying to get your attention.
1—2 years. Can't understand difference in meaning (for example, "up" versus "down"), follow two requests ("Please pick up the bottle and give it to me"), string together two or three words, or name common objects.
3—4 years. Does not answer simple "who," "what," and "where" questions. Cannot be understood by people outside the family, use four-word sentences, or pronounce most phonemes correctly. If delays persist until kindergarten, most pediatricians recommend speech therapy. (14)
Dr. Karl König, founder of the Camphill movement for children and adults with special needs, distinguished three levels in speech development, which he called saying, naming, and talking. (15) Saying involves a desire or an emotion that comes out as a one-word sentence, like "Here!" or "Cookie!" Naming involves learning the names of things and the beginnings of the thought processes that link concepts with perceptions and draw relationships between the general ("dog") and the specific ("Fido"). Talking involves dialogue as we are used to it. As the child experiences the world and the way it is expressed in language, with its inherent logic and grammar, she begins to use whole sentences between ages two and three.
Archetypal Images
While the toddler is learning the names of things, a great deal is happening on the preverbal level in the rapt attention with which the child contemplates each object. For example, while an adult or a school-age child will be most interested in what he or she can do with a ball, a young toddler will be most interested in the ball itself—its shape, texture, color, and the fact that it rolls away when it slips out of her hands. Our adult consciousness has lost its connection with what goes on in the dreamy depths of the child's soul, with what is happening behind her dreaming, wondering, or delighted eyes. Daniel Udo de Haes, in his excellent book The Young Child, develops a fascinating picture of the unspoken "soul language" by which simple objects speak to the child of qualities in the spiritual world and the nature of the soul's journey to earth. We can get a taste of Udo de Haes's perception in his description of the fascination young children (and adults) have with water:
Every human soul is aware, consciously or unconsciously, of a connection with this watery element. Does not each of us long for the clarity which pure water can manifest? Does not every soul feel its own ability to stream and flow in all directions, to wave and to dash, to seethe and toss or to reflect calmly? Ultimately its capacity of rising to the heavens and descending again to earth, is brought to expression by water. The little child experiences all this much more directly and intensely than we do, though less consciously, and it is for this reason that he feels his connection with water and plays with it with such abandon. (16)
In a similar way, Udo de Haes explains children's delight in drawing houses or making houses out of the sofa pillows as arising from a reawakening of something within the child's own soul when it encounters "houses" on earth. He states, "Descending to earth, the soul bears within it the task of helping to build the 'house' that it would have to live in during the life that was about to begin; for the task that it was assigned was to help in forming its body. We should therefore not be surprised at the joy with which the child builds a little house, thus symbolically fulfilling the task of building his body." (17)
In The Young Child, Udo de Haes develops a very enlivening (and not at all sentimental) picture of the inner life of the young child, which I have found valuable to hold as a possibility when I watch a toddler contemplating an object. Jesus said, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). What is the world like for a little child? This is a question worth holding by anyone who cares for young children. And to the extent that their wonder in the world around them can become real to us as well, the rediscovery of this aspect within ourselves can, without our noticing it, be a help to the young child who is exploring his own world of experiences.
Because of the fascination the young child has with simple objects and the resonance within the soul that such objects awaken, Udo de Haes recommends archetypal toys such as a ball, a bowl, a cup (with sand or water to pour), a little wooden house, a box with hinged lid, or a small wagon.
The fact that the objects of nature and the simple objects of human life speak to the inner life of the child, reminding him of truths from the spiritual world, is echoed by the seventeenth-century English poet Thomas Traherne:
WONDER
How like an Angel came I down!
How Bright are all Things here!
When first among his Works I did appear
O how their Glory did me Crown
The World resembled his Eternitie
In which my Soul did Walk;
And every Thing that I did see,
Did with me talk.
THE EMERGENCE OF THINKING
Just as walking and talking can be seen as the major tasks of the first and second years of life, so thinking is a major accomplishment of the time from ages two to three. But thinking in its most rudimentary forms can be seen as early as the first year when the baby pushes an obstacle aside in order to grasp an object. Piaget describes this problem-solving behavior, with an element of intentionality, as one of the first signs of intelligence.
This early, practical or sensorimotor intelligence isn't replaced by reflecting on ideas until around the age of two. Prior to that time children tend to use trial and error for problem solving. As they turn two, you will increasingly see them pause and think about various alternatives or about the action they are going to do before doing it.
Thinking emerges between ages two and three, after the child has learned to speak. Many people will suppose that one has to think in order to speak, but remember that speech develops as a result of imitation and of feelings and is connected with movement. The first words are interjections, and Steiner says, "When the child says 'Mama' or 'Papa,' it expresses feelings towards Mama and Papa, not any sort of concept or thought. Thinking is first developed from speech." (18)
According to Steiner, logical thinking develops out of the experience of the logic inherent in the grammar of spoken language (grammar tells us who hit whom, whether it occurred in the past or is going to happen, and so forth). Between the ages of two and three years, the child's use of sentences takes off exponentially and includes the rules for tense and for number (plurals). How does a young child learn this? When I read that Steiner said it was an innate gift that the higher hierarchies (that is, angelic beings) provided before birth, I was at a loss for how to present this. But now researchers agree with Steiner that children are somehow born with these abilities. When they talk about the infant's brain being "hardwired" to seek out—and even invent, if necessary—the grammatical rules in language and the logical thinking that follows, isn't that a materialistic way of saying the same thing? Here is a report from the Los Angeles Times:
Babies struggling to turn babble into polished patter use a previously undiscovered instinct for rules to master the building blocks of language, scientists at New York University announced Thursday.
The new insight is persuasive evidence that the ability to think in terms of formulas and rules is not just something that must be learned through school, as some scholars have argued, but is also a fundamental characteristic of every human mind, several language experts said ...
The research, published today in Science, broadens the understanding of what may be built into every human being at birth, from a rudimentary knowledge of shapes and numbers to a well-stocked intellectual tool kit for learning the complexities of human speech. (19)
Unless a child has a hereditary condition known as specific language impairment, most children are so primed for grammatical rules that they will invent them if necessary, taking whatever rules they find and sharpening and extending them. For example, hearing adults who take up American Sign Language to share it with their deaf children tend to make all kinds of grammatical errors; however, their children still become fluent. But if deaf children are raised without any language, they grow deaf to grammar and are unable to pick it up later, as has been shown in cases in which hearing was restored in adulthood. (20)
Whether you consider that language is a gift from the hierarchies or from the mechanics who create the wiring in the brain, it must still have models in order to develop. So talk to and with your child a lot! Most people would guess that we have language because we can think, but it appears more accurate to say that we are able to think because we have language. According to Rudolf Steiner, the ability to think, reason, and problem solve grows out of language. It is the order in language and the brain's ability to comprehend it that form the basis for later thinking.
However exciting it may be to see your child start to show signs of thinking, this doesn't mean you should start providing lengthy explanations of things or reasoning with her. The young child is still centered around the body and the will and is not governed by thought and reflection. Imitation and example are still the keys for working with a child before the age of seven, as we will see in subsequent chapters.
The Development of Memory
The development of thinking depends on the process of language formation and the maturing of memory. Steiner points out how the development of the child's memory echoes the historical development of humanity. The first type of memory is localized or place memory, which involves recalling something when the child is in the same environment or receives similar sensory cues. For example, she may only visit grandma's house every few months, but she immediately remembers where the toy cupboard and the cookie jar are when she walks in the door. Historically, this kind of early memory is represented by monuments, cairns, monoliths, and other markers that remind people of the events that occurred at that location. This type of memory is very strong in the young child, who cannot pull up memories at will until the age of six. For example, if you ask preschoolers, 'What did you do at school today?' they will typically say, "Nothing." But if they receive other cues—if you start to sing one of the songs they learned at school or they see or smell something similar to something they experienced there—you can get an amazingly detailed rendition of the mornings activities.
The second type of memory that developed historically can be called rhythmical memory, in which history was carried in verse by poets or bards who would recite epic tales to remind people of their heritage. The rhythmical element makes memorization much easier, as when a young child sings his ABC's or recites "One, two, buckle my shoe." With such songs the child can go through the entire sequence, but he is unable to start in the middle or remember individual elements without reciting the whole verse from the beginning.
The third type of memory, picture memory, begins to develop in the third year and involves the child being able to use images and ideas. Lois Cusick, in the Waldorf Parenting Handbook, diagrams this progression in the following illustration, which also relates the three types of memory to the three major systems described by Steiner in human development: the limbs-metabolic system, which helps us move from place to place and is associated with localized memory; the heart-lung rhythmic system, which helps the young child easily learn songs and nursery rhymes "by heart"; and the head-nerve system, which is the last to unfold when the child is able to make images and later to remember more abstract ideas. (21)
At the same time, they are changing from sleepy newborns to alert and lively toddlers who run circles around their parents. This change in consciousness from infancy to three years involves waking up, in the sense that the participatory consciousness of the newborn gradually becomes replaced by a strong sense of self (just try opposing the will of a two-year-old!). Before this strong sense of I can emerge, the child must first develop language, thinking, and memory.
Penetration of the body, which culminates in walking, is a fundamental task of the baby's first year. Talking is a key task of the second year. And thinking and memory are areas of tremendous development in the third year. All these fundamental milestones of the first three years occur by themselves, according to their own timetable. We need only provide love and nourishment, and refrain from doing things that hamper the child's basic pattern of unfolding.
This chapter presents a picture of the tremendous developmental changes occurring in the child during the first three years. The next two chapters suggest many practical things you can do as your child's first teacher that are consonant with healthy and balanced development.
GROWING INTO THE BODY
Control of the Head
A newborn's head is very large compared to her body, and her limbs are relatively undeveloped appendages, good neither for walking nor for eating as they are with other mammals. The image of "growing down" or penetrating the body also applies to how areas in the brain mature: developmental neuropsychologist Jane Healy reports that because the development of myelin in the spine proceeds from top to bottom, the mouth, eyes, arms, and hands are used adeptly before legs and feet. (1) In the newborn, after the mouth organizes itself around instinctual suckling, the first conscious control begins in the eyes. This is necessary because without a steady visual field, it would not be possible to develop the hand-eye coordination and balance that are necessary for crawling and walking. When a baby is born, her natural focus is about ten inches away—just the distance between a breastfeeding infant and her mother's face. Next the baby learns to follow something with her eyes when it comes into her range of vision, which extends to about twelve inches at two months of age. She may begin to turn her head toward a sound if it comes in one ear more strongly than the other. She begins to be able to hold her head up off the mattress when on her stomach and to turn her head more toward the midline when on her back. But it will be many more months before sufficient head and neck strength will be present for her to sit unassisted.
Around three months she will be able to prop herself up on her forearms with full head and neck control. Consonant with our image of growing down," we see that control of the upper arms comes before control of the lower arms, control of the wrists before the fingers, of the legs before the feet. During the time from six to fourteen weeks, the muscles in your baby's legs are strengthening by kicking out and being held slightly flexed, but there is no real leg control.
Control of the head also manifests in visual ability, which increases rapidly and is nearly completely under control by three and a half months. Once your baby can focus clearly on nearby objects and create a single image of them, she will discover her hands and stare at them— sometimes for five or ten minutes at a time. Between six and fourteen weeks her hands will no longer be held in a fist most of the time, and she will start bringing her hands together and clasping them. Eye and hand convergence is something only primates and humans have, and it is an important step in the development of intelligence.
You will see eye-hand coordination developing as your two- or three-month-old swipes at an object and later brings it to her mouth. This coordination increases with practice and maturation, so that by six months a baby usually has complete control of the use of her hands.
Reaching is an important developmental skill, one of the major ways that children begin to explore the world and build the foundations of intelligence. Your baby will almost always reach for anything that is nearby and will either bring it to her mouth or look at it, sometimes moving it about or passing it from hand to hand.
Control of the Torso
As the months go by, your baby gains increasing control of her body from the head down. Sometime between two and six months she will probably succeed in turning from her back to her stomach, followed a few weeks later by being able to turn back the other way. The first time is often a surprise—even to the baby—so be careful not to leave her unattended on a changing table or bed where she can flip off! Even a much younger baby can sometimes unexpectedly succeed in turning from back to stomach through powerful leg thrusts, especially if she is angry.
Further control of the muscles of the torso will result in your baby's being able to sit up unassisted, usually between six and eight months of age. This first achievement of an upright posture marks a significant maturing of the muscles.
Once your baby is adept at turning over in both directions and can sit alone, she will try to bring herself from a lying to a sitting position. This new ability is usually accomplished by around eight months of age.
Control of the Legs
All of the movement and kicking your baby does helps strengthen her legs. Sometime around four months of age she will discover that she has feet, because her eyes had been unable to discern them earlier. But she won't be able to use her legs in a controlled fashion. That changes around eight months of age, when she learns to creep and crawl. Some babies are eager to go and may even be frustrated by their inability to get things they want; others are happy to sit and watch the world go by, and they may first crawl four or five months later than the "ear"' ones. The normal range is tremendous, so don't compare your baby with the neighbor's! Insights into later character traits can sometimes be gained by observing how your child learns to crawl and walk. Simply observe and encourage your baby and trust that she is developing according to her own timetable. If you have questions about how your child is developing, seek answers to them rather than worry!
Physical therapists now tell us how important crawling is in later development. The rhythmical pattern of cross crawling is significant not only for the development of proper physical coordination, but it also affects the development of the brain and how a child learns. Some learning and emotional disabilities are related to a lack of crawling or can be helped by sensory integration or other systems of therapy. (2) For this reason, anything that shortens a baby's time spent crawling (baby walkers, leg splints, or braces) should be avoided during this critical period.
Crawling is followed by the baby's ability to pull herself up while holding onto a table or sofa. The ability to walk while holding onto things is followed by increased balance and coordination and the wonderful first steps alone.
Once your baby can crawl, you will find everything changes! Because crawling is such a momentous change for parents and walking is such a momentous accomplishment for babies, I want to discuss parenting the baby up to the age of eight months before going on to discuss walking.
WHAT IS YOUR BABY LIKE BETWEEN SIX WEEKS AND EIGHT MONTHS OF AGE?
We can say that babies "grow down and wake up," for while they are growing and developing physically, they are also becoming more alert and more interested in the world around them. We have seen how they develop physically; let's explore how they behave as they become more "present" with each passing day.
Your baby will sleep less as the weeks go by and will pay close attention to what is going on around her. Once she discovers her hands, she will use them whenever possible to grasp and explore objects with her eyes and mouth. The tongue and lips are sensitive organs of exploration, and when your baby starts to teethe during this period, counter-pressure can sometimes help sore gums. There are many teething rings on the market, some of which can be put in the refrigerator to chill. I especially recommend Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets, which, amazingly, are sold by many major drugstore chains. Being homeopathic, they present no danger of overdose or side effects. It is not unusual for babies to be fussy while they are teething, or even occasionally to have a fever or runny nose.
By three months your baby will probably be smiling regularly at anyone who gets her attention. Three-month-old babies are delightful to be with, and most of our images of babies from television or advertising are of a three-month-old rather than a newborn. We now have much more of a sense that there is a real person present, someone who seems to respond to us. Indeed, a baby does begin to show more special behavior, such as smiling more with her parents or primary caregivers from the fourth month on. But there is still openness and friendliness to all people at this age.
The baby's sense of self and other is slow to emerge, for the consciousness of a newborn is very diffuse. It is as if there is no inner or outer. As we watch the baby slowly distinguish between parents and others, we have the sense that she is more present in her body. It is interesting that you cannot elicit a tickle response from a baby before about fourteen weeks of age. Burton White postulates that tickling depends on the "ticklee" perceiving that another person is producing the stimulation (you can't tickle yourself). He states, "The child younger than about fourteen weeks of age is probably not well enough developed socially to have reached whatever awareness of another is necessary to make the tickle functional." (3)
This is consonant with Steineds idea of the gradual incarnation of the I and the slowly developing consciousness of the self, which is necessary for any perception of "other." Steiner described babies as "sleeping" in their consciousness, "dreaming" in their emotions, and most "awake" in their willing, which manifests in the body. We can see the strength of this willing in the tremendous growth and movement of the body and in the insistence with which a baby demands that her physical needs be met. Try to argue with a crying baby that she's not really hungry and she ought to be able to wait! The force of will behind the physical functions of a baby does not respond to reason or consolation—only to physical activity such as eating, sucking, or rocking.
The next step in the differentiation of others is evident in the common phenomenon known as stranger anxiety. Sometime in the first year, four out of five babies start reacting with hesitation and fear to anyone who is not in the immediate family. This reaction can start as early as six months, and it is not a sign that anything is wrong. Aside from becoming wary of people who aren't familiar, most babies enjoy themselves most of the time during the first year. They are basically happy, curious, and growing throughout this time.
LEARNING TO WALK
During the period from eight to sixteen months of age, most children master their physical body and learn to walk. Note that there can be as much as eight months' difference between early and late walkers.
Children learn to walk through practice and through imitation. It has been found that in the rare cases in which human babies have been reared by animals in the jungles of India that the child never achieves a truly upright posture. There is a strong inner drive in children to stand and to walk, and to be like the people around them, It is something inherent in children and does not require baby gymnastics or mechanical devices to aid its progress. Baby walkers do not lead to early walking; in fact, many physicians now believe that infant walkers may adversely affect muscle development and coordination and lead to a delay in walking. (4) Due to the large number of accidents involving walkers, the Canadian Medical Association has asked the government to ban their sale. (5) Time spent in walkers also takes time away from opportunities to creep and crawl and can affect coordination and balance.
Nor do infant walkers lead to increased social and explorative behaviors, as their proponents say; studies have found no difference in these behaviors for infants in or out of walkers. They may give parents some free time, but not without physical and developmental risks to the baby. (6) There is similar concern about baby bouncers (cloth seats suspended by a spring hung over a doorsill) by many pediatricians because of potential damage to the baby's bones or joints if they are used on hard floors. (7) In general, it's best not to use mechanical aids to produce positions or activities that the child can't attain on her own.
Watching your child learn to walk on her own can sometimes provide insights into character traits, because walking is something the child achieves through her own efforts. Is there a driving will to move, or a great solidity and contentment in sitting? Are falls taken in stride, or are they discouraging? Keep watching and see what your child "tells" you. All you need to do is be there to encourage and share your child's pride in those first steps.
It is valuable to watch the process of learning to walk for what it can tell us of the child's nature and the incarnation process of the I. Steiner states, 'Walking does not merely mean that the human being ceases to crawl and acquires an upright position. It means that the child attains the equilibrium of its own organism within the cosmos, learns to control its movements and acquires a free orientation." (8) He continues, "And for anyone who is able to observe such a matter in the right way, the most remarkable and most important of life's riddles actually find expression in the manner in which the child progresses from creeping to the upright position, to the placing of the feet, but also in addition to holding the head upright and to the use of arms and legs." (9)
To explain this further, once the baby achieves equilibrium in the upright posture, Steiner observes that the hands and arms are freed to serve the inward life, while the legs serve for bodily movement.
The liberation of the hands and arms affords the possibility for the soul to find its equilibrium. The function of the legs, the treading, the raising and bending, the harmony between right and left, brings about a relation to what is below us. It has the effect of bringing into the life of body and soul the element of rhythm, of measure, the caesuras of existence. The soul elements which live in the hands and arms become free; this introduces an element of melody, a musical element into the life of the child. (10)
Watching a young child with awareness that more might be going on than meets the eye can make us more open when we are with young children. Even though I can't articulate any great insights I've had, I know that those times of openness and remembrance seem very valuable for me, for my parenting and for the child.
THE SECOND YEAR: MASTERING LANGUAGE
A child's first birthday is as much an anniversary for the mother as for the baby. Exactly one year earlier she was going through labor, and she remembers vividly what she felt holding her baby for the first time. As dramatic as the changes in the baby were in the first year, they will be equally dramatic in the second. By the time a child is two there is much greater distance from the dreamy dependency of infancy and a much greater sense of who this person is in her own right.
Just as mastering the body and learning to walk were the dominant activities of the first year of your baby's life, so mastering language and learning to talk are the major tasks from age one to two. Language development consists both of comprehension, which develops first, and the ability to speak. Learning to talk, like learning to walk, seems to involve both an innate capacity of the brain and a need to encounter models in the environment. Because language comprehension is so fundamental to all later learning and to good social development, it is valuable to consider it in some detail.
Language Comprehension
I hope you have been talking to your baby since her birth as if she were a person worthy of respect. This attention and respect not only increase her sense of self-worth and her loving interaction with you, but also by using proper language rather than baby talk, you are providing a model worthy of imitation.
There are approximately six thousand languages in the world, and your newborn is equally fluent in all of them! But she quickly learns to distinguish between phonemes through staying attuned to whatever sounds the speakers around her are using. By twelve months, an infant's "auditory map" in the brain will have been formed. She will be unable to pick out phonemes that she has not heard thousands of times because no clusters of neurons will have been assigned the job of responding to that sound.
The next step in decoding speech, after recognizing phonemes, is to start recognizing words from the run-together stream of sounds that we register when we hear a language that is foreign to us. Early on babies start to become accustomed to how sounds are used to start syllables in their mother tongue.
Once children start to recognize and play with syllables, they become attuned to metric patterns as well. Peter Jusczyk, a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University, showed that between six and ten months, American babies develop a clear bias for words with first-syllable accents. (The majority of English words, and virtually all the Daddy-baby-birdie diminutives we use with babies, are accented on the first syllable. French words, by contrast, typically have the accent on the last syllable.) His work implies that children less than a year old hear speech not as a blur of sound but as a series of distinct but mostly meaningless words.
The first unmistakable signs of word recognition usually occur around eight months of age. If someone says, "Where's Mommy?" while several people are in the room, a child will turn toward her mother when she really knows that word. That depends, of course, on the mother having referred to herself as "Mommy" or "Mama." If all the child ever hears is her father referring to her mother as "Jenna," she will also call her mother by her first name. There is something to be said for having your child refer to the two of you as "Mommy and Daddy," "Mama and Papa," or some such words because the sounds of these words are appropriate and easy to learn, and because it expresses relationship (parent and child, family).
One of the best things you can do for your child is to talk to her. Talk to her while you are changing her diaper or giving her a bath. She will usually appreciate the attention and, as a knowing being, will appreciate being treated as a person rather than as an object. And you will be helping not only her language development but her brain development as well. And please sing to your child, beginning when you are pregnant and continuing throughout childhood! The melodic quality of language and the emotions expressed through a lullaby or a nursery game are very valuable for your baby's development. Comprehension is not the only part of language, although it tends to be overemphasized by our intellectual adult nature. Nonsense rhymes and action verses such as "To market, to market" become favorites of the toddler and teach the melodic quality of language. This kind of interaction is not only valuable for the developing child, but it can also make parenting tasks go more smoothly. For example, getting into the habit of using songs for activities such as washing her hair or going to bed can melt away the resistance of a willful two-year-old. Many other examples are contained in Shea Darian's book Seven Times the Sun. (11)
Because so much depends on the development of language, it is important to watch your child for hearing disorders. If your baby is having frequent ear infections, it is advisable to look for allergies or other possible causes of fluid buildup in the ears. Impaired hearing can impede development in many other areas during these critical years of early childhood, so try to find a diagnosis and plan of treatment that you can support.
As your child comes to understand specific words, she will begin following simple instructions, like waving bye-bye or sitting down. Once your child starts to walk, she will frequently be coming to show you things or ask for assistance. Such times, when her attention is clearly directed toward you, are excellent times to talk about what is at hand and then to act on it. Many parents underestimate what their child can understand at this age. This does not mean that you should explain everything to a one-year-old! It does mean that you should talk intelligently about what is happening in the present—what the child is seeing and doing. Between the first and third birthdays, language comprehension explodes to the point where most children understand most of the words they will use in ordinary conversation for the rest of their lives!
The Ability to Talk
The ability to produce language proceeds much more slowly than the ability to understand it. While your child will show increasing understanding of words before her first birthday, very few children speak before they are one. The reason for this, according to Steiner, is that language development grows out of movement and the ability to walk. Modern neurolinguistic work supports the relationship between learning to walk and grasp, and learning to speak. With this in mind, we can watch not only how our children learn to walk and the quality of their movements, but we can also observe the quality of their speech as it develops over the years and see if there is any discernible relationship between the two. Certainly physical and speech therapists—both conventional ones and those working out of Steiner's indications for "curative education"—can see it. In such curative settings, movement and sound are often used separately and in combination to help overcome developmental difficulties.
A child's vocabulary increases slowly at first, from an average of three words at twelve months to twenty-two words at eighteen months of age. But around a year and a half, children's language abilities explode, so that most start acquiring new words at the phenomenal rate of one every two hours. By their second birthdays, most children have mastered one thousand to two thousand words and have started stringing two words together. (12) How much language is in the child's environment makes a huge difference in how much vocabulary she acquires:
Studies have shown that the size of a toddler's vocabulary and the complexity of her sentences are strongly correlated with how much a mother talks to the child; however, only "live" language, not television, produces these vocabulary and syntax-boosting effects. Why doesn't all the gabbing on TV stimulate language development? Researchers suspect that "language has to be used in relation to ongoing events, or it's just noise." (13)
In other words, language needs to come from a living source and be related to events, emotional contexts, and cause-and-effect relationships in a child's life in order for the synapses to register in meaningful ways that the child will remember. So much for educational TV and preschoolers' language development!
Developmental rates can vary among children by a year or more, and the majority of late talkers are boys. However, there is no evidence that late talkers end up less fluent than early talkers. Where there are speech or other language problems, the pros and cons of early intervention versus waiting until age five to intervene are hotly debated, but the pendulum is swinging toward earlier intervention. In contrast, not hearing what is being said and being slow to develop understanding are both serious conditions, and experts suggest being on the watch for the following red flags:
0—3 months. Does not turn when you speak or repeat sounds such as coos.
4—6 months. Does not respond to "no" or changes in tone of voice, look around for sources of sound like a doorbell, or babble in speechlike sounds such as p, b, and m.
7—12 months. Does not recognize words for common items, turn when you call her name, imitate speech sounds, or use sounds other than crying to get your attention.
1—2 years. Can't understand difference in meaning (for example, "up" versus "down"), follow two requests ("Please pick up the bottle and give it to me"), string together two or three words, or name common objects.
3—4 years. Does not answer simple "who," "what," and "where" questions. Cannot be understood by people outside the family, use four-word sentences, or pronounce most phonemes correctly. If delays persist until kindergarten, most pediatricians recommend speech therapy. (14)
Dr. Karl König, founder of the Camphill movement for children and adults with special needs, distinguished three levels in speech development, which he called saying, naming, and talking. (15) Saying involves a desire or an emotion that comes out as a one-word sentence, like "Here!" or "Cookie!" Naming involves learning the names of things and the beginnings of the thought processes that link concepts with perceptions and draw relationships between the general ("dog") and the specific ("Fido"). Talking involves dialogue as we are used to it. As the child experiences the world and the way it is expressed in language, with its inherent logic and grammar, she begins to use whole sentences between ages two and three.
Archetypal Images
While the toddler is learning the names of things, a great deal is happening on the preverbal level in the rapt attention with which the child contemplates each object. For example, while an adult or a school-age child will be most interested in what he or she can do with a ball, a young toddler will be most interested in the ball itself—its shape, texture, color, and the fact that it rolls away when it slips out of her hands. Our adult consciousness has lost its connection with what goes on in the dreamy depths of the child's soul, with what is happening behind her dreaming, wondering, or delighted eyes. Daniel Udo de Haes, in his excellent book The Young Child, develops a fascinating picture of the unspoken "soul language" by which simple objects speak to the child of qualities in the spiritual world and the nature of the soul's journey to earth. We can get a taste of Udo de Haes's perception in his description of the fascination young children (and adults) have with water:
Every human soul is aware, consciously or unconsciously, of a connection with this watery element. Does not each of us long for the clarity which pure water can manifest? Does not every soul feel its own ability to stream and flow in all directions, to wave and to dash, to seethe and toss or to reflect calmly? Ultimately its capacity of rising to the heavens and descending again to earth, is brought to expression by water. The little child experiences all this much more directly and intensely than we do, though less consciously, and it is for this reason that he feels his connection with water and plays with it with such abandon. (16)
In a similar way, Udo de Haes explains children's delight in drawing houses or making houses out of the sofa pillows as arising from a reawakening of something within the child's own soul when it encounters "houses" on earth. He states, "Descending to earth, the soul bears within it the task of helping to build the 'house' that it would have to live in during the life that was about to begin; for the task that it was assigned was to help in forming its body. We should therefore not be surprised at the joy with which the child builds a little house, thus symbolically fulfilling the task of building his body." (17)
In The Young Child, Udo de Haes develops a very enlivening (and not at all sentimental) picture of the inner life of the young child, which I have found valuable to hold as a possibility when I watch a toddler contemplating an object. Jesus said, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). What is the world like for a little child? This is a question worth holding by anyone who cares for young children. And to the extent that their wonder in the world around them can become real to us as well, the rediscovery of this aspect within ourselves can, without our noticing it, be a help to the young child who is exploring his own world of experiences.
Because of the fascination the young child has with simple objects and the resonance within the soul that such objects awaken, Udo de Haes recommends archetypal toys such as a ball, a bowl, a cup (with sand or water to pour), a little wooden house, a box with hinged lid, or a small wagon.
The fact that the objects of nature and the simple objects of human life speak to the inner life of the child, reminding him of truths from the spiritual world, is echoed by the seventeenth-century English poet Thomas Traherne:
WONDER
How like an Angel came I down!
How Bright are all Things here!
When first among his Works I did appear
O how their Glory did me Crown
The World resembled his Eternitie
In which my Soul did Walk;
And every Thing that I did see,
Did with me talk.
THE EMERGENCE OF THINKING
Just as walking and talking can be seen as the major tasks of the first and second years of life, so thinking is a major accomplishment of the time from ages two to three. But thinking in its most rudimentary forms can be seen as early as the first year when the baby pushes an obstacle aside in order to grasp an object. Piaget describes this problem-solving behavior, with an element of intentionality, as one of the first signs of intelligence.
This early, practical or sensorimotor intelligence isn't replaced by reflecting on ideas until around the age of two. Prior to that time children tend to use trial and error for problem solving. As they turn two, you will increasingly see them pause and think about various alternatives or about the action they are going to do before doing it.
Thinking emerges between ages two and three, after the child has learned to speak. Many people will suppose that one has to think in order to speak, but remember that speech develops as a result of imitation and of feelings and is connected with movement. The first words are interjections, and Steiner says, "When the child says 'Mama' or 'Papa,' it expresses feelings towards Mama and Papa, not any sort of concept or thought. Thinking is first developed from speech." (18)
According to Steiner, logical thinking develops out of the experience of the logic inherent in the grammar of spoken language (grammar tells us who hit whom, whether it occurred in the past or is going to happen, and so forth). Between the ages of two and three years, the child's use of sentences takes off exponentially and includes the rules for tense and for number (plurals). How does a young child learn this? When I read that Steiner said it was an innate gift that the higher hierarchies (that is, angelic beings) provided before birth, I was at a loss for how to present this. But now researchers agree with Steiner that children are somehow born with these abilities. When they talk about the infant's brain being "hardwired" to seek out—and even invent, if necessary—the grammatical rules in language and the logical thinking that follows, isn't that a materialistic way of saying the same thing? Here is a report from the Los Angeles Times:
Babies struggling to turn babble into polished patter use a previously undiscovered instinct for rules to master the building blocks of language, scientists at New York University announced Thursday.
The new insight is persuasive evidence that the ability to think in terms of formulas and rules is not just something that must be learned through school, as some scholars have argued, but is also a fundamental characteristic of every human mind, several language experts said ...
The research, published today in Science, broadens the understanding of what may be built into every human being at birth, from a rudimentary knowledge of shapes and numbers to a well-stocked intellectual tool kit for learning the complexities of human speech. (19)
Unless a child has a hereditary condition known as specific language impairment, most children are so primed for grammatical rules that they will invent them if necessary, taking whatever rules they find and sharpening and extending them. For example, hearing adults who take up American Sign Language to share it with their deaf children tend to make all kinds of grammatical errors; however, their children still become fluent. But if deaf children are raised without any language, they grow deaf to grammar and are unable to pick it up later, as has been shown in cases in which hearing was restored in adulthood. (20)
Whether you consider that language is a gift from the hierarchies or from the mechanics who create the wiring in the brain, it must still have models in order to develop. So talk to and with your child a lot! Most people would guess that we have language because we can think, but it appears more accurate to say that we are able to think because we have language. According to Rudolf Steiner, the ability to think, reason, and problem solve grows out of language. It is the order in language and the brain's ability to comprehend it that form the basis for later thinking.
However exciting it may be to see your child start to show signs of thinking, this doesn't mean you should start providing lengthy explanations of things or reasoning with her. The young child is still centered around the body and the will and is not governed by thought and reflection. Imitation and example are still the keys for working with a child before the age of seven, as we will see in subsequent chapters.
The Development of Memory
The development of thinking depends on the process of language formation and the maturing of memory. Steiner points out how the development of the child's memory echoes the historical development of humanity. The first type of memory is localized or place memory, which involves recalling something when the child is in the same environment or receives similar sensory cues. For example, she may only visit grandma's house every few months, but she immediately remembers where the toy cupboard and the cookie jar are when she walks in the door. Historically, this kind of early memory is represented by monuments, cairns, monoliths, and other markers that remind people of the events that occurred at that location. This type of memory is very strong in the young child, who cannot pull up memories at will until the age of six. For example, if you ask preschoolers, 'What did you do at school today?' they will typically say, "Nothing." But if they receive other cues—if you start to sing one of the songs they learned at school or they see or smell something similar to something they experienced there—you can get an amazingly detailed rendition of the mornings activities.
The second type of memory that developed historically can be called rhythmical memory, in which history was carried in verse by poets or bards who would recite epic tales to remind people of their heritage. The rhythmical element makes memorization much easier, as when a young child sings his ABC's or recites "One, two, buckle my shoe." With such songs the child can go through the entire sequence, but he is unable to start in the middle or remember individual elements without reciting the whole verse from the beginning.
The third type of memory, picture memory, begins to develop in the third year and involves the child being able to use images and ideas. Lois Cusick, in the Waldorf Parenting Handbook, diagrams this progression in the following illustration, which also relates the three types of memory to the three major systems described by Steiner in human development: the limbs-metabolic system, which helps us move from place to place and is associated with localized memory; the heart-lung rhythmic system, which helps the young child easily learn songs and nursery rhymes "by heart"; and the head-nerve system, which is the last to unfold when the child is able to make images and later to remember more abstract ideas. (21)
THE YOUNG CHILD'S SENSES
Considering the tremendous physical and psychological changes that take place in the first three years, it is especially important to protect the child's senses to promote healthy development. Because young children are not yet able to separate themselves from their impressions through thinking and reflection, it is as if they are all sense organ. Scientific studies have shown that the fetus and newborn are tremendously more sensitive than doctors believed even a few decades ago. According to Steiner, this sensitivity modulates but remains throughout early childhood:
In the first part of his life . . . the child is, so to say, altogether a sense organ. This we have to take very literally. What is the characteristic function of a sense organ? It is receptive to impressions from the environment. If something striking occurs near him—for example, a burst of anger—then the reflection thereof goes right through the child. It will affect even his blood circulation and digestive system. (22)
Rainer Patzlaff goes on to explain, "Impressions are taken deeply into the unconscious physical processes and imprinted into the structure and function of the organs, into growth and form. This means that, in the education of very young children, the material as well as the social and human environment is of paramount importance." (23)
Paying special attention to the environment of the young child both at home and in child care or preschool is thus especially important. Almost all parents have experienced that their child can easily become overwhelmed when overstimulated by all the sights, sounds, and tastes at a children's party or at the movies. The opposite—the health-giving effects of a simplified environment and a rhythmical schedule for children of all ages—is less well known because the hectic pace of our lives doesn't support parents in having this experience. However, this relationship has been validated by Kim John Payne throughout his twenty years of counseling families. His suggestions in Simplicity Parenting form a practical and achievable way to enrich family life, from early childhood through adolescence. (24)
THE EMERGING SENSE OF SELF
Your toddler is very different from a baby, not only in her ability to walk and talk but also in her sense of self. By the time your child is eighteen months old, you will have no doubt that you are dealing with another human being of power.
A baby has what can be called participatory consciousness. There is no separation between self and other. Certainly the individuality is present and can be sensed in an infant, but it seems to surround the baby as the process of incarnation gradually occurs. The young baby participates in all the sense impressions of life without any distance, only gradually distinguishing various sensations, various adults, and all the things in the created world.
We have talked about the common occurrence of fear or shyness with strangers that most babies go through around nine months of age, and during the second year you will see other signs of the emerging sense of "I" and "not-I." During the second year, toddlers begin to feel themselves as separate beings, using their own name, starting to be possessive about toys, and starting to resist simple instructions from their parents. What psychologists call negativism is a normal sign in the second half of the second year of life. As the concept "no" begins to have meaning for them, children will pit their will against that of their parents.
In The First Three Years of Life, White writes, 'Why a child has to become ornery and stay that way for a minimum of six or seven months is one of the mysteries that makes the study of early human development so rich and fascinating. . . . The next comparable step seems to occur at puberty and takes the form of adolescent rebellion. We leave it to other researchers to delve further into this fascinating problem." (25)
Steiner's explanation of such behavior is that the child's I is being experienced more strongly, making him more awake and more centered in the power of his individuality. These times occur at ages two to three, around age nine, and again around age thirteen. Finally, at age twenty-one the individuality is fully incarnated into earthly life.
The toddler's emerging sense of self is strengthened by the development of memory, which results in the first conscious use of the word I. Indeed, there can be no awareness of oneself without memory. Memory comes from an accumulation of experiences with the "not-I." Things that are painful—a knife that cuts, hard cement steps that cause a bump— interrupt the young child's participatory consciousness and separate the world from the self. Memory arises from these and other encounters, increasing the sense of the observer or the experience and the thing experienced. This sense of distance or separation is in contrast to the infant's unfocused consciousness, which doesn't distinguish between self and other, which participates completely in whatever sensation is at hand.
The emergence of memory, thinking, and the self go hand in hand, and sometime between two and three you will notice your child first saying "I" instead of calling herself by her name. Prior to this time she will say "Susy do it" or "Susy book," imitating what she has heard herself called. Saying "I" can only be done by the person herself, and the earlier ways of talking will disappear.
The age between two and three is an exciting time, one in which your child wholeheartedly says to the world, "Here am I!" This wonderful step in development can be accompanied by "self-will" as the child asserts her newfound power of individuality. Having an understanding of the changing consciousness of the child can help us gain perspective on the forces behind a child's actions and can help us offer guidance and correction (insisting on "right action") without our own emotional reactions muddying the waters. Examples of creative ways of coping with negative behavior will be given in chapter 7, "Discipline and Other Parenting Issues."
Having insights into your child's physical development and the changes in consciousness from birth through age three can help you understand and respond creatively to your child. In the next two chapters we will consider ways in which you can help your child's natural development during these crucial first three years.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
NOTES
Considering the tremendous physical and psychological changes that take place in the first three years, it is especially important to protect the child's senses to promote healthy development. Because young children are not yet able to separate themselves from their impressions through thinking and reflection, it is as if they are all sense organ. Scientific studies have shown that the fetus and newborn are tremendously more sensitive than doctors believed even a few decades ago. According to Steiner, this sensitivity modulates but remains throughout early childhood:
In the first part of his life . . . the child is, so to say, altogether a sense organ. This we have to take very literally. What is the characteristic function of a sense organ? It is receptive to impressions from the environment. If something striking occurs near him—for example, a burst of anger—then the reflection thereof goes right through the child. It will affect even his blood circulation and digestive system. (22)
Rainer Patzlaff goes on to explain, "Impressions are taken deeply into the unconscious physical processes and imprinted into the structure and function of the organs, into growth and form. This means that, in the education of very young children, the material as well as the social and human environment is of paramount importance." (23)
Paying special attention to the environment of the young child both at home and in child care or preschool is thus especially important. Almost all parents have experienced that their child can easily become overwhelmed when overstimulated by all the sights, sounds, and tastes at a children's party or at the movies. The opposite—the health-giving effects of a simplified environment and a rhythmical schedule for children of all ages—is less well known because the hectic pace of our lives doesn't support parents in having this experience. However, this relationship has been validated by Kim John Payne throughout his twenty years of counseling families. His suggestions in Simplicity Parenting form a practical and achievable way to enrich family life, from early childhood through adolescence. (24)
THE EMERGING SENSE OF SELF
Your toddler is very different from a baby, not only in her ability to walk and talk but also in her sense of self. By the time your child is eighteen months old, you will have no doubt that you are dealing with another human being of power.
A baby has what can be called participatory consciousness. There is no separation between self and other. Certainly the individuality is present and can be sensed in an infant, but it seems to surround the baby as the process of incarnation gradually occurs. The young baby participates in all the sense impressions of life without any distance, only gradually distinguishing various sensations, various adults, and all the things in the created world.
We have talked about the common occurrence of fear or shyness with strangers that most babies go through around nine months of age, and during the second year you will see other signs of the emerging sense of "I" and "not-I." During the second year, toddlers begin to feel themselves as separate beings, using their own name, starting to be possessive about toys, and starting to resist simple instructions from their parents. What psychologists call negativism is a normal sign in the second half of the second year of life. As the concept "no" begins to have meaning for them, children will pit their will against that of their parents.
In The First Three Years of Life, White writes, 'Why a child has to become ornery and stay that way for a minimum of six or seven months is one of the mysteries that makes the study of early human development so rich and fascinating. . . . The next comparable step seems to occur at puberty and takes the form of adolescent rebellion. We leave it to other researchers to delve further into this fascinating problem." (25)
Steiner's explanation of such behavior is that the child's I is being experienced more strongly, making him more awake and more centered in the power of his individuality. These times occur at ages two to three, around age nine, and again around age thirteen. Finally, at age twenty-one the individuality is fully incarnated into earthly life.
The toddler's emerging sense of self is strengthened by the development of memory, which results in the first conscious use of the word I. Indeed, there can be no awareness of oneself without memory. Memory comes from an accumulation of experiences with the "not-I." Things that are painful—a knife that cuts, hard cement steps that cause a bump— interrupt the young child's participatory consciousness and separate the world from the self. Memory arises from these and other encounters, increasing the sense of the observer or the experience and the thing experienced. This sense of distance or separation is in contrast to the infant's unfocused consciousness, which doesn't distinguish between self and other, which participates completely in whatever sensation is at hand.
The emergence of memory, thinking, and the self go hand in hand, and sometime between two and three you will notice your child first saying "I" instead of calling herself by her name. Prior to this time she will say "Susy do it" or "Susy book," imitating what she has heard herself called. Saying "I" can only be done by the person herself, and the earlier ways of talking will disappear.
The age between two and three is an exciting time, one in which your child wholeheartedly says to the world, "Here am I!" This wonderful step in development can be accompanied by "self-will" as the child asserts her newfound power of individuality. Having an understanding of the changing consciousness of the child can help us gain perspective on the forces behind a child's actions and can help us offer guidance and correction (insisting on "right action") without our own emotional reactions muddying the waters. Examples of creative ways of coping with negative behavior will be given in chapter 7, "Discipline and Other Parenting Issues."
Having insights into your child's physical development and the changes in consciousness from birth through age three can help you understand and respond creatively to your child. In the next two chapters we will consider ways in which you can help your child's natural development during these crucial first three years.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
- The Child from Birth to Three in Waldorf Education and Child Care, by Rainer Patzlaff et al. (Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America). The first half provides a very cogent description of child development from birth to three.
- Heaven on Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children, by Sharifa Oppenheimer (SteinerBooks). Discusses how children learn and ways to create a nurturing environment for them.
- The Incarnating Child, by Joan Salter (Hawthorn Press). Steiner oriented work that addresses a child's development through the second birthday. Highly recommended!
- Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne (Ballantine Books). Ways to protect the healthy development of children of all ages.
- Waldorf Parenting Handbook, by Lois Cusick (Rudolf Steiner College Press). Valuable section on early childhood, as well as a description of the Waldorf (Steiner School) curriculum through adolescence.
NOTES
- Jane Healy, Your Child's Growing Mind, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 30.
- Jean Ayers, Sensory Integration and Learning Disorders (Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services, 1973).
- White, The First Three Years of Life, p. 60.
- "Pediatric Notes," March 26, 1987, p. 46, summarized in Pediatrics for Parents 8, no. 6 (June 1987).
- Canadian Medical Association Journal, January 1, 1987, p. 57, summarized in Pediatrics for Parents 8, no. 6 (June 1987).
- "Pediatric Notes."
- White, The First Three Years of Life, p. 80.
- Rudolf Steiner, lectures delivered in Dornach, Switzerland, April 15—22, 1923, reported by Albert Steffen in Swiss Teachers' Course (London: The Library of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, n.d.).
- Rudolf Steiner, "Pneumatosophy: The Riddles of the Inner Human Being," lecture delivered in Berlin, Germany, May 23, 1923 (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press), p. 2.
- Steiner, "The Child Before the Seventh Year."
- Shea Darian, Seven Times the Sun: Guiding Your Child Through the Rhythms of the Day (Phoenix, AZ: Gilead Press, 2001 [1994]).
- Geoffrey Cowley, "The Language Explosion," Newsweek Special Edition, Spring/Summer 1997, p. 20.
- Begley, "How to Build a Babfs Brain," p. 31.
- Cowley, "The Language Explosion," p. 21.
- Karl König, The First Three Years of the Child (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1969), p. 24.
- Daniel Udo de Haes, The Young Child (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986), p. 24.
- Ibid.
- Steiner, "Pneumatosophy," p. 3.
- "A Baby's 'Ga-ga' Speaks Volumes," Los Angeles Times, republished in the Sacramento Bee, January 1, 1999, p. A8.
- Cowley, "The Language Explosion," p. 21.
- Reprinted from p. 19 of Lois Cusick, Waldorf Parenting Handbook, by permission of the publishers, St. George Publications, Spring Valley, New York, 1984.
- Rudolf Steiner, lectures delivered in Torquay, England, Summer 1924, quoted in Elizabeth Grunelius, Early Childhood Education and the Waldorf School Plan (Englewood, NJ: Waldorf School Monographs, 1974), p. 42.
- Rainer Patzlaff et al., The Child from Birth to Three in Waldorf Education and Child Care (Spring Valley, NY: Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, 2011), p. 20.
- Payne, Simplicity Parenting.
- White, The First Three Years of Life, p. 157.