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 4
Tasks and Assignments for Early Childhood Education 1 - Lesson 4
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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 reflect on the first twelve month of the infant. How does this development influence the child's ability to participate socially in the preschool or kindergarten environment? What activities help with potential difficulties of integration? 2. Contrast the development of the child in terms of (a) physical development, (b) development of intelligence, (c) emotional development and (d) language development. 3. Describe and discuss toys appropriate for the very young child. Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email. 
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Study Material for Early Childhood Education 1 - Lesson 4
You Are Your Child's First TeacherCΗΑΡΤΕR 4 - Helping Your Baby's Development
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Before we consider ways in which you can encourage your baby's natural development in the first year, it is important to remember that your child is his or her own person, and more than the genetic blend of two individuals. Each person comes into life not only with unique characteristics that will unfold over the course of a lifetime but also with a unique individuality and destiny. This is reflected in the wisdom of many cultures and religions, and is also expressed by the Cherokee blessing, "May you live long enough to know why you were born." (1)
During pregnancy the mother has known this baby intimately, "from the inside out," for nine months. And yet when you look into your newborn's eyes, you realize that she is her own person, and you may have the sense of a very ancient and knowing being who is both familiar and a stranger to you. Who is this child? What will his or her life be like? What an adventure, finding out!
The experience of a unique spiritual being coming to you is sometimes felt by parents before the birth, or even before conception or were aware of a "being" who wanted to come to them shortly before they became pregnant. König describes this unseen process, of which we might be dimly aware:
First the being of the child approaches the mother, and through this she finds the child's father. Later, however, the child's angel has a direct meeting with the mother's higher being and entrusts the child to her For most mothers this spiritual meeting remains subconscious, but its significance is a lasting one because from this meeting springs the well of the mother's love. This very special love which a mother has for her child, and which transcends all biological powers, is imparted to every woman when she meets her child's angel. (2)
This perspective, that on some level your child has chosen you (with all your imperfections!) and this life with all its joys and difficulties, can be helpful when you find yourselves overwhelmed with the twentyfour-hour-a-dayness of taking care of an infant or the sleepless nights of parenting a teenager. Before we turn to the practicalities of caring for a newborn, take a few minutes to think back on anything you knew about your child before he or she was born. What dreams did you have? Was there something special about how your baby's name came to you? What did you sense from your baby's movements while inside your womb? It can be helpful to keep a journal of your observations and feelings during pregnancy and throughout your child's first years—it's a great adjunct to the typical baby book.
STIMULATING AND PROTECTING THE SENSITIVITY OF THE NEWBORN
Birth involves a huge change for the baby. Psychologists have long told us this, but it has yet to transform birthing practices in most hospitals. It wasn't until the 1970s that the sensitivity of the newborn at birth was dramatically brought to awareness by the work of the late French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer. Medical science had fallen into the belief that babies didn't see, feel, or experience very much in the womb, during birth, or as a newborn. Leboyer himself said he had experienced three thousand deliveries before he realized that the newborn's cries were really made in distress. (3) Today it is hard for any thinking and feeling person not to be aware of how vulnerable the senses of a newborn are to sight, sound, temperature, and all the other experiences of the world.
Much has been written about the importance of stimulating your baby's senses, starting with maternal deprivation studies conducted in the 1940s, which demonstrated that institutionalized children without adequate stimulation from a primary caregiver show developmental lags that cannot be made up later. Later studies in Romania confirmed with brain scans that the temporal lobes, which receive input from the senses and regulate emotions, were dramatically less active in institutionalized orphans who had experienced extreme deprivation in infancy compared to normal children. (4)
However, American popular pyschologists and business interests have interpreted an infant's need for stimulation as meaning that you need to be constantly stimulating your baby with bits of colored plastic and flash cards. Rather than these artificial means, however, a baby needs the holding, rocking, talking, concern, and love of its mother or another primary caregiver in order to develop normally. More sensible child-development experts remind parents that infant stimulation is not something you need to do separately from caregiving. (5)
You will be providing most of what your baby needs for healthy development if you do the following:
The child needs so much sleep because it is entirely sense organ. It could not otherwise endure the dazzle and noise of the outer world. Just as the eye must shut itself against the dazzling sunlight, so must this sense-organ, the child— for the child is entirely sense-organ—shut itself off against the world, so must it sleep a great deal. For whenever it is confronted with the world, it has to observe. (6)
By remembering the sensitivity and needs of the newborn, you will gain confidence that you are providing your baby with the best possible start in life.
The Sense of Touch
Your baby is perhaps most sensitive to touch, the skin being our largest sense organ. The entire birth process is like a massage for the baby, stimulating her skin senses and getting her ready to breathe. The cold air hitting her skin at birth gives the baby her first strong dose of body definition, of inner and outer. This is in contrast to life in the womb, which is like being immersed in a warm bath.
Your baby's sensitive skin, which previously has only known water, will now be exposed to all of the elements of ordinary life. No wonder babies are so prone to rashes—it's quite an adjustment. Touch remains vital throughout your baby's life, and it's a pity that so many of the givens of modern child rearing, such as baby seats and strollers, serve to distance parents and their children and insulate the child from life-giving touch. Although babies need to be safely belted into infant seats in the car, holding and carrying your baby in your arms at other times is better for both of you. But how will you ever get anything done? Here is where the various types of slings and soft front carriers come to the res cue by leaving your (or your partner's) hands free for other tasks. However, a word of caution is necessary. Using vertical carriers before a baby can hold his head erect can place undue strain on the central nervous system, while using a sling that keeps the baby curled up too tightly or blocks all fresh air can limit free breathing. One of the best resources on selecting and using a baby carrier safely is still available as a reprint from Mothering magazine at www.mothering.com. (7)
Returning to the sense of touch, it is helpful to think about what kinds of materials you want to have touching your baby's skin and to choose fabrics that are soft, warming, and pleasurable against the skin. Natural fibers are especially beneficial because they breathe. If some kinds of synthetics make your skin crawl or make you feel as if you're sealed in an airtight container, consider that the effect is magnified for your baby. Not only do cotton, silk, and wool allow air to flow through the fibers, but wool also wicks moisture away from the skin and keeps your baby drier than other fabrics. Hospitals have found that premature babies gain weight faster when they are placed on wool sheets, but no one knows why. (8) Steiner would say that natural fibers can actually contribute to the body's vital energy, whereas some synthetics rob the body of energy.
The Sense of Sight
Your baby's sense of sight expands from the newborn's short focus from breast to mother's eyes to gradually take in more with each passing month. Your baby's security increases when the space he is in is small, like his depth of vision. This is one reason why your baby may sleep better in a small bassinet than in a large crib and why many cultures all over the world have a version of a cradle or Moses basket so the baby can sleep safely by the mother's side as she works.
Mothers all over the world tuck their babies into bed with them at night when they are small, and certainly while they are nursing. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out against "co-sleeping" because a small number of babies died in a given year, but they didn't report whether either partner had consumed alcohol or taken sleeping medications or any other drugs that increase drowsiness. Waterbeds obviously are not safe for co-sleeping. The benefits of sleeping with your baby include increased attachment and nighttime security for the baby. And it is certainly easier to nurse a baby in bed than to get up, go to another room and get the baby, and then sit up in a rocking chair before getting up yet again to return the baby to his or her bed. Some researchers feel that sleeping in close proximity with your baby helps regulate her breathing and decreases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS or crib death), which is also decreased if you put your baby to sleep on her back instead of her tummy. It's something you need to decide, and www.mothering.com is, once again, a valuable source of information.
One of the advantages of having a bassinet or hooded basket for your newborn is that it provides a small, enclosed space for naps during the day—and it gives you room to stretch out or be with your partner without waking the little one. An innovative compromise that offers the best of both worlds is the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper, a three-sided bassinet that attaches to the side of your bed. Your baby is safely tucked in next to you, where she can still hear your breathing and feel your presence. The lack of a wall between your mattress and the baby's mattress makes it easy to reach your baby for reassuring or for nursing.
In the early weeks, bassinets may be draped with colored silk to filter the light reaching the baby. A combination of blue and pink or rose silk provides an especially soft light, and such pieces are available from several online sources. Having a special blanket made of natural cotton or silk can help build up associations with sleep over the months and then can help your older baby settle into sleep when she is tired at night or at nap time. The sleepwear and the bed, together with the baby's skin, can be thought of as three "sheaths" that protect the baby in his or her contact with the outside world.
Is it necessary to take such care with a newborn? Certainly not in the sense of survival. Babies are hardy creatures and can even survive the fluorescent lights and Muzak in the preemie nursery. But it is helpful for us to be aware of how completely open to outside influences a baby is. Burton
White, in The First Years of Life, states that the baby in the first six weeks "is generally unusually sensitive ... It is perfectly normal for an infant to startle and cry at any abrupt change in stimulation during her first weeks of life. Such common reactions include a response to sharp nearby noises, or to jolts to the crib or bassinet, or to any rather sudden change in position, particularly when the baby has been inactive. A second, less dramatic indication of sensitivity at this age is the infant's avoidance of bright lights. A Phase 1 infant (Birth to six weeks) will keep his eyes tightly shut in a brightly lit room or when outside in the sun. In fact, he is more likely to open his eyes and keep them open in a dimly lit room than in one at an ordinary level of illumination." (9)
The Sense of Hearing
Just as bright lights cause a baby to close down, loud noises will cause your baby to throw her arms and legs up in the startle reflex and begin to cry. Although you'll want to avoid slamming the door or dropping things near your baby, this doesn't mean that you need to tiptoe around the house all the time. Your baby should become used to the natural sounds of your household and will learn to sleep through most of them.
It is good to focus on the quality of the sounds that reach your baby's ears. One measure of quality is loudness; another is harmony and rhythm. One of the most pleasing sounds to your baby is your voice. Not only does she start to recognize your voice and your partner's, but if you hum or sing, she will be especially soothed. Many parents like to make up a little song for their baby that they start singing when pregnant; they have reported that the baby pays attention and is soothed by the song and seems to recognize it, even right after birth. You don't need to be a talented musician to Sing to your children—even someone tone deaf can hum! Getting into the habit of singing will help your child's language development and sense for music and rhythm, and it's a delightful way to share together.
The quality of aliveness that comes through the human voice when you sing to your baby is very different from a recording of soothing music for babies, or even one of your own singing. There is a nurturing quality in things that come from living sources that disappears when they are transferred to a recording. Children, especially, have come into this life to be alive and to grow. That which comes directly from a living source connects them with life on earth and the forces of growth, while that which is mechanical is further removed from them. Devices now on the market that simulate the noise of a car going fifty-five miles per hour may drive your baby to sleep, but what an affront to a newborn's senses! Similarly, white noise machines or creating a hum with a fan at nap time doesn't do your baby any favors.
It's obvious that your baby's experience is totally different when you or your partner sing to her (however ineptly) from when a CD player is the source of the sounds. Not only is the experience of a real person's presence missing with recorded music, radio, and television, but the quality of the sound is also different, regardless of the quality of the sound system. Steiner said that the quality of the sound from mechanical sources had a detrimental effect on the young child, both on the developing sensitivity of the ear and on the entire organism, because everything from each sense affects the entire body. (10) This is not so much the case with a child over the age of seven. Paying attention to the quality of the sounds your baby hears can only be beneficial.
The Sense of Warmth
A sense of warmth is especially important for your baby because her ability to regulate her body temperature is not yet fully mature. Also, an infant's head is so large in proportion to the rest of her body that the potential for heat loss is tremendous. Any outdoor person will tell you, "If your feet are cold, put on a hat," because so much of the body's heat is lost through the head. Many hospitals are beginning to put stockinette caps on babies in the nurseries, and it is a good idea to keep your baby's head covered throughout the first year. The baby's brain grows as much in the first year as it does throughout the rest of life, and for this process it is good to keep the head warm and protected.
A baby hat not only prevents heat loss but also keeps the fontanels covered. The fontanels are the "soft spots" in the baby/s skull. The one toward the back of the head is harder to feel, but the one toward the front can take up to eighteen months to close. During this time the brain and central nervous system are just beneath the scalp instead of being under the bony layer of the skull. The fontanels should neither be bulging nor sunken when your baby is at rest (although they will bulge when she cries). Many parents have found that putting a hat on their baby has a calming effect when they are out in the world, for it seems to keep the baby more insulated from outside influences. I recommend fitted hats over the stretchy stockinette variety, because stockinette caps fit poorly and always tend to ride up and need pulling down. This can be irritating to the newborn—perhaps too much like the birth process she has just come through!
The sense of warmth is very important throughout early childhood, and it is important to keep babies and toddlers warm and protected from drafts so their energy can go into development instead of into maintaining their body temperature. You can't judge whether a child is warm enough by how you are feeling, or by what a verbal child will tell you. A better guide is whether or not the child's hands and feet are warm.
Don't let your baby get overheated, but it is important to keep all the organs warm, especially the organs of digestion. This is why formula has to be warmed to body temperature and why traditional remedies for colic often involve warm wraps on the stomach. It is also why babies should always wear an undershirt or onesie (usually in addition to other clothing). Traditional mothers in warm climates always keep their babies covered, to protect them from the heat of the sun and to protect them from drafts. In our culture we need to be especially careful when taking the baby into air-conditioned rooms to provide a blanket or clothing to cover the baby's skin and prevent her body warmth from dissipating.
The Importance of the Environment
During the first six weeks, your baby needs to adjust to earthly life gradually and to get her digestive system functioning smoothly. Because she sleeps so much and her perceptual abilities are so limited, any kind of "enriched environment" will be wasted on the infant. Be skeptical of commercial and media hype regarding the needs of the newborn.
If an "enriched environment" is wasted on your baby, an aesthetic one is not. Creating a feeling of calm in the room (and in the mother) communicates to the baby and helps with sleep, digestion, and peacefulness. Most of the commercial items for babies are expensive and unnecessary. If you do have the luxury of decorating the nursery, avoid garish wallpaper and cartoon characters. Greens, browns, and grays are also much more "earthy?' than the infant or young child, who is still closely connected to heaven and doesn't yet walk firmly on the ground. The rose-pink-blue environment created by putting silks over the cradle or crib is especially soothing for young babies, and a color Steiner called "peach blossom" is especially suited to young children. Looking at the space in which your baby sleeps with attention and reverence adds those qualities to the environment. Adding a little table with fresh flowers, some photos or art reproduction, and some objects from nature like a pretty rock or shell can remind you of your own still center in the midst of all the demands of caring for a new baby.
Steiner suggested that many paintings by Raphael express higher truths, and he especially recommended that pregnant women contemplate Raphael's Sistine Madonna, which is also wonderful to have in a young child's room (note the faces of the unborn children in the clouds surrounding Mary). Meditating on this picture can reveal many things to the mother about both the nature of the eternal feminine and the incarnation process. About this particular painting Steiner said, "The painting of the Madonna with the child is the symbol of the eternal spirituality in people which comes certainly to the earth from beyond. Yet, this painting, through parted clouds, has everything that can only arise or proceed from the earthly." (11)
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING WITH A NEWBORN?
Being with a newborn is sublime on the one hand and often shocking on the other—at least the first time around. On the sublime side, I have frequently walked into a room where a newborn is sleeping and marveled that anyone so small could fill the entire room. The poet William Wordsworth described a similar phenomenon:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
But trailing clouds of Glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
On the other hand, I can still remember how difficult the first week was when I was a first-time mother. Having just given birth, you are wide open emotionally and physically. Hormones, starting to breastfeed, interrupted sleep, and roller-coaster emotions put a woman much more in touch with the beauty, vulnerability, and overwhelming aspects of life. Being a new mother or a new father involves a change in being, a stretching of who we are to take on the responsibility and the twenty-four-hour-a-day care of another human being, who (for a while at least) is completely dependent on us.
Most parents agree that the first six weeks are the hardest. Even after you recover from the birth itself, you will probably find the complete lack of rhythm doesn't give you any support. Life gets easier after these first six weeks, so if you can stay in communication with your partner during this transition time and have the sense that you are holding hands as you go under together, you will come back up together as well. It is easier with subsequent children because everything is more familiar. However, a second or third baby can be surprising in the amount of work he or she adds to a system where parents may already feel pressed for time. The key is getting adequate help so you can relax into what is happening and give up on things that aren't as essential, like cleaning the house yourself. Single parents, especially, need to arrange adequate support in advance.
Being with a baby involves doing a lot of repetitive things (diapering, nursing, washing clothes) that can look like nothing because they seem to involve maintenance rather than creative development. So when your partner comes home from work and asks, "What did you do today, dear?" you may think about it and burst into tears. I found I could accomplish one thing (one task in the world outside the baby) each day, if I was lucky, during the first two months. For someone who was used to being active and effective, that was a real shock.
How can this period of transition after the birth be made easier for parents? The most important thing is to get adequate help. This may mean having a relative come stay with you, hiring someone to come in and straighten up the house (postpartum doula support services are becoming more common, thank goodness), or going online to organize a care circle of friends to drop off a casserole or do a half hour of whatever is needed every afternoon during the first week or so.
To the extent you feel that you can relax and just be with your baby, you'll be more at peace. This may involve making sure that all other responsibilities are handled and that all deadlines fall well before your due date, or it may mean giving up on cleaning the house for a while. When we finally surfaced about five days after the birth of our first child, every plant in the house was withered, and we were sad!
The first six weeks are a very special time to be together as a family, to just be present with your new baby, adjust to the changes in your life, and regain your strength and bearings. If you can honor the magnitude of the event, arrange for some help, and schedule few or no other activities, you may find your adjustment much less rocky. Allow yourself to be nourished by the wonderful energy that surrounds a newborn.
The energy of creation that is present at a birth is very powerful and holy. This is true at every birth, but it is more accessible if this energy is acknowledged and protected. Because babies are so close to the spiritual world, they call forth love and giving from all sorts of people—some of whom you won't have heard from in years. Learn to receive, to let people do things for you, to say thank you. Use the time to practice doing nothing, to just be centered in the heart or in your breath. If you have other children, you will be especially busy after the birth. See if you can find brief moments to just sit and watch the baby sleeping. Such moments nourish you for the constant demands of mothering. Try to take advantage of the connection to the spirit that your baby has and to which you are still open in the postpartum period. Life will return to a new "normal" soon enough.
WHAT IS IT LIKE FROM MONTHS TWO TO TWELVE?
Once you've emerged from the fog of the postpartum period and just when you think you've figured it out, your baby will have moved on to something new! Babies change so rapidly in the first year that you may always feel as if you're scrambling to keep up. This can make what might seem mundane—tending to your baby's physical needs for food, cleanliness, sleep, and touch—more challenging than you ever imagined. But don't undervalue the care you as parents provide, for the infant is being shaped by her relationship with both you and the environment. Parents' feelings and interactions have an impact different from that received in even quality child care. With more and more parents putting the baby in full-time child care at six weeks to return to their careers, we appeal to mothers and fathers to be with their child as much as possible in at least the first year of life! With the possible exception of your baby/s grandmother, in your own home, no one can provide the calm environment and loving attention that the mother or father provides. The idea of "quality time" does not apply to an infant. She needs the constant proximity, the breastfeeding, the carrying, the being in a carrier or on the floor next to you while you do something.
No other mammal is born as helpless as the human being, and no other has such potential for development. In many ways a baby is not "read)/' to be born when compared with other mammals, and yet it must be born after nine months' gestation or the head will become too large and calcified to fit through the mother's pelvis. But the baby's needs for being close to the mother's body do not stop at birth; they continue throughout the first year and longer. Most non-industrialized societies practice some form of "marsupial mothering," with mothers carrying the baby in constant contact with the body up to the age of nine months—almost like a second gestational period. At that time there is a noticeable change as the baby becomes much more interested in the surrounding world, reaches for table foods, and is able to crawl and then walk on her own.
A different approach from the "in arms" mothering described above was articulated by Dr. Emmi Pikler, one of the leading European doctors who studied and worked with infants. She worked in a children's home in Hungary (where there weren't any mothers), and her work was developed in North America by Magda Gerber under the name Resources for Infant Educarers, or RIE. Helle Heckmann, who runs a Waldorf-inspired child care center in Denmark, says of Pikler,
Through her observation of children, she was able to show the importance of confidence and self-reliance as well as the belief in "being able to," as fundamental to the child's development into a confident adult. By reinforcing the child's confidence in her physical capabilities, and by respecting each child's individual developmental path, we as caregivers and educators can meet the needs of the young child. Emmi Pikler has given me the courage to work with children in a respectful way. (12)
Heckmann translates that into her approach with infants and describes it as follows:
There is no doubt that the infant thrives in love. Countless studies of the development of infants have shown that love and care are vital. But caring should not be mistaken for reaction and constant supervision. Show care and affection in situations when it is natural, such as eating and nursing, when it is natural to create a you-and-I situation, when it is natural to nurse, sing, chat, and get to know each other. The rest of the time it is important to leave the infant in peace and quiet to sleep or, when awake, to get to know herself without constant intervention from her surroundings. Often it is very difficult to show the infant this respect and leave her alone. Constantly satisfying our own need for reassurance and your need to look at your beautiful baby will often influence the infant's ability to be content with herself. Too many disturbances quickly lead to dependence on constant attention from the surroundings, and a vicious cycle of bad habits is created. By giving the infant peace and quiet for the first months of her life, she will get used to her physical life. (13)
Proponents of both attachment parenting and Pikler's more hands-off approach each have numerous arguments on their side. Parents and caregivers in both groups are caring, concerned, and consistent, and— when they are in touch with the being and the real needs of the child— both get good results, or what White would call "great kids." But when they fall off the tightrope, the former tend to err on the side of "smother love" or letting the child totally run the circus, while the latter tend to err on the side of rigidity or distance.
Steiner always encouraged people not to accept things by rote or on faith, but to test ideas for themselves. The key, as I see it, is not to follow any "system" or "expert" to the detriment of your child. Try to inform yourself, and ask, "What does the child need in this situation for his or her best development?" Use your head, listen to your heart, and make your best decisions based on what you perceive your child's needs to be and what you are able to provide in each situation. And then, if possible, evaluate what happened and grow from what you learned.
Although we have spent a great deal of time discussing different approaches to mothering, let's not forget fathers! The father's ever expanding relationship with the baby also contributes greatly to the child's growth and development. This relationship can begin during pregnancy, as the father takes time to be in touch with the developing body and being of his child. In experiencing the birth with his wife, he finds his love and connection with this child strengthening dramatically. By sharing the care of the baby and seeing her grow, the father's relationship deepens, so that he finds other times and ways to be with the baby, especially if she is being breastfed. As the baby develops and is increasingly able to respond with smiles and play, the relationship of father and child deepens. In addition to the special love and protection a father can provide for his baby and his wife, there are many ways in which he can interact with his baby during the first year. Fathering is of benefit not only to the baby but also to the man, who allows the nurturing aspect of his personality to develop. Mothers enjoy seeing their husbands interact with the baby; in fact, studies have shown that marital satisfaction for women with children is connected with seeing their husbands active as a father. (14)
Here we will present no recipes for producing a "super baby." In fact, what most new parents need is confidence that they themselves are important and can provide the best possible care for their babies. However, based on an increasing knowledge of child development and the gradual nature of the incarnation process, certain principles and activities can be especially helpful for you and your baby.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
As we have seen, all babies go through a normal sequence of development that involves assuming control of the body. The differences in the developmental rates of individual babies have more to do with timing than with the order in which skills develop. Freedom to move the arms and legs ensures that muscles will strengthen and that processes such as language and cognitive development, which are related to physical movement, will unfold appropriately. If you are having serious questions about your baby's development, check with your family doctor or a specialist to reassure yourself that your baby is developing normally. This is especially true if you suspect a hearing problem or if your baby has frequent ear infections. So much of learning depends on good hearing!
Your baby does not need baby exercise courses or other fancy stimulation to develop well. Expensive infant stimulation and home exercise kits are a waste of money and make the false assumption that we know better than the baby which muscles she should move. You can have all the benefits of positive interaction with your baby without spending the money simply by enjoying being with your child and rolling around on the floor together. If you are doing something because it feels good in the moment (massaging your baby or watching him grab at something), then you are interacting positively. But if you are doing it for results (so he'll be serene when he grows up or will walk sooner), then you are out of the present moment and have fallen prey to the media hype that tells us we should help our children progress faster. The most important thing you can do in the first year is to provide a calm and loving environment for your baby so that she can grow and develop according to her own inner unfolding.
Your baby needs very little to play with in the first few months because her main task is to become accustomed to her body and develop her muscles (and hence her brain) through natural movements. Although your baby is still primarily a horizontal being, you can delight her with a mobile in which the objects are horizontal and thus visible to the baby (remember that what is visible to you is seen as a narrow edge by the baby in the crib).
Crib toys should not produce loud noises or flashing lights. It is important for safety to remove hanging crib toys when your baby seems nearly able to pull herself up to a sitting position.
Before a baby can sit up, it is good to have her near you on a blanket on the floor. Babies don't object to being on their backs or on their stomachs instead of sitting. Our culture is visually oriented, and we think that babies always need to be sitting up in molded infant seats when they are awake. Some researchers on developmental learning disabilities feel that babies should not be propped up into a sitting position by infant seats but should be given the opportunity to achieve the sitting position entirely unaided. (15) It is a question of not jumping ahead of the normal progression of development.
Once your baby can sit up, you'll find she loves to play with small objects, which are important in the development of physical coordination and intelligence. Especially valuable are toys and small objects that can be banged, thrown, or dropped. Think of things you already have that she will find fascinating. (Remember that everything ends up in the mouth, and small pieces that can break off are dangerous. Anything smaller than 1 1/2 inches in any dimension could get stuck in a baby's throat.) A wooden spoon, a beautiful shell, a cloth ball, and a small dried gourd can be favorites. Your kitchen is full of wonderful "toys"—measuring spoons, pots and lids, nesting bowls. The wooden rattle, of which the infant was unaware and which the three-month-old would hold or drop indiscriminately, gradually becomes interesting for its texture and sounds. Several sources of natural toys are listed at the end of this chapter. Although there is nothing wrong with chrome and plastic, it seems appropriate to honor the natural connection that young children have with the living world.
The playpen, which has fallen out of use, is another invention that doesn't take into account the real developmental needs of the child. Until the baby crawls, a blanket on the floor serves just as well, and a basket for toys can be handy for picking things up when the baby takes a nap. Once the baby starts to crawl, playpens are a real barrier to development.
When Your Baby Starts to Crawl
From a parent's point of view, development seems to go in phases. First everything is all right, then it's fairly difficult, then all is well again, and so on. Joseph Chilton Pearce, in Magical Child, speaks about each developmental step being preceded by a return to the matrix (structure, safety, mother) and then followed by a voyage out into the world to find new experiences and exercise new abilities. (16) The expansion and contraction is like breathing, and it is important for development that times of regression (inwardness or clinging behavior) be understood not as backsliding but as preparation for the next surge forward toward independence.
One such "regression" often happens just before a baby starts to crawl. You might find yourself carrying around this heavy child much of the time and wondering, "When will it ever change?" Then suddenly it does, and your baby is off, having mastered the first means of getting around on his own. Parenting changes with this event, because your baby is suddenly into everything. Planning ahead can save you a lot of grief and make this an exciting time in your lives.
Sometime before your baby starts to crawl, you will need to baby-proof your home, making it safe for and from the baby. Starting with the kitchen, where your baby will probably spend the most time, make sure that all poisonous and dangerous items are out of reach and put simple toddler locks on cupboards that you don't want the baby to get into. You should also check for unstable objects, such as a small table or a potted plant. Stairs pose a special risk of falling, but babies love stairs. An invaluable suggestion from White is to place the child guard gate about three steps up instead of at the bottom of your staircase. This gives your baby a place to practice climbing without the risk of getting hurt.
Making your home a safe place for the baby is one of the best things you can do to aid your child's development. The objects in your home provide wonderful stimulation for her, and you won't have to say "no" all the time. It is much better to let your baby roam than to keep her in a playpen, because babies need to crawl, need changing stimulation, and need to be around you. In his observations of families where children developed beautifully, White found that parents had made their homes safe and open to children rather than keeping them caged in playpens, where they rapidly became bored. He states, "It is my view that to bore a child on a daily basis by the regular use of a playpen for extended periods is a very poor childrearing practice. The same principle applies to the use of cribs, jump seats, high chairs and other restrictive devices" when they are used to limit a child's movement for long periods every day. (17)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
During the first year of life, the weight of your baby's brain can actually double. Brain cells, which become stimulated by picking up and relaying messages, develop new dendrite spines, and these neural pathways become myelinated, or insulated to make the pathway that has been created operate more accurately and faster. Your baby is learning constantly through her physical activities. As movements become more coordinated and are repeated hundreds of times each day, your baby learns eye-hand coordination and how to grasp something she sees. According to both Piaget and Steiner, these things that seem like the foundation of physical development are also the foundation for later intellectual development.
Between the ages of six and eight months a baby's interests usually change from her own motor skills to the world around her, and memory starts to develop. Interest in dropping, banging, and throwing small objects starts to teach the baby about cause and effect and temporal sequence, important foundations for later thinking. For example, the seven-month-old will repeatedly drop a spoon or toy from a high chair and watch where it goes. Toys that involve performing one action that causes another part to move are also favorites for a child of this age.
Understanding the gradual development of memory is also important when considering the growth of intelligence. Jane Healy concludes from her research in developmental neuropsychology:
A child's first months lay the groundwork for paying attention, taking in bits of information to each of the senses, and practicing with body movements. During this "sensorimotor" period, the brain is not ready to deal with much beyond immediate physical experience. Around eight or nine months of age, the prefrontal cortex begins its long march toward maturity, and the child starts to use memory to link past and present experience: "Oops! Here comes the sitter—time to cry!" (18)
As the prefrontal cortex starts to develop, short-term memory and "object permanence" start to develop in the baby. A baby sitting in her high chair and dropping her spoon for the tenth time is not doing it to annoy you. Rather, she is observing the wonderful phenomenon we call gravity and playing with the idea of appearance and disappearance (which makes peek-a-boo a favorite game). In this play we can see a metaphor for the coming in and out of existence or manifestation that the baby is exploring by its very being. There is as yet no memory to give an object permanence; mother disappears and reappears as suddenly as the baby itself appeared in the physical world.
Babies around six to eight months of age also love to bang things and explore sounds. Having a cupboard in the kitchen that is the baby/s (and putting child locks on the others) can be a real blessing. While you're busy, your baby can be occupied swinging the door, banging the pot with the wooden spoon, stacking the unbreakable bowls, or rattling the taped container with rice inside.
It is pointless to address a baby's learning ability in an abstract fashion from birth until eight months of age, because all babies go through the normal pattern of development unless they are abused or disabled. Jane Healy concluded from her study of developmental neuropsychology, "Your overall goal should be not to 'teach' your baby but to help her discover how to organize experience for herself Babies come equipped with the 'need to know'; our job is to give them love, acceptance, and the raw material of appropriate stimulation at each level of development. Your own common sense, augmented by current knowledge, is the best guide." (19)
However, the current pressure for early academic achievement and the American maxim that "faster is better" have clouded common sense when it comes to activities like teaching babies to read. Healy points out that even though babies can be taught to read words with enough condition-response training, they are not reading for meaning and are using a lower part of their brain, simply because the parts of the brain that should be used in reading are not yet developed. Such activities risk your baby developing habits that are hard to undo later (see chapter 11 for more reasons not to push academics onto younger and younger children). Let your baby be a baby. Play with her through language and movement and enjoy one another!
At this stage it is impossible to separate physical development and the development of intelligence, but one is not predictive of the other. In other words, a child who crawls at six months and walks at eight is not more intelligent or highly developed than a child who crawls at ten months and walks at fourteen. What is important for the development of intelligence is that the motions are gone through in each stage; the timetable is usually just a question of individual differences within the wide range of normal. Researchers have been unable to find dramatic evidence of poor development in the first year in children who do poorly later, probably because they have not yet developed the deficit. (20) In other words, most parents manage to provide all that is needed for their baby's development in the first year. So relax, enjoy, and put your attention on the spheres that are more open to parental input during the first eight months.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A baby's sense of well-being depends on having her needs for love, warmth, touch, and food met. Emotional development is based on the love, trust, and touch experienced in the baby's first relationships within the family.
When you respond promptly to your baby's cries, she learns that the world is a friendly place and that your love and protection surround her. Parents who follow their instincts know this, and it's nice to find psychologists now stating that you can't spoil a young baby. Unfortunately, however, mothers are still likely to hear grandparents or perhaps even their husbands comment that they are spoiling the baby, or even that it's good for babies to cry. Surrounding your baby with love, warmth, and touch provides a secure foundation for later life that is almost impossible to make up for if it has been lacking.
Researchers have observed that babies usually cry only in response to discomfort until around four or five months of age. At that age a new kind of intentional behavior can be seen for the first time: crying so that an adult will pick them up and cuddle them. In other words, the baby has learned, through successfully having her physical needs met, that she can also cry for attention. It is important that she have confidence that an adult will come when she calls and that a pleasant experience results. This contrasts with babies in institutions, who learn that their cries won't bring a response, and as a result don't exhibit this new intentional behavior of attracting the attention of adults. Most professionals would rather see a baby between three and six months cry too much for attention than cry too little and risk receiving inadequate attention during the first few months of life. (21) Beginning to distinguish between the two types of cries is a valuable skill to develop. Because babies have neither reason nor a sense of time, you can't tell the child to wait or to stop crying. Many mothers and fathers find this a difficult time in their parenting that would be easier if we had more adults around!
During the months before your baby learns to crawl (perhaps between six and eight months), your baby may become demanding. She can see everything and wants to experience it, but she can't get to it. This driving force to crawl and walk is appropriate, but it can result in a baby who requires frequent changes of scenery, adult input, or carrying to avoid complaining. White, in his quest to find out what creates a pleasant, unspoiled three-year-old, as well as a bright one, has traced the origins of "spoiling" back to those parents who fall into a pattern of constantly responding to their six- or seven-month-old's cry for attention. "If you find that you are picking up your child and playing with her seven or eight times an hour for six or seven hours a day, you are probably moving into a pattern that will cause you some grief fairly soon," White states. (22)
I found this statement interesting because White is a sensible observer, and he must have noticed some sort of correlation. I pondered this observation for many years, because I couldn't figure out how he could suggest that you should ignore your baby's call for attention. I realized that if there is a potential problem, it must lie in the fact that one's circumstances have created a whiny baby who wants to be picked up six or eight times an hour. One of the ways to avoid this pattern is to involve your baby in your life. For example, parents with one or two other young children don't have this problem as often—they haven't the time. Also, the siblings provide interaction for the baby, so attention needn't always come from the parents.
It seems that White was observing the problems created when the baby becomes the center of attention instead of an observer of and a participant in family life. Ignoring your baby and letting her cry it out is not what he is recommending! Rather, he is suggesting that you realize that your baby is born into your family and needs to find his or her place there. You must find the middle ground between letting the baby become the center of the universe, and thus jumping to fulfill her every whim, and ignoring her out of some mistaken belief that you will spoil her.
It seems to me that two problems arise. The one we have just discussed seems to be solved by asking the question, "How can I be in empathetic connection with my baby and perceive what she needs in this moment?" The other seems to involve the problem discussed in the previous chapter, that modern life does not support what young children need and hence leads to problems of babies not being able to observe their mothers doing "real work" around the house. With the industrial revolution and the move to the cities, labor-saving devices not only changed the nature of home life but also created families in which women were isolated from other members of their families—indeed, from other adults altogether. So another way to avoid the babfs learning to whine louder and louder to get mother's attention is to have other adults about. Our culture, with its lack of extended family, puts a real strain on the mother. Earlier I mentioned a friend of mine who realized this truth from her experiences in Mexico (page 29). How much you hold and carry your baby can have an effect on him, but it also needs to be balanced with your own needs and emotional well-being.
The larger question with regard to many of the difficulties parents encounter has to be, "How can we overcome our isolation and find or recreate community?" Raising young children in isolation can be crazy making—I'm convinced it was never meant to happen. Everyone nods with a certain recognition that "it takes a village to raise a child," so how did we end up where we are today?
Two historical forces have served to isolate women and their mothering. The first was the pioneering impulse to strike out for the frontier, and the second was the migration to the cities. Although it was tremendously difficult for pioneer women to be separated from their community of women, life was so hard that children had to be incorporated into the process of helping the family survive, and rural life was at least healthier than conditions in the overcrowded tenements or factories. But with the dominance of city life, the isolation of mothers has continued and intensified as we have become increasingly mobile and tend to live far from all our family members.
If you find yourself home alone with your baby and are not having the time of your life, you need to reach out and find a network of support. You owe it to your children, your mothering, and yourself. Some suggestions of groups you might join include La Leche League, mother-infant groups, playgroups, and religious groups. Put up signs in the natural foods co-op or start talking to other mothers in the park. They're probably either as isolated as you are or they've found something worth sharing.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
As was discussed in the previous chapter, the first year is a critical period during which babies learn the sounds of a language and develop an interest in communicating with others. The baby has been able to hear sounds from the fifth month inside the womb, but most of the sounds the baby heard came from within the mother's own body or from her internal vibrations as she spoke. Only near the end of pregnancy does the expanded uterus begin to conduct outside sounds with any clarity. Some "prenatal university/' advocates are trying to sell parents recorded messages or music with special earphones that attach to the mother's stomach to increase auditory pathways for future language or mathematical development. Just as Steiner says that you wouldn't want to stimulate the developing eye of the baby when it was in the womb, Jane Healy advises that "until we learn more about this topic it seems sensible to give the fetus a calm, stable start without an atmosphere of overstimulation or pressure. By all means talk and sing to your unborn child as you relax and rock, but reflect carefully before you start 'pushing' any type of learning." If you're still tempted by the hype associated with these items, she continues:
Overstimulating parents, however, should think twice about an experiment in which duck embryos were subjected to abnormally intense auditory stimulation (noise); after the ducks were born they failed to learn their mother's call and showed other signs of abnormal attention and development. When you are tempted to turn up the stereo, remind yourself that 'augmented sensory experience' is probably not good for human babies either. (23)
Infants show a preference for their mother's voice and start trying to understand and remember speech sounds soon after birth. Nothing can substitute for the love and attention you give your baby. When you talk to her while changing her diaper, for example, you are providing loving stimulation and a model for language development. At around four months your baby will turn and smile when you say her name. This is a stage called pre-language comprehension, because any name will work equally well, but regardless it is an exciting time. By eight months she will probably be responding to a few specific words, which usually include some variation of "mommy," "daddy," "baby," and "bye-bye," if English is the primary language in your home.
Babies prefer sounds that are high-pitched and respond especially well to the voice when it is rhythmical and melodic—hence the use of lullabies with babies throughout all cultures. Any time you hum or sing to your baby, you are doing her a wonderful service. Some parents worry that they "aren't musical," but everyone can hum, and songs can be extremely simple, involving only a few words and one or two notes. A simple musical instrument called a children's harp is very soothing at nap or bedtime and can also help parents bring the musical element to their young children. The harp is tuned in a special way, according to a pentatonic scale, so that anything you play sounds angelic—there are no wrong notes. Sources for the children's harp are listed at the end of this chapter, and music is discussed more in chapter 10.
TOYS FOR THE FIRST YEAR
American companies spent $2 billion on advertising to children in 1998, twenty times more than they did in 1988, and the amount has only gone up since then! Despite what Madison Avenue would like you to believe, your baby will develop quite healthily without your buying any toys in the first year. Helle Heckmann, director of the Danish child care center, Nøkken, states, "The infant has himself, and it is by observing himself and his limbs that the infant develops. That is why the infant should not be offered any toys." (24) However, every baby in America is going to have toys, so what principles can guide our selections?
What your baby needs is a balance of playing with objects, moving to develop physical skills, and interacting with people. Interaction can come through the daily care you give your baby—through breastfeeding or giving him a bottle (and, later, spoon feedings), and through changing and bathing her. Just make sure that you are attentive and aware of your baby as a human being during these times rather than treating her as an object or a chore that has to be accomplished. Talking and singing to your baby can lead to playing games as she becomes a little older. Babies love to play peek-a-boo after they are about six months old, delighting in the appearance and disappearance of themselves and the world. Simple movement games like "pat-a-cake" or "so big" also delight a one-year-old.
The following are the toys and equipment that I would recommend for babies in the first year:
The following items, however, are of questionable value:
And, to conclude, these are some enjoyable activities to do with your baby that can help her natural development:
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Various Approaches to Parenting
Things to Do with Your Baby
SONGS, FINGER PLAYS, AND LULLABIES
SOURCES FOR TOYS
There are many online sources for toys for babies made from wood, wool, cotton, and other natural materials, including:
SOURCES FOR CHILDREN'S HARPS
NOTES
During pregnancy the mother has known this baby intimately, "from the inside out," for nine months. And yet when you look into your newborn's eyes, you realize that she is her own person, and you may have the sense of a very ancient and knowing being who is both familiar and a stranger to you. Who is this child? What will his or her life be like? What an adventure, finding out!
The experience of a unique spiritual being coming to you is sometimes felt by parents before the birth, or even before conception or were aware of a "being" who wanted to come to them shortly before they became pregnant. König describes this unseen process, of which we might be dimly aware:
First the being of the child approaches the mother, and through this she finds the child's father. Later, however, the child's angel has a direct meeting with the mother's higher being and entrusts the child to her For most mothers this spiritual meeting remains subconscious, but its significance is a lasting one because from this meeting springs the well of the mother's love. This very special love which a mother has for her child, and which transcends all biological powers, is imparted to every woman when she meets her child's angel. (2)
This perspective, that on some level your child has chosen you (with all your imperfections!) and this life with all its joys and difficulties, can be helpful when you find yourselves overwhelmed with the twentyfour-hour-a-dayness of taking care of an infant or the sleepless nights of parenting a teenager. Before we turn to the practicalities of caring for a newborn, take a few minutes to think back on anything you knew about your child before he or she was born. What dreams did you have? Was there something special about how your baby's name came to you? What did you sense from your baby's movements while inside your womb? It can be helpful to keep a journal of your observations and feelings during pregnancy and throughout your child's first years—it's a great adjunct to the typical baby book.
STIMULATING AND PROTECTING THE SENSITIVITY OF THE NEWBORN
Birth involves a huge change for the baby. Psychologists have long told us this, but it has yet to transform birthing practices in most hospitals. It wasn't until the 1970s that the sensitivity of the newborn at birth was dramatically brought to awareness by the work of the late French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer. Medical science had fallen into the belief that babies didn't see, feel, or experience very much in the womb, during birth, or as a newborn. Leboyer himself said he had experienced three thousand deliveries before he realized that the newborn's cries were really made in distress. (3) Today it is hard for any thinking and feeling person not to be aware of how vulnerable the senses of a newborn are to sight, sound, temperature, and all the other experiences of the world.
Much has been written about the importance of stimulating your baby's senses, starting with maternal deprivation studies conducted in the 1940s, which demonstrated that institutionalized children without adequate stimulation from a primary caregiver show developmental lags that cannot be made up later. Later studies in Romania confirmed with brain scans that the temporal lobes, which receive input from the senses and regulate emotions, were dramatically less active in institutionalized orphans who had experienced extreme deprivation in infancy compared to normal children. (4)
However, American popular pyschologists and business interests have interpreted an infant's need for stimulation as meaning that you need to be constantly stimulating your baby with bits of colored plastic and flash cards. Rather than these artificial means, however, a baby needs the holding, rocking, talking, concern, and love of its mother or another primary caregiver in order to develop normally. More sensible child-development experts remind parents that infant stimulation is not something you need to do separately from caregiving. (5)
You will be providing most of what your baby needs for healthy development if you do the following:
- Touch or hold your baby often.
- Talk to him or her.
- Spend time face-to-face, making eye contact.
- Generally respond quickly to fussiness or crying.
The child needs so much sleep because it is entirely sense organ. It could not otherwise endure the dazzle and noise of the outer world. Just as the eye must shut itself against the dazzling sunlight, so must this sense-organ, the child— for the child is entirely sense-organ—shut itself off against the world, so must it sleep a great deal. For whenever it is confronted with the world, it has to observe. (6)
By remembering the sensitivity and needs of the newborn, you will gain confidence that you are providing your baby with the best possible start in life.
The Sense of Touch
Your baby is perhaps most sensitive to touch, the skin being our largest sense organ. The entire birth process is like a massage for the baby, stimulating her skin senses and getting her ready to breathe. The cold air hitting her skin at birth gives the baby her first strong dose of body definition, of inner and outer. This is in contrast to life in the womb, which is like being immersed in a warm bath.
Your baby's sensitive skin, which previously has only known water, will now be exposed to all of the elements of ordinary life. No wonder babies are so prone to rashes—it's quite an adjustment. Touch remains vital throughout your baby's life, and it's a pity that so many of the givens of modern child rearing, such as baby seats and strollers, serve to distance parents and their children and insulate the child from life-giving touch. Although babies need to be safely belted into infant seats in the car, holding and carrying your baby in your arms at other times is better for both of you. But how will you ever get anything done? Here is where the various types of slings and soft front carriers come to the res cue by leaving your (or your partner's) hands free for other tasks. However, a word of caution is necessary. Using vertical carriers before a baby can hold his head erect can place undue strain on the central nervous system, while using a sling that keeps the baby curled up too tightly or blocks all fresh air can limit free breathing. One of the best resources on selecting and using a baby carrier safely is still available as a reprint from Mothering magazine at www.mothering.com. (7)
Returning to the sense of touch, it is helpful to think about what kinds of materials you want to have touching your baby's skin and to choose fabrics that are soft, warming, and pleasurable against the skin. Natural fibers are especially beneficial because they breathe. If some kinds of synthetics make your skin crawl or make you feel as if you're sealed in an airtight container, consider that the effect is magnified for your baby. Not only do cotton, silk, and wool allow air to flow through the fibers, but wool also wicks moisture away from the skin and keeps your baby drier than other fabrics. Hospitals have found that premature babies gain weight faster when they are placed on wool sheets, but no one knows why. (8) Steiner would say that natural fibers can actually contribute to the body's vital energy, whereas some synthetics rob the body of energy.
The Sense of Sight
Your baby's sense of sight expands from the newborn's short focus from breast to mother's eyes to gradually take in more with each passing month. Your baby's security increases when the space he is in is small, like his depth of vision. This is one reason why your baby may sleep better in a small bassinet than in a large crib and why many cultures all over the world have a version of a cradle or Moses basket so the baby can sleep safely by the mother's side as she works.
Mothers all over the world tuck their babies into bed with them at night when they are small, and certainly while they are nursing. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out against "co-sleeping" because a small number of babies died in a given year, but they didn't report whether either partner had consumed alcohol or taken sleeping medications or any other drugs that increase drowsiness. Waterbeds obviously are not safe for co-sleeping. The benefits of sleeping with your baby include increased attachment and nighttime security for the baby. And it is certainly easier to nurse a baby in bed than to get up, go to another room and get the baby, and then sit up in a rocking chair before getting up yet again to return the baby to his or her bed. Some researchers feel that sleeping in close proximity with your baby helps regulate her breathing and decreases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS or crib death), which is also decreased if you put your baby to sleep on her back instead of her tummy. It's something you need to decide, and www.mothering.com is, once again, a valuable source of information.
One of the advantages of having a bassinet or hooded basket for your newborn is that it provides a small, enclosed space for naps during the day—and it gives you room to stretch out or be with your partner without waking the little one. An innovative compromise that offers the best of both worlds is the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper, a three-sided bassinet that attaches to the side of your bed. Your baby is safely tucked in next to you, where she can still hear your breathing and feel your presence. The lack of a wall between your mattress and the baby's mattress makes it easy to reach your baby for reassuring or for nursing.
In the early weeks, bassinets may be draped with colored silk to filter the light reaching the baby. A combination of blue and pink or rose silk provides an especially soft light, and such pieces are available from several online sources. Having a special blanket made of natural cotton or silk can help build up associations with sleep over the months and then can help your older baby settle into sleep when she is tired at night or at nap time. The sleepwear and the bed, together with the baby's skin, can be thought of as three "sheaths" that protect the baby in his or her contact with the outside world.
Is it necessary to take such care with a newborn? Certainly not in the sense of survival. Babies are hardy creatures and can even survive the fluorescent lights and Muzak in the preemie nursery. But it is helpful for us to be aware of how completely open to outside influences a baby is. Burton
White, in The First Years of Life, states that the baby in the first six weeks "is generally unusually sensitive ... It is perfectly normal for an infant to startle and cry at any abrupt change in stimulation during her first weeks of life. Such common reactions include a response to sharp nearby noises, or to jolts to the crib or bassinet, or to any rather sudden change in position, particularly when the baby has been inactive. A second, less dramatic indication of sensitivity at this age is the infant's avoidance of bright lights. A Phase 1 infant (Birth to six weeks) will keep his eyes tightly shut in a brightly lit room or when outside in the sun. In fact, he is more likely to open his eyes and keep them open in a dimly lit room than in one at an ordinary level of illumination." (9)
The Sense of Hearing
Just as bright lights cause a baby to close down, loud noises will cause your baby to throw her arms and legs up in the startle reflex and begin to cry. Although you'll want to avoid slamming the door or dropping things near your baby, this doesn't mean that you need to tiptoe around the house all the time. Your baby should become used to the natural sounds of your household and will learn to sleep through most of them.
It is good to focus on the quality of the sounds that reach your baby's ears. One measure of quality is loudness; another is harmony and rhythm. One of the most pleasing sounds to your baby is your voice. Not only does she start to recognize your voice and your partner's, but if you hum or sing, she will be especially soothed. Many parents like to make up a little song for their baby that they start singing when pregnant; they have reported that the baby pays attention and is soothed by the song and seems to recognize it, even right after birth. You don't need to be a talented musician to Sing to your children—even someone tone deaf can hum! Getting into the habit of singing will help your child's language development and sense for music and rhythm, and it's a delightful way to share together.
The quality of aliveness that comes through the human voice when you sing to your baby is very different from a recording of soothing music for babies, or even one of your own singing. There is a nurturing quality in things that come from living sources that disappears when they are transferred to a recording. Children, especially, have come into this life to be alive and to grow. That which comes directly from a living source connects them with life on earth and the forces of growth, while that which is mechanical is further removed from them. Devices now on the market that simulate the noise of a car going fifty-five miles per hour may drive your baby to sleep, but what an affront to a newborn's senses! Similarly, white noise machines or creating a hum with a fan at nap time doesn't do your baby any favors.
It's obvious that your baby's experience is totally different when you or your partner sing to her (however ineptly) from when a CD player is the source of the sounds. Not only is the experience of a real person's presence missing with recorded music, radio, and television, but the quality of the sound is also different, regardless of the quality of the sound system. Steiner said that the quality of the sound from mechanical sources had a detrimental effect on the young child, both on the developing sensitivity of the ear and on the entire organism, because everything from each sense affects the entire body. (10) This is not so much the case with a child over the age of seven. Paying attention to the quality of the sounds your baby hears can only be beneficial.
The Sense of Warmth
A sense of warmth is especially important for your baby because her ability to regulate her body temperature is not yet fully mature. Also, an infant's head is so large in proportion to the rest of her body that the potential for heat loss is tremendous. Any outdoor person will tell you, "If your feet are cold, put on a hat," because so much of the body's heat is lost through the head. Many hospitals are beginning to put stockinette caps on babies in the nurseries, and it is a good idea to keep your baby's head covered throughout the first year. The baby's brain grows as much in the first year as it does throughout the rest of life, and for this process it is good to keep the head warm and protected.
A baby hat not only prevents heat loss but also keeps the fontanels covered. The fontanels are the "soft spots" in the baby/s skull. The one toward the back of the head is harder to feel, but the one toward the front can take up to eighteen months to close. During this time the brain and central nervous system are just beneath the scalp instead of being under the bony layer of the skull. The fontanels should neither be bulging nor sunken when your baby is at rest (although they will bulge when she cries). Many parents have found that putting a hat on their baby has a calming effect when they are out in the world, for it seems to keep the baby more insulated from outside influences. I recommend fitted hats over the stretchy stockinette variety, because stockinette caps fit poorly and always tend to ride up and need pulling down. This can be irritating to the newborn—perhaps too much like the birth process she has just come through!
The sense of warmth is very important throughout early childhood, and it is important to keep babies and toddlers warm and protected from drafts so their energy can go into development instead of into maintaining their body temperature. You can't judge whether a child is warm enough by how you are feeling, or by what a verbal child will tell you. A better guide is whether or not the child's hands and feet are warm.
Don't let your baby get overheated, but it is important to keep all the organs warm, especially the organs of digestion. This is why formula has to be warmed to body temperature and why traditional remedies for colic often involve warm wraps on the stomach. It is also why babies should always wear an undershirt or onesie (usually in addition to other clothing). Traditional mothers in warm climates always keep their babies covered, to protect them from the heat of the sun and to protect them from drafts. In our culture we need to be especially careful when taking the baby into air-conditioned rooms to provide a blanket or clothing to cover the baby's skin and prevent her body warmth from dissipating.
The Importance of the Environment
During the first six weeks, your baby needs to adjust to earthly life gradually and to get her digestive system functioning smoothly. Because she sleeps so much and her perceptual abilities are so limited, any kind of "enriched environment" will be wasted on the infant. Be skeptical of commercial and media hype regarding the needs of the newborn.
If an "enriched environment" is wasted on your baby, an aesthetic one is not. Creating a feeling of calm in the room (and in the mother) communicates to the baby and helps with sleep, digestion, and peacefulness. Most of the commercial items for babies are expensive and unnecessary. If you do have the luxury of decorating the nursery, avoid garish wallpaper and cartoon characters. Greens, browns, and grays are also much more "earthy?' than the infant or young child, who is still closely connected to heaven and doesn't yet walk firmly on the ground. The rose-pink-blue environment created by putting silks over the cradle or crib is especially soothing for young babies, and a color Steiner called "peach blossom" is especially suited to young children. Looking at the space in which your baby sleeps with attention and reverence adds those qualities to the environment. Adding a little table with fresh flowers, some photos or art reproduction, and some objects from nature like a pretty rock or shell can remind you of your own still center in the midst of all the demands of caring for a new baby.
Steiner suggested that many paintings by Raphael express higher truths, and he especially recommended that pregnant women contemplate Raphael's Sistine Madonna, which is also wonderful to have in a young child's room (note the faces of the unborn children in the clouds surrounding Mary). Meditating on this picture can reveal many things to the mother about both the nature of the eternal feminine and the incarnation process. About this particular painting Steiner said, "The painting of the Madonna with the child is the symbol of the eternal spirituality in people which comes certainly to the earth from beyond. Yet, this painting, through parted clouds, has everything that can only arise or proceed from the earthly." (11)
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING WITH A NEWBORN?
Being with a newborn is sublime on the one hand and often shocking on the other—at least the first time around. On the sublime side, I have frequently walked into a room where a newborn is sleeping and marveled that anyone so small could fill the entire room. The poet William Wordsworth described a similar phenomenon:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
But trailing clouds of Glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
On the other hand, I can still remember how difficult the first week was when I was a first-time mother. Having just given birth, you are wide open emotionally and physically. Hormones, starting to breastfeed, interrupted sleep, and roller-coaster emotions put a woman much more in touch with the beauty, vulnerability, and overwhelming aspects of life. Being a new mother or a new father involves a change in being, a stretching of who we are to take on the responsibility and the twenty-four-hour-a-day care of another human being, who (for a while at least) is completely dependent on us.
Most parents agree that the first six weeks are the hardest. Even after you recover from the birth itself, you will probably find the complete lack of rhythm doesn't give you any support. Life gets easier after these first six weeks, so if you can stay in communication with your partner during this transition time and have the sense that you are holding hands as you go under together, you will come back up together as well. It is easier with subsequent children because everything is more familiar. However, a second or third baby can be surprising in the amount of work he or she adds to a system where parents may already feel pressed for time. The key is getting adequate help so you can relax into what is happening and give up on things that aren't as essential, like cleaning the house yourself. Single parents, especially, need to arrange adequate support in advance.
Being with a baby involves doing a lot of repetitive things (diapering, nursing, washing clothes) that can look like nothing because they seem to involve maintenance rather than creative development. So when your partner comes home from work and asks, "What did you do today, dear?" you may think about it and burst into tears. I found I could accomplish one thing (one task in the world outside the baby) each day, if I was lucky, during the first two months. For someone who was used to being active and effective, that was a real shock.
How can this period of transition after the birth be made easier for parents? The most important thing is to get adequate help. This may mean having a relative come stay with you, hiring someone to come in and straighten up the house (postpartum doula support services are becoming more common, thank goodness), or going online to organize a care circle of friends to drop off a casserole or do a half hour of whatever is needed every afternoon during the first week or so.
To the extent you feel that you can relax and just be with your baby, you'll be more at peace. This may involve making sure that all other responsibilities are handled and that all deadlines fall well before your due date, or it may mean giving up on cleaning the house for a while. When we finally surfaced about five days after the birth of our first child, every plant in the house was withered, and we were sad!
The first six weeks are a very special time to be together as a family, to just be present with your new baby, adjust to the changes in your life, and regain your strength and bearings. If you can honor the magnitude of the event, arrange for some help, and schedule few or no other activities, you may find your adjustment much less rocky. Allow yourself to be nourished by the wonderful energy that surrounds a newborn.
The energy of creation that is present at a birth is very powerful and holy. This is true at every birth, but it is more accessible if this energy is acknowledged and protected. Because babies are so close to the spiritual world, they call forth love and giving from all sorts of people—some of whom you won't have heard from in years. Learn to receive, to let people do things for you, to say thank you. Use the time to practice doing nothing, to just be centered in the heart or in your breath. If you have other children, you will be especially busy after the birth. See if you can find brief moments to just sit and watch the baby sleeping. Such moments nourish you for the constant demands of mothering. Try to take advantage of the connection to the spirit that your baby has and to which you are still open in the postpartum period. Life will return to a new "normal" soon enough.
WHAT IS IT LIKE FROM MONTHS TWO TO TWELVE?
Once you've emerged from the fog of the postpartum period and just when you think you've figured it out, your baby will have moved on to something new! Babies change so rapidly in the first year that you may always feel as if you're scrambling to keep up. This can make what might seem mundane—tending to your baby's physical needs for food, cleanliness, sleep, and touch—more challenging than you ever imagined. But don't undervalue the care you as parents provide, for the infant is being shaped by her relationship with both you and the environment. Parents' feelings and interactions have an impact different from that received in even quality child care. With more and more parents putting the baby in full-time child care at six weeks to return to their careers, we appeal to mothers and fathers to be with their child as much as possible in at least the first year of life! With the possible exception of your baby/s grandmother, in your own home, no one can provide the calm environment and loving attention that the mother or father provides. The idea of "quality time" does not apply to an infant. She needs the constant proximity, the breastfeeding, the carrying, the being in a carrier or on the floor next to you while you do something.
No other mammal is born as helpless as the human being, and no other has such potential for development. In many ways a baby is not "read)/' to be born when compared with other mammals, and yet it must be born after nine months' gestation or the head will become too large and calcified to fit through the mother's pelvis. But the baby's needs for being close to the mother's body do not stop at birth; they continue throughout the first year and longer. Most non-industrialized societies practice some form of "marsupial mothering," with mothers carrying the baby in constant contact with the body up to the age of nine months—almost like a second gestational period. At that time there is a noticeable change as the baby becomes much more interested in the surrounding world, reaches for table foods, and is able to crawl and then walk on her own.
A different approach from the "in arms" mothering described above was articulated by Dr. Emmi Pikler, one of the leading European doctors who studied and worked with infants. She worked in a children's home in Hungary (where there weren't any mothers), and her work was developed in North America by Magda Gerber under the name Resources for Infant Educarers, or RIE. Helle Heckmann, who runs a Waldorf-inspired child care center in Denmark, says of Pikler,
Through her observation of children, she was able to show the importance of confidence and self-reliance as well as the belief in "being able to," as fundamental to the child's development into a confident adult. By reinforcing the child's confidence in her physical capabilities, and by respecting each child's individual developmental path, we as caregivers and educators can meet the needs of the young child. Emmi Pikler has given me the courage to work with children in a respectful way. (12)
Heckmann translates that into her approach with infants and describes it as follows:
There is no doubt that the infant thrives in love. Countless studies of the development of infants have shown that love and care are vital. But caring should not be mistaken for reaction and constant supervision. Show care and affection in situations when it is natural, such as eating and nursing, when it is natural to create a you-and-I situation, when it is natural to nurse, sing, chat, and get to know each other. The rest of the time it is important to leave the infant in peace and quiet to sleep or, when awake, to get to know herself without constant intervention from her surroundings. Often it is very difficult to show the infant this respect and leave her alone. Constantly satisfying our own need for reassurance and your need to look at your beautiful baby will often influence the infant's ability to be content with herself. Too many disturbances quickly lead to dependence on constant attention from the surroundings, and a vicious cycle of bad habits is created. By giving the infant peace and quiet for the first months of her life, she will get used to her physical life. (13)
Proponents of both attachment parenting and Pikler's more hands-off approach each have numerous arguments on their side. Parents and caregivers in both groups are caring, concerned, and consistent, and— when they are in touch with the being and the real needs of the child— both get good results, or what White would call "great kids." But when they fall off the tightrope, the former tend to err on the side of "smother love" or letting the child totally run the circus, while the latter tend to err on the side of rigidity or distance.
Steiner always encouraged people not to accept things by rote or on faith, but to test ideas for themselves. The key, as I see it, is not to follow any "system" or "expert" to the detriment of your child. Try to inform yourself, and ask, "What does the child need in this situation for his or her best development?" Use your head, listen to your heart, and make your best decisions based on what you perceive your child's needs to be and what you are able to provide in each situation. And then, if possible, evaluate what happened and grow from what you learned.
Although we have spent a great deal of time discussing different approaches to mothering, let's not forget fathers! The father's ever expanding relationship with the baby also contributes greatly to the child's growth and development. This relationship can begin during pregnancy, as the father takes time to be in touch with the developing body and being of his child. In experiencing the birth with his wife, he finds his love and connection with this child strengthening dramatically. By sharing the care of the baby and seeing her grow, the father's relationship deepens, so that he finds other times and ways to be with the baby, especially if she is being breastfed. As the baby develops and is increasingly able to respond with smiles and play, the relationship of father and child deepens. In addition to the special love and protection a father can provide for his baby and his wife, there are many ways in which he can interact with his baby during the first year. Fathering is of benefit not only to the baby but also to the man, who allows the nurturing aspect of his personality to develop. Mothers enjoy seeing their husbands interact with the baby; in fact, studies have shown that marital satisfaction for women with children is connected with seeing their husbands active as a father. (14)
Here we will present no recipes for producing a "super baby." In fact, what most new parents need is confidence that they themselves are important and can provide the best possible care for their babies. However, based on an increasing knowledge of child development and the gradual nature of the incarnation process, certain principles and activities can be especially helpful for you and your baby.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
As we have seen, all babies go through a normal sequence of development that involves assuming control of the body. The differences in the developmental rates of individual babies have more to do with timing than with the order in which skills develop. Freedom to move the arms and legs ensures that muscles will strengthen and that processes such as language and cognitive development, which are related to physical movement, will unfold appropriately. If you are having serious questions about your baby's development, check with your family doctor or a specialist to reassure yourself that your baby is developing normally. This is especially true if you suspect a hearing problem or if your baby has frequent ear infections. So much of learning depends on good hearing!
Your baby does not need baby exercise courses or other fancy stimulation to develop well. Expensive infant stimulation and home exercise kits are a waste of money and make the false assumption that we know better than the baby which muscles she should move. You can have all the benefits of positive interaction with your baby without spending the money simply by enjoying being with your child and rolling around on the floor together. If you are doing something because it feels good in the moment (massaging your baby or watching him grab at something), then you are interacting positively. But if you are doing it for results (so he'll be serene when he grows up or will walk sooner), then you are out of the present moment and have fallen prey to the media hype that tells us we should help our children progress faster. The most important thing you can do in the first year is to provide a calm and loving environment for your baby so that she can grow and develop according to her own inner unfolding.
Your baby needs very little to play with in the first few months because her main task is to become accustomed to her body and develop her muscles (and hence her brain) through natural movements. Although your baby is still primarily a horizontal being, you can delight her with a mobile in which the objects are horizontal and thus visible to the baby (remember that what is visible to you is seen as a narrow edge by the baby in the crib).
Crib toys should not produce loud noises or flashing lights. It is important for safety to remove hanging crib toys when your baby seems nearly able to pull herself up to a sitting position.
Before a baby can sit up, it is good to have her near you on a blanket on the floor. Babies don't object to being on their backs or on their stomachs instead of sitting. Our culture is visually oriented, and we think that babies always need to be sitting up in molded infant seats when they are awake. Some researchers on developmental learning disabilities feel that babies should not be propped up into a sitting position by infant seats but should be given the opportunity to achieve the sitting position entirely unaided. (15) It is a question of not jumping ahead of the normal progression of development.
Once your baby can sit up, you'll find she loves to play with small objects, which are important in the development of physical coordination and intelligence. Especially valuable are toys and small objects that can be banged, thrown, or dropped. Think of things you already have that she will find fascinating. (Remember that everything ends up in the mouth, and small pieces that can break off are dangerous. Anything smaller than 1 1/2 inches in any dimension could get stuck in a baby's throat.) A wooden spoon, a beautiful shell, a cloth ball, and a small dried gourd can be favorites. Your kitchen is full of wonderful "toys"—measuring spoons, pots and lids, nesting bowls. The wooden rattle, of which the infant was unaware and which the three-month-old would hold or drop indiscriminately, gradually becomes interesting for its texture and sounds. Several sources of natural toys are listed at the end of this chapter. Although there is nothing wrong with chrome and plastic, it seems appropriate to honor the natural connection that young children have with the living world.
The playpen, which has fallen out of use, is another invention that doesn't take into account the real developmental needs of the child. Until the baby crawls, a blanket on the floor serves just as well, and a basket for toys can be handy for picking things up when the baby takes a nap. Once the baby starts to crawl, playpens are a real barrier to development.
When Your Baby Starts to Crawl
From a parent's point of view, development seems to go in phases. First everything is all right, then it's fairly difficult, then all is well again, and so on. Joseph Chilton Pearce, in Magical Child, speaks about each developmental step being preceded by a return to the matrix (structure, safety, mother) and then followed by a voyage out into the world to find new experiences and exercise new abilities. (16) The expansion and contraction is like breathing, and it is important for development that times of regression (inwardness or clinging behavior) be understood not as backsliding but as preparation for the next surge forward toward independence.
One such "regression" often happens just before a baby starts to crawl. You might find yourself carrying around this heavy child much of the time and wondering, "When will it ever change?" Then suddenly it does, and your baby is off, having mastered the first means of getting around on his own. Parenting changes with this event, because your baby is suddenly into everything. Planning ahead can save you a lot of grief and make this an exciting time in your lives.
Sometime before your baby starts to crawl, you will need to baby-proof your home, making it safe for and from the baby. Starting with the kitchen, where your baby will probably spend the most time, make sure that all poisonous and dangerous items are out of reach and put simple toddler locks on cupboards that you don't want the baby to get into. You should also check for unstable objects, such as a small table or a potted plant. Stairs pose a special risk of falling, but babies love stairs. An invaluable suggestion from White is to place the child guard gate about three steps up instead of at the bottom of your staircase. This gives your baby a place to practice climbing without the risk of getting hurt.
Making your home a safe place for the baby is one of the best things you can do to aid your child's development. The objects in your home provide wonderful stimulation for her, and you won't have to say "no" all the time. It is much better to let your baby roam than to keep her in a playpen, because babies need to crawl, need changing stimulation, and need to be around you. In his observations of families where children developed beautifully, White found that parents had made their homes safe and open to children rather than keeping them caged in playpens, where they rapidly became bored. He states, "It is my view that to bore a child on a daily basis by the regular use of a playpen for extended periods is a very poor childrearing practice. The same principle applies to the use of cribs, jump seats, high chairs and other restrictive devices" when they are used to limit a child's movement for long periods every day. (17)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
During the first year of life, the weight of your baby's brain can actually double. Brain cells, which become stimulated by picking up and relaying messages, develop new dendrite spines, and these neural pathways become myelinated, or insulated to make the pathway that has been created operate more accurately and faster. Your baby is learning constantly through her physical activities. As movements become more coordinated and are repeated hundreds of times each day, your baby learns eye-hand coordination and how to grasp something she sees. According to both Piaget and Steiner, these things that seem like the foundation of physical development are also the foundation for later intellectual development.
Between the ages of six and eight months a baby's interests usually change from her own motor skills to the world around her, and memory starts to develop. Interest in dropping, banging, and throwing small objects starts to teach the baby about cause and effect and temporal sequence, important foundations for later thinking. For example, the seven-month-old will repeatedly drop a spoon or toy from a high chair and watch where it goes. Toys that involve performing one action that causes another part to move are also favorites for a child of this age.
Understanding the gradual development of memory is also important when considering the growth of intelligence. Jane Healy concludes from her research in developmental neuropsychology:
A child's first months lay the groundwork for paying attention, taking in bits of information to each of the senses, and practicing with body movements. During this "sensorimotor" period, the brain is not ready to deal with much beyond immediate physical experience. Around eight or nine months of age, the prefrontal cortex begins its long march toward maturity, and the child starts to use memory to link past and present experience: "Oops! Here comes the sitter—time to cry!" (18)
As the prefrontal cortex starts to develop, short-term memory and "object permanence" start to develop in the baby. A baby sitting in her high chair and dropping her spoon for the tenth time is not doing it to annoy you. Rather, she is observing the wonderful phenomenon we call gravity and playing with the idea of appearance and disappearance (which makes peek-a-boo a favorite game). In this play we can see a metaphor for the coming in and out of existence or manifestation that the baby is exploring by its very being. There is as yet no memory to give an object permanence; mother disappears and reappears as suddenly as the baby itself appeared in the physical world.
Babies around six to eight months of age also love to bang things and explore sounds. Having a cupboard in the kitchen that is the baby/s (and putting child locks on the others) can be a real blessing. While you're busy, your baby can be occupied swinging the door, banging the pot with the wooden spoon, stacking the unbreakable bowls, or rattling the taped container with rice inside.
It is pointless to address a baby's learning ability in an abstract fashion from birth until eight months of age, because all babies go through the normal pattern of development unless they are abused or disabled. Jane Healy concluded from her study of developmental neuropsychology, "Your overall goal should be not to 'teach' your baby but to help her discover how to organize experience for herself Babies come equipped with the 'need to know'; our job is to give them love, acceptance, and the raw material of appropriate stimulation at each level of development. Your own common sense, augmented by current knowledge, is the best guide." (19)
However, the current pressure for early academic achievement and the American maxim that "faster is better" have clouded common sense when it comes to activities like teaching babies to read. Healy points out that even though babies can be taught to read words with enough condition-response training, they are not reading for meaning and are using a lower part of their brain, simply because the parts of the brain that should be used in reading are not yet developed. Such activities risk your baby developing habits that are hard to undo later (see chapter 11 for more reasons not to push academics onto younger and younger children). Let your baby be a baby. Play with her through language and movement and enjoy one another!
At this stage it is impossible to separate physical development and the development of intelligence, but one is not predictive of the other. In other words, a child who crawls at six months and walks at eight is not more intelligent or highly developed than a child who crawls at ten months and walks at fourteen. What is important for the development of intelligence is that the motions are gone through in each stage; the timetable is usually just a question of individual differences within the wide range of normal. Researchers have been unable to find dramatic evidence of poor development in the first year in children who do poorly later, probably because they have not yet developed the deficit. (20) In other words, most parents manage to provide all that is needed for their baby's development in the first year. So relax, enjoy, and put your attention on the spheres that are more open to parental input during the first eight months.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A baby's sense of well-being depends on having her needs for love, warmth, touch, and food met. Emotional development is based on the love, trust, and touch experienced in the baby's first relationships within the family.
When you respond promptly to your baby's cries, she learns that the world is a friendly place and that your love and protection surround her. Parents who follow their instincts know this, and it's nice to find psychologists now stating that you can't spoil a young baby. Unfortunately, however, mothers are still likely to hear grandparents or perhaps even their husbands comment that they are spoiling the baby, or even that it's good for babies to cry. Surrounding your baby with love, warmth, and touch provides a secure foundation for later life that is almost impossible to make up for if it has been lacking.
Researchers have observed that babies usually cry only in response to discomfort until around four or five months of age. At that age a new kind of intentional behavior can be seen for the first time: crying so that an adult will pick them up and cuddle them. In other words, the baby has learned, through successfully having her physical needs met, that she can also cry for attention. It is important that she have confidence that an adult will come when she calls and that a pleasant experience results. This contrasts with babies in institutions, who learn that their cries won't bring a response, and as a result don't exhibit this new intentional behavior of attracting the attention of adults. Most professionals would rather see a baby between three and six months cry too much for attention than cry too little and risk receiving inadequate attention during the first few months of life. (21) Beginning to distinguish between the two types of cries is a valuable skill to develop. Because babies have neither reason nor a sense of time, you can't tell the child to wait or to stop crying. Many mothers and fathers find this a difficult time in their parenting that would be easier if we had more adults around!
During the months before your baby learns to crawl (perhaps between six and eight months), your baby may become demanding. She can see everything and wants to experience it, but she can't get to it. This driving force to crawl and walk is appropriate, but it can result in a baby who requires frequent changes of scenery, adult input, or carrying to avoid complaining. White, in his quest to find out what creates a pleasant, unspoiled three-year-old, as well as a bright one, has traced the origins of "spoiling" back to those parents who fall into a pattern of constantly responding to their six- or seven-month-old's cry for attention. "If you find that you are picking up your child and playing with her seven or eight times an hour for six or seven hours a day, you are probably moving into a pattern that will cause you some grief fairly soon," White states. (22)
I found this statement interesting because White is a sensible observer, and he must have noticed some sort of correlation. I pondered this observation for many years, because I couldn't figure out how he could suggest that you should ignore your baby's call for attention. I realized that if there is a potential problem, it must lie in the fact that one's circumstances have created a whiny baby who wants to be picked up six or eight times an hour. One of the ways to avoid this pattern is to involve your baby in your life. For example, parents with one or two other young children don't have this problem as often—they haven't the time. Also, the siblings provide interaction for the baby, so attention needn't always come from the parents.
It seems that White was observing the problems created when the baby becomes the center of attention instead of an observer of and a participant in family life. Ignoring your baby and letting her cry it out is not what he is recommending! Rather, he is suggesting that you realize that your baby is born into your family and needs to find his or her place there. You must find the middle ground between letting the baby become the center of the universe, and thus jumping to fulfill her every whim, and ignoring her out of some mistaken belief that you will spoil her.
It seems to me that two problems arise. The one we have just discussed seems to be solved by asking the question, "How can I be in empathetic connection with my baby and perceive what she needs in this moment?" The other seems to involve the problem discussed in the previous chapter, that modern life does not support what young children need and hence leads to problems of babies not being able to observe their mothers doing "real work" around the house. With the industrial revolution and the move to the cities, labor-saving devices not only changed the nature of home life but also created families in which women were isolated from other members of their families—indeed, from other adults altogether. So another way to avoid the babfs learning to whine louder and louder to get mother's attention is to have other adults about. Our culture, with its lack of extended family, puts a real strain on the mother. Earlier I mentioned a friend of mine who realized this truth from her experiences in Mexico (page 29). How much you hold and carry your baby can have an effect on him, but it also needs to be balanced with your own needs and emotional well-being.
The larger question with regard to many of the difficulties parents encounter has to be, "How can we overcome our isolation and find or recreate community?" Raising young children in isolation can be crazy making—I'm convinced it was never meant to happen. Everyone nods with a certain recognition that "it takes a village to raise a child," so how did we end up where we are today?
Two historical forces have served to isolate women and their mothering. The first was the pioneering impulse to strike out for the frontier, and the second was the migration to the cities. Although it was tremendously difficult for pioneer women to be separated from their community of women, life was so hard that children had to be incorporated into the process of helping the family survive, and rural life was at least healthier than conditions in the overcrowded tenements or factories. But with the dominance of city life, the isolation of mothers has continued and intensified as we have become increasingly mobile and tend to live far from all our family members.
If you find yourself home alone with your baby and are not having the time of your life, you need to reach out and find a network of support. You owe it to your children, your mothering, and yourself. Some suggestions of groups you might join include La Leche League, mother-infant groups, playgroups, and religious groups. Put up signs in the natural foods co-op or start talking to other mothers in the park. They're probably either as isolated as you are or they've found something worth sharing.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
As was discussed in the previous chapter, the first year is a critical period during which babies learn the sounds of a language and develop an interest in communicating with others. The baby has been able to hear sounds from the fifth month inside the womb, but most of the sounds the baby heard came from within the mother's own body or from her internal vibrations as she spoke. Only near the end of pregnancy does the expanded uterus begin to conduct outside sounds with any clarity. Some "prenatal university/' advocates are trying to sell parents recorded messages or music with special earphones that attach to the mother's stomach to increase auditory pathways for future language or mathematical development. Just as Steiner says that you wouldn't want to stimulate the developing eye of the baby when it was in the womb, Jane Healy advises that "until we learn more about this topic it seems sensible to give the fetus a calm, stable start without an atmosphere of overstimulation or pressure. By all means talk and sing to your unborn child as you relax and rock, but reflect carefully before you start 'pushing' any type of learning." If you're still tempted by the hype associated with these items, she continues:
Overstimulating parents, however, should think twice about an experiment in which duck embryos were subjected to abnormally intense auditory stimulation (noise); after the ducks were born they failed to learn their mother's call and showed other signs of abnormal attention and development. When you are tempted to turn up the stereo, remind yourself that 'augmented sensory experience' is probably not good for human babies either. (23)
Infants show a preference for their mother's voice and start trying to understand and remember speech sounds soon after birth. Nothing can substitute for the love and attention you give your baby. When you talk to her while changing her diaper, for example, you are providing loving stimulation and a model for language development. At around four months your baby will turn and smile when you say her name. This is a stage called pre-language comprehension, because any name will work equally well, but regardless it is an exciting time. By eight months she will probably be responding to a few specific words, which usually include some variation of "mommy," "daddy," "baby," and "bye-bye," if English is the primary language in your home.
Babies prefer sounds that are high-pitched and respond especially well to the voice when it is rhythmical and melodic—hence the use of lullabies with babies throughout all cultures. Any time you hum or sing to your baby, you are doing her a wonderful service. Some parents worry that they "aren't musical," but everyone can hum, and songs can be extremely simple, involving only a few words and one or two notes. A simple musical instrument called a children's harp is very soothing at nap or bedtime and can also help parents bring the musical element to their young children. The harp is tuned in a special way, according to a pentatonic scale, so that anything you play sounds angelic—there are no wrong notes. Sources for the children's harp are listed at the end of this chapter, and music is discussed more in chapter 10.
TOYS FOR THE FIRST YEAR
American companies spent $2 billion on advertising to children in 1998, twenty times more than they did in 1988, and the amount has only gone up since then! Despite what Madison Avenue would like you to believe, your baby will develop quite healthily without your buying any toys in the first year. Helle Heckmann, director of the Danish child care center, Nøkken, states, "The infant has himself, and it is by observing himself and his limbs that the infant develops. That is why the infant should not be offered any toys." (24) However, every baby in America is going to have toys, so what principles can guide our selections?
What your baby needs is a balance of playing with objects, moving to develop physical skills, and interacting with people. Interaction can come through the daily care you give your baby—through breastfeeding or giving him a bottle (and, later, spoon feedings), and through changing and bathing her. Just make sure that you are attentive and aware of your baby as a human being during these times rather than treating her as an object or a chore that has to be accomplished. Talking and singing to your baby can lead to playing games as she becomes a little older. Babies love to play peek-a-boo after they are about six months old, delighting in the appearance and disappearance of themselves and the world. Simple movement games like "pat-a-cake" or "so big" also delight a one-year-old.
The following are the toys and equipment that I would recommend for babies in the first year:
- A rocking chair
- A children's harp, also called a kinderlyre
- An infant car seat (birth to nine months) and a child car seat (nine months on)
- A cloth sling for carrying young babies; a sling or backpack for older babies; a baby buggy or pram, if you can find one, and later a stroller for outdoor walks
- A crib gym (from six weeks until the baby is sitting)
- A stair gate placed on the third stair to allow for safe climbing practice (or you can construct three steps and a platform)
- A baby food grinder to prepare foods from your table for the baby (there's no need to give solid food before six months—and the food you make is fresh and salt- and sugar-free, unlike most processed baby foods)
- A large box or basket to keep toys in
- Several balls of various sizes, including a cloth or felt ball for the younger child (avoid foam balls, which can easily be pulled apart and eaten)
- Pots and pans (six to twelve months)
- Containers with lids and hinged boxes (seven to fifteen months) A box or basket with about a dozen safe objects (several large shells, pieces of driftwood, a pretty rock) with stiff pages
- Low four-wheeled toys that can be straddled (once your baby is walking)
- Water toys
The following items, however, are of questionable value:
- Pacifiers. After nursing is established, some babies still need to suck more than they need to eat, and a pacifier can be soothing during the first year of life, but its danger is that it replaces human interaction. Toddlers and older children who have a pacifier pinned to their clothing often have it stuck in their mouths just to keep them quiet.
- Props for bottles. Propping a bottle means that your baby is losing the love and attention that accompanies breastfeeding or bottlefeeding. Letting a baby fall asleep with a bottle in his mouth can result in serious tooth decay, because the juice or milk sits in the mouth and the sugars can encourage bacterial growth and "bottle mouth syndrome."
- Baby bouncer. This gets the baby vertical before she can stand, and the force of jumping can have a negative impact on the leg bones.
- Baby walker. Although babies love the mobility a baby walker allows them, it makes them vertical before they can stand and takes time away from crawling. It is also implicated in many accidents in the home.
- Playpen. Fortunately, Pack 'N Play and similar items are pretty much only used for sleeping these days. Better to babyproof your home than to confine your child!
- Swimming classes. Although these were formerly in vogue, many parents report having negative experiences with these classes and no real gains.
- Baby gymnastics. Your baby knows best how to move to develop! Gymnastics can be okay as an excuse to meet other parents if the children are just allowed to play, but it tends to be too stimulating and can place your baby or toddler at risk.
And, to conclude, these are some enjoyable activities to do with your baby that can help her natural development:
- Put an emphasis on touching, carrying, and skin-to-skin contact. Talk to your baby; focus on her as a person when you're caring for her.
- Hum and sing to your baby.
- Place a high value on contact with nature. Your baby will love to see the interplay of light and shadow when under a tree, and toddlers love sand and water play, indoors or out. However, avoid overexposure to bright sun.
- Recite nursery rhymes and play movement games, including peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, "This Big," "Hickory Dickory Dock," and "Where's Baby?"
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Various Approaches to Parenting
- The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff (Addison-Wesley). The classic discussion of attachment parenting. Or see www.askdrsears.com or www.attachmentparenting.org.
- LifeWays North America. Offers support for parents and child care providers through their LifeWays Early Childhood and Human Development Certification, a combination of part-time classes and guided work between sessions. See www.lifewaysnorthamerica.org.
- Mothering.com. Natural mothering and online community with reprints from twenty-five years of Mothering magazine.
- Mothering and Fathering: The Gender Differences in Child Rearing, by Tine Thevenin (Avery). Discusses the gender differences in parenting, both in society and in the home. Out of print, but worth finding online.
- Mothering with Soul, by Joan Salter (Hawthorn Press). A Waldorf mothering as special work.
- Nøkken: A Garden for Children, by Helle Heckmann (Waldorf Early Childhood Association). Learn more about Heckmann's insights and program in Denmark. Available from www.waldorfearlychildhood.org.
- Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE). Books, videos, training opportunities, and other information on the approach of Dr. Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber. See www.pikler.org and www.rie.org.
- Sophia's Hearth Family Center. Offers workshops and courses in New Hampshire for parents and professionals that combine principles from Waldorf and Pikler/RIE. At www.sophiashearth.org.
Things to Do with Your Baby
SONGS, FINGER PLAYS, AND LULLABIES
- Giving Love, Bringing Joy and other titles by Wilma Ellersiek (with accompanying CDs). Hand gesture games and lullabies in the mood of the fifth. Available from www.waldorfearlychildhood.org.
- Sing a Song with Baby and The Wonder of Lullabies, by Mary Schunemann. Songs, fingerplays, games, and lullabies, with accompanying CDs to help you learn them. By a consummate Waldorf songstress. Available from www.naturallyyoucansing.com.
SOURCES FOR TOYS
There are many online sources for toys for babies made from wood, wool, cotton, and other natural materials, including:
- A Toy Garden (www.atoygarden.com)
- Bella Luna Toys (www.bellalunatoys.com)
- Nova Natural (www.novanatural.com)
- Palumba (www.palumba.com)
SOURCES FOR CHILDREN'S HARPS
- Bella Luna Toys (www.bellalunatoys.com) offers several lines, including Song of the Sea and Choroi. Also look on their site for their video, "Introduction to the Pentatonic Lyre," for a demonstration of tuning and playing.
NOTES
- Sister MorningStar, "Welcoming Sophie," Midwifery Today 99 (Autumn 2011).
- Karl Konig, Eternal Childhood (N. Yorkshire, UK: Camphill Press, 1994), p. 33.
- Frederick Leboyer, Birth without Violence (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009 [1975]).
- Begley, "How to Build a Baby's Brain," pp. 30-31.
- Debra Rosenberg and Larry Reibstein, "Pots, Blocks & Socks," Newsweek Special Edition, Spring/Summer 1997, p. 34.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Ground of Education (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1947), p. 38,
- See www.mothering.com for the topic "babywearin' and reprints of "Babywearing 101" and other articles.
- Reported in Lancet 2 (1983), p. 1014.
- White, The First Three Years of Life, p. 19.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1965), p. 24.
- Rudolf Steiner in a lecture delivered January 30, 1913, and quoted in The Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Winter 1987, p. 15. For an inspiring description of one mother's work with this picture, see Joan Salter, Mothering with Soul (Gloucestershire, UK: Hawthorn Press, 1998), pp. 17—21.
- Helle Heckmann, Nøkken: A Garden for Children (Silver Spring, MD: Waldorf Early Childhood Association, 1998), p. 4.
- Ibid., p. 16.
- References quoted in Robert B. McCall, "Support Thy Wife," Parents, July 1987, pp. 168-69.
- See work by Audrey McAllen, available through the Remedial Research Group, 9200 Fair Oaks Blvd., Fair Oaks, California 95628.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977).
- White, The First Three Years of Life, p. 102.
- Healy, Your Child's Growing Mind, pp. 47—48.
- Ibid., pp. 29, 39.
- White, The First Three Years ofLife, p. 106.
- Ibid., 91.
- Ibid.
- Healy, Your Child's Growing Mind, p. 33.
- Heckmann, Nøkken, p. 18.