In observing young children one can see that they are attracted to movement with such keen enthusiasm that they cannot sit still,  but must move and imitate what they have seen.  In the “Pedagogical Value of the Knowledge of Man and the Cultural Value of Pedagogy” Rudolf Steiner shares that “the little child clings with his perceptions to gestures, movements, and motion before all else and that when he perceives any kind of motion he feels the inner urge to imitate it”.  In this uninhibited mood they are lost in their surroundings with complete devotion, reverence and awe for what they experience.

 When the environment is such that the child can be surrounded with movement worthy of imitation, this innately religious devotion is cultivated.  Unfortunately, the many handy devices of modern technology hardly provided opportunities for this native capacity.  Instead it is helpful to use the more old fashioned devices, for example brooms, rakes, shovels, egg beaters, etc. which provide movement worthy of imitation.  It is also most helpful for the child to see an adult who approaches their task with joy and enthusiasm.  Daily tasks become inspirational as one realizes that the child can fully experience immersion in reverence and spiritual devotion to the task in the mood of the movement and activity and that this is an antidote to the modern mood of pessimism and sarcasm in adolescence.  The child experiences movement as an innately religious experience. This can be cultivated by  telling stories of fairies and gnomes or events of your life  with gestures and movement imbued with meaning.  Children love the movement and activity that fathers often provide.

 These old fashioned tools also provide an antidote to the noise that modern devices make.  In the formative years a child’s sensory system becomes overwhelmed by such noise. The ear’s capacity to hear becomes coarsened and the perception of the “Music of the Spheres” in the natural tones of birds, the wind, moving water, etc. are lost.A  fixation on mechanical noises can develop with a hardening effect on the organs.  A quiet time of blessing or prayer is helpful  where the attitude and gesture of the reverent adult reveals their inner life and counteracts the coarsening tendency of modern sounds.

 In Waldorf parenting and education attention to the subtle details of cultivating soul and spiritual values is emphasized.  These experiences of religious devotion in the imitation of the environment and of reverence and awe deeply felt in simple events become a wellspring of vitality for their health and wellbeing in adulthood.

 Knowing this you can create a daily rhythm which embraces the child being involved in simple household activities.  For instance, when they are puttering about under your feet as you make breakfast,  they could be exploring the nature of the material world.  Thereby they are experiencing spirit in matter, a gift which they have brought with them

from their recent experiences before birth in the spiritual world.  Eventually, they will be so inspired and interested in your activity that they will clamor to participate.  At that stage find ways for them to “help”, such as cutting bananas with a butter knife or buttering the toast.  They are not only learning the wisdom inherent in practical activities and perceptual and fine motor skills, but they are also learning the value of service to the family.

While very young children may appear to use logic, their primary modes of learning are imitation and movement; that is the willing soul. Before you begin to speak begin the movement you wish them to imitate and make a general statement, not command, such as we are putting our shoes on now.” Better yet, sing it! This strengthens their willing soul. Young children respond more positively to statements, because questions illicit thinking, which is a part of the brain that needs the underpinning of sound movement skills to function more efficiently. Stories of similar situations from your childhood captivate children as they begin to form inner pictures of your words. Picture forming appeals to their sense of life.

Use gestures and begin the movement of putting on shoes as you tell the story.  Appeal to your child’s imagination.  If he/she likes trains, the engineer is putting on boots, because he/she has a big load to haul. Most choices should be made by the adult.  For example: in the winter, spring shoes are put away and the child is offered the tall snow boots or the blue ones. When a child makes choices their life force is used for mental activity, rather than to grow a healthy body. Then their sense of well being suffers & cooperation becomes difficult. Create the activity ahead of time. The shoes, jackets, etc., can be set out the night before. The form carries the function. Doing these activities the same time every day will help. The organs become healthier, thus the child’s sense of well being is nurtured. They are more cooperative when they experience rhythm.

 Your child is able to be cheerful and cooperative when they experience a bodily sense of well being. Think of yourself as the conductor. Children respond to a self confident parent by imitating confidence. Prepare yourself ahead of time by visualizing and planning how you will conduct the activity. Order, predictability and repetition cultivate confidence and well being. When your child feels a strong sense of life and self they will be  more respectful. Allow and encourage your child to do all they can do for themselves, gradually increasing their skill. Song and verses, which portray what they are doing help. Mastery also builds confidence. Activities can become games, time for fun and laughter. How high can the shoes jump once they are on? Use humor, change the subject or sing when a child becomes fixated. This helps switch to a different brain center, which allows the focus to shift from them being stuck on what they don’t want to getting the shoes on.

Tips:

• Focus on what you would like them to do, not what they should stop.  The positive focus creates neural pathways which are the basis for more positive behavior.
• Also, use positive reinforcement judiciously so they feel good about their accomplishment, but aren’t trying to people please.
• Occasionally raise the bar.  For example: wow, you can put your shoes on!  One of these days you’ll be able to tie them too.
• Be clear and consistent with boundaries. Be a great role model and forgive yourself.
• If things don’t go well, at the end of the day tell your child a story with a happy ending of the shoes being put on and going on a great adventure.  Thank the angels for the day and for the night.  Set the mood for the next day.
• Spend time with yourself considering what didn’t go well.  Maybe your child was hungry or overly tired.  Ponder how you could do it differently.  Plan and visualize your next day.

1.  Practice self-development and self-discipline.

2.  Develop observation, contemplation, and meditation skills to nurture your relationship to guiding Spiritual Beings.  Observe your child (hair, eyes, features, limbs, color, movements, smells, sounds, for example.)  The percepts that you notice become spiritual food for Angels and Higher Beings to give you intuition and inspiration about your child.

3.  You are your child’s destiny guide, they are your teacher.  What issues do they bring up from your childhood?  What family patterns?

4.  Practice presence of mind to be able to do what needs to be done. Presence models,  ” I love you enough to be here in relationship to you.”

5.  Allows your child to live in their stream of consciousness. Slow down.

6.  Create rhythm that allows stream to flow.

7.  Pay attention to the rhythms of sleeping and eating.  These have a great and lasting    effect on the child’s bodily constitution and sense of well being.

8. Allow for downtime and slow flow time, that allows family members to digest soul experiences.  Hang out together doing nothing but enjoy each other.

9. Nurture awareness of imitation so that you do what they can appropriately imitate. Allow them to participate in your daily life of tending the hearth and home.

10.  Do not do for them what they can do.

11.  Be active with your child in daily chores, nature, games, tumbling, gardening, and care for the hearth and home.  Allow them to participate in your life.  For a portion of the day do in their presence what they can do with you.  This fosters for the child a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose.

12. Cultivate the virtues of gratitude, wonder, awe and respect.  This nurtures health and wellbeing and supports a mood of self discipline.

13. Pay attention to the environment which affects their physical organism in building their physical body.  Simple and beautiful surroundings provide the most healthy influence.  Limit technology and media.

14.  Develop a strong visual imagination of your day with positivity, firmness and love.  Nurture joy and happiness in simplicity.  Review with yourself at the end of the day what did and did not work.

15.  Visualize challenging situations with your children and how you will react in the future.

16.  Consistency and predictability creates security.  Use “No” 10% of the time and modeling and redirection the other 90% of the time.  Realize that model imperative means that they will do what you do, not what you say, as they imitate who you are.

17.  Cultivate good habits and a strong will in the early years through imitation, repetition, delay of gratification and  not too many choices.

18.  Use simple communication with phrases and gestures.  Show and tell them what to do, and avoid dwelling on what not to do.  Make statements and minimize questions and choices, which tend to be confusing to the consciousness of a young child.  Their consciousness better relates to “ we” as they do not yet feel the awareness of separateness, of I and you.  Stories have a deep effect on the child and reasoning is confusing.  To cultivate reasonable children, model reasonable behavior that reflects well reasoned choices that are in alignment with your values and feelings.

19.  Minimize adult activities such as movies, museums, lectures, concerts, tours, etc.

20.  Examine your boundaries.  Boundaries are an expression of how your higher Ego establishes values and integrates thinking, feeling and willing.  Children need a firm, purposeful, kind and benevolent leader.  They need a sense that you are in charge, the captain of the ship.

21.  Children thrive in a flock where they can learn politeness, kindness, compassion, sharing, and helpfulness, harmonizing their will and tempering the self in relationship to others needs and desires.

22.  Children can become challenging when they learn new skills.  Time for you to evaluate your relationship with them.

23. At challenging times pick up clutter, clean, change the environment.  Go outside with them.

24.  Avoid bribery, such as if you do this then you will get….  Instead the carrot and motivation  are more helpful, for example, I’m hungry.  Let’s go get something to eat.”

25.  Make a heart/physical connection daily and your child will cooperate more willingly.  Use praise sparingly, but acknowledge and express gratitude for their help, thoughtfulness and abilities.

26.  Remember, you are their destiny guide on earth and they bring important new spiritual capacities and insights from their recent sojourn in the spiritual world.

27.  Hold the highest and best thoughts of your child and that is mainly what they will manifest.

The Spiritual Aspects of the Twelve Senses and Virtues to Cultivate as One Ages

These are the virtues one can cultivate regarding each of the Twelve Senses that Rudolf Steiner discussed. One can cultivate these before old age so that the challenges of aging are met gracefully and create a positivity around one that attracts a healthy environment and relationships.

Sight- Look inward, focus on inner vision of wisdom and justice of events of destiny, especially so called failures, reversals, misfortunes and accept as needed. Be grateful for all lessons learned, peacefully and without regret. Recognize destiny as a friend.

Hearing-Listen with soul, silently, selflessly with full attention and without criticism. Hear what’s being said behind the words, through nonverbal communication. Hear what things of nature and the world are saying. Children often cannot convey what they mean through the words.

Smell-Never turn up your nose or shun others. Instead smell with compassion and love. Sense the true essence of the other one, of their I Am.

Taste- Indulge not in insult but develop courtesy. Avoid criticism and judgment.

Touch- Overcome egotistic curiosity of touching for inquisitiveness, rather touch things and people with reverence. Play instruments and develop skill with handicrafts.

Warmth- Cultivate patience, great warmth of heart, an ardent soul and fiery spirit.

Balance- Focus on inner tranquility and equilibrium.

Sense of Life- Evenness of temper and service to others.

Speech- Sense divine power of the word and be courageous.

Thought- Avoid excessive talkativeness, be silent within and contemplative. Assimilate new ideas.

Sense of Ego of Others- Go beyond appearances/maya. Sense the divine Ego, I Am of the other. Consider the interest of the other as much as your own.

If age becomes a burden strive to be a light filled soul which aims to be a blessing, not a burden.

These thoughts come from the study of Citizens of the Cosmos by Beredene Jocelyn and The Fulfillment of Old Age by Norbert Glas, M.D.

Here’s a little free audio for you I recorded at a live Waldorf teacher workshop in March. Titled “Working With Boys“, this recording gives insight into the minds of boys and how parents and teachers can work with them to bring out the best in them. Total time for this audio is almost 3 hours…so take your time and enjoy.

Edit: The volume is a bit low, so you may need to turn your volume up a bit more than normal.

The predisposition to illness is determined by actions and attitudes of the last life. This life presents an opportunity to overcome issues with illness.  As an adult one may provide a model for children to imitate and heal an illness when practicing  the following principles:

• Enjoyment of work to produce warmth
• Elements of calm and order
• Positive attitude
• Overcome fears
• Love for humanity
• Trust in destiny
• Regular exercise
• Meditative practice
• Contemplation
• Process  feelings of the day each night
• Rhythm of activity and rest
• Cultivation of the virtues, reverence, wonder, gratitude, kindness, compassion, tolerance and, love, etc.

Immune suppressors are:

• Immunization
• Antibiotics and allopathic medicine
• Sugar and poor nutrition
• Media stress
• Not enough sleep
• Pollutants , including household and body care  products and perfume

Much of modern life depletes the Etheric( Life) Body, including the following:

• Intellectualism and  materialism
• Overstimulation and electricity
• Consumerism
• Artificial materials
• Allopathic medicine and antibiotics
• Hardening
• Media Conventional agriculture
• Pollutants and  materialistic chemistry

Antidotes:

• Imagination and  imitation for young and old
• Rhythm and repetition
• Spiritual life and festivals
• Natural materials
• Holistic medicine
• Play, nature and movement
• Organic and biodynamic food
• Ecological practices

Here’s a fun and informative talk I did titled Parental Guidance and Boundaries. Running time is 37:52.

A topic many parents have asked for help with is separation anxiety.

I believe that our thoughts and feelings have a great effect on children and that the following is helpful. Children thrive when they feel that an adult is lovingly in charge and models trust, confidence, kindness, caring and understanding with the underlying attitude,”I can handle this problem.”  They also benefit from the belief that they can be strong and courageous enough to overcome their fears.

Another helpful belief and reality is that there are Spiritual Beings, including the child’s own Angel, your Angel and Archangel Michael, here to protect and give courage. If your child needs help, call on these Beings. Language, such as, “I will always help and protect you and love and care for you and will be there to help you”, can support the transition. Generally speaking, our  joy and enthusiasm creates a mood where they can move out of the fearful state.

Another factor is that the world today is filled with an atmosphere of fear, worry, doubt and discordant beliefs. These do not align with the spiritual realities of our existence. The greatest assistance for you and your child is to cultivate your relationship to your Higher Being and then the Spiritual Beings can help  as they are very willing  to do. However, they will only help adults if we ask for assistance since they have great respect for freedom and individual initiative.

Children are very sensitive to the energies around them and so when parents have doubt and worry or concern that they not linger longer at drop off time, as fear is contagions amongst children. Most of the time the children and I go on to have a joyous day together with lots of humor and fun….so don’t worry!

We are a circle of love and support for the children and I look forward to our community learning and growing together.

In my life experience I have found that raising children is one of the most inspiring opportunities you may have for spiritual initiations.  Every child is a recent arrival with the latest news from the spiritual world and that gift lies within the being of this tiny individual who is a seed baby ready to grow and blossom.  Rudolf Steiner has shared that the angels were intimately involved with child rearing in earlier stages of   human consciousness . The necessary evolutionary development of our intellect has left us without the intuitions which the angelic world conveyed to us in times past to assist in parenting.  He also offers a pathway to develop these intuitions and reestablish a relationship to the angelic world to assist us in guiding the children.

This intuitive process begins to develop when we consider with an open mind that every child has come from the spiritual world and alternates between life on earth and life across the threshold. They are children of the creator,  gifted to us to love and cherish, to guide and learn with as they mature. A family is chosen by the soul and higher being, the I AM THAT I AM, with particular ancestral traits and possibilities for a constitutional body.  This provides  a vehicle offering the best options for developing and living a life which allows the destiny to unfold. Based on past life experiences  and the insights of  the higher being, these characteristics serve the evolutionary needs of the child’s soul and spirit.  The feelings and attitudes which the mother has about this unfolding miracle play a central role in the development of the child in the womb.   Awe and wonder, joy and serenity affect  the body chemistry of the Mother so that she can create a welcoming environment for the feelings and organs of the infant to develop in a healthy and life embracing way.

A dialogue can also begin with the child’s angel with a request to guide and assist one in creating an environment in the home which will support health and well being for your child, in a way co-parenting with the wisdom and insight higher beings can offer.

The relationship with the child has already begun as well.  Steiner shares in one of the volumes of “ Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies” that we have been together in the spiritual world before our birth and in  past lives, not necessarily as parent and child.  Thus a possibility exists that parents and children may evolve together.  With these thoughts in mind the child who is held in joy and wonder,  before and after birth, has a very different feeling than one who is surrounded with worry, fear or doubt about any aspect of childbirth and child rearing. This is an important aspect, for the child is affected a great deal by the feeling world of adults.  Of course, thoughts and actions have an impact, but it is the feelings the child perceives most strongly.

From birth, when the child’s perceptions are first experiencing physical earthly existence, the child is mainly connected to the parents and foremost the mother.  Steiner spoke of the dominant capacity of imitation in the young child and this is what is most prominent in the relationship. In the spiritual world the child experiences a deep feeling of devotion and brings this into the physical world in the expression of imitation. This is not the basic concept of imitation that I raise a hand, the child raises a hand. Rather, the young child’s imitation is one that is visceral and  all encompassing as the child  experiences not so much what you say or what you do, but instead who you are, your “Being”, which expresses itself in what you think, say, do and particularly what you feel.

The predominate mode of imitation in the child makes the parents the prominent role models for the child at the deepest and formational levels of the body and psyche as well as a guide for how to be in a physical body and function in the material world.  When the relationship develops with this understanding of the child’s experience one strives to be a role model worthy of imitation. This developmental and age appropriate understanding supports  the child’s sense of self in growing with a deeply felt experience of being understood and honored .Note that the emphasis is on striving, for we all learn a great deal from making errors and the child benefits from this as a model for being human.

In the future I hope to further explore imitation and the role of guidance as well as other aspects of parenting as I continue to develop the work with prenatal parents.

I am very happy to have people forward these blog articles on to other parents and request that you acknowledge where they originated and/or link to my website.☺

In Stargarden, my Waldorf Early Childhood Parenting Program, the morning  begins with the group of adults and children singing together:

 “Give Thanks to the Mother Earth, Give Thanks to the Father Sun, Give Thanks to the beautiful garden, Where the Mother and the Father are One,

 Give Thanks, give thanks, give thanks that we are One, Give thanks, give thanks, To the Mother and the Father Sun”

The greeting is accompanied by gestures of gratitude to our Mother, the Earth, and Father, the Sun, reconnecting with a feeling of humility to the Nature Spirits, the Elementals, and the Higher Beings who have sacrificed themselves to manifest material reality for the sake of our Spiritual Development here.

In creating a garden, even small flowerpots on the window sill, one nurtures in children a deep appreciation of these invisible brothers and sisters. The feeling of gratitude and appreciation for the plants, which are manifestations of the elemental beings, nurtures these Beings in a way that frees them from material bondage. The relationship that we cultivate with the Divine Mother Earth through tending and caring for our garden keeps alive the child’s inherent experience of their spiritual home and creates an aura of blessed sanctuary so that the beneficial elementals, and we with them, find peace. Through the seasons, careful attentiveness to the needs of the elementals in the garden helps to imbue the children and adults with health-giving vitality so that they have an experience of the sensible and supersensible in nature and the physical world and can find the peace and harmony accessible to all.

One aspect of tending the garden involves use of biodynamic sprays with which we aid the cultivation of sanctuary for humans, for plants, for animals, and the supersensible realms. Each sanctuary becomes an island of light with its boundaries extending to the farthest reaches of the cosmos and to the deepest realms, where Higher Beings who guide the earth reside. The home becomes the chapel for the Holy Family to worship in the daily rhythms of waking and sleeping, eating and cleaning, working and playing. Our work becomes our prayer, and our prayer becomes our work, as we celebrate the spark of divinity, the gift of co-creator, within each individual. It is a very full, rich and beautiful tapestry of life that we weave together.

It was Rudolf Steiner’s vision that these islands of light be cultivated far and wide. Here in the Rocky Mountain region and throughout Waldorf communities and other communities which appreciate the Mother Earth and Father Sun, we can shine brightly by creating such sanctuary.

I am very happy to have people forward these blog articles on to other parents and request that you acknowledge where they originated and/or link to my website.☺