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I asked Margret Meyerkort if she would be willing to be interviewed for Kindling, and after much persuasion, she agreed. I visited her lovely home, and, over rosehip juice and nibbles, Margret spoke to me briefly about some of the background, history and some events during her many years as a Steiner Waldorf kindergarten teacher and trainer. Our conversation was so interesting and informative, that I often forgot to take notes, and I left feeling that we had only just touched the surface of Margret’s fascinating life, so I will call this a “potted histor” and hope that one day we may hear more from Margret, who kindly corrected my notes for me.

Margret came to England in 1950 from Switzerland (where as a nurse she had cared for an epileptic boy) to be trained as a Steiner Waldorf school class teacher at Hawkwood College in Stroud. The founder of Hawkwood College was Margaret Bennell, a friend of Margaret McMillan and a co-founder of Wynstones School. Among the other tutors were Dr. Ernst Lehrs and Dr. Maria Roeschl, both of whom had been direct students of Rudolf Steiner.

In 1953, Dr. Maria Glas, one of the two school doctors at Wynstones School, asked Margret if she would become the kindergarten teacher there. She agreed to help them out for a year, after which she hoped to become a class teacher. Three years later, a class teaching position became available, but Margret had grown to enjoy the particular creativity of kindergarten work and was intrigued to continue finding out what Rudolf Steiner had meant by stating that the teacher of the young child is like a priest.

At first, the kindergarten was in a wooden hut on the grounds of the school’s hostel, one mile’s walk from the school. The large room with a pitched ceiling had an iron stove. Margret had to light the fire at 7:00 a.m. after one hour’s bus journey from her accommodation near Nailsworth, Stroud. She had carried over wood and coal from the hostel yard the previous evening. Kindergarten hours were 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Children brought their own sandwiches and had a rest after lunch.

After two years, Rudi Lissau, an upper school teacher, spoke of the importance of integrating the kindergarten into the life of the school, and the kindergarten was moved into what had been the staff room on the ground floor of the main building.

Margret’s understanding of education and of life came out of her inner work and her studies of Rudolf Steiner’s work. For instance, one day she read in one of his karma lectures, that the “stars are gateways to the spiritual world.” Out of this study, she designed her Advent calendar, which was added to her classroom. Then she read that the straw of the wheat is condensed sunlight, so she made the bowls for two doll’s prams out of thick wheat-straw. While studying nutrition and the development of the teeth, she gave the children biodynamic carrots and another year a mussel shell full of biodynamic wheat grains as part of their snack on Mondays. When she read about the activity of the spirit of a language, she studied English nursery songs and nursery rhymes and used these frequently in the kindergarten.

Priorities became difficult for Margret: especially on the occasion when Dr. Glas needed help in his nursing home in Stroud; when the school hostel needed help with a dormitory for lower school boys; when the school needed the city children to be supervised on the public transport bus into Gloucester; when mothers asked for help with birthday celebrations, at home, with sick children; and, last but by no means least, there was the participation in activities of the Anthroposophical Society. Fortunately, she had thirty to fifty minutes rest with the children after lunch, and occasionally went to sleep, too.

In 1953, Wynstones School had an Advent Festival for classes 1 to 4, a Christmas Festival for the kindergarten and a Midsummer Festival for classes 8 to 12. By 1980, the school had an Advent Festival for the kindergarten, as well. Sometimes, children of the Junior School Orchestra played the bamboo pipes which they had made in lessons and Swedish canteles, (a forerunner of the kinderharp, which were made by older-children in woodwork lessons), and there was a Midsummer Festival for the whole school. (The kindergarten celebrated it partly independently). Then there were those festivals for the whole school which had grown out of kindergarten festivals as the children had moved into the classes, all of which the kindergarten continued to celebrate independently: a Whitsun Festival which had been helped by Eileen Hutchins, founder of the Elmfield School, Stourbridge; a Maypole Festival; an Autumn/Michaelmas Festival, (the Michaelic aspect with the help of Peter Roth, one of the founders of the Camphill Schools). Lastly, there were the following festivals for the kindergarten only: Snowdrop Day, a Spring/Easter Festival, an end-of-the-year-festival, and September/October lantern walks following the Autumn/Michaelmas Festival. In 1958, to mark Wynstones 21st birthday, Margret started what has since been called the Christmas Market.

For many years, the kindergarten, like the rest of the school, had parents’ evenings every term in addition to home visits. The parents’ evening in the summer term developed into a special meeting in that it prepared the handing over of the so-called “schoolchildren” to their class teacher-to-be (if she/he could be present) at the end-of-the-year festival.

In 1963, Margret took an unpaid sabbatical year and joined the second year students of Else Klink’s Eurythmy School in Koengen, near Stuttgart. Since the inception of Wynstones School in 1937, the kindergarten had not had eurythmy. Wynstones’ eurythmist, who had been trained in Dornach in the early 1920’s said that of the “four different eurythmy’s, the eurythmy for the young child was the most difficult.” Together with what Margret had learned from previous courses in England and ongoing courses she was taking after the year with Else Klink, she risked giving the children the little eurythmy she could, appreciating that fully trained eurythmists did not approve.

In the mid 1960’s, Dr. von Kugelgen (founder and head of the International Kindergarten Association for many years) asked Margret to bring the kindergarten teachers working in Great Britain together, and the Kindergarten Steering Group was formed under the heading of the Steiner Schools Fellowship. For several years, it consisted of Stella Jarman from Michael Hall, Joan Marcus from Elmfield, Stourbridge, Eileen Simon from The New School, King’s Langley and Margret, from Wynstones. They represented all the kindergarten teachers in the country, were in regular contact with them and organized conferences which helped to inform their teaching.

A year after Francis Edmunds began the Teacher Training Course at Emerson College, he asked Margret to give a one week course on “living with the young child,” as he put it. Although Edmunds asked Margret to come to Emerson and work there with him, she felt that if she gave up her direct contact with children her work as a trainer would be out of touch. However, she continued the annual work at Emerson College and took students on for their practicum experience.

In the mid 1960’s, Cecily Thatcher, a trainer from the Montessori College in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to Wynstones to work with Margret for a year. On her return to Johannesburg, Cecily opened her kindergarten and subsequent school. A few years later, Margret went to Johannesburg and Cape Town for nine months. This was the beginning of Margret’s international work.

In 1977, Francis Edmunds had students who wanted to go into kindergarten work. He advised Margret to start a training course. She discussed the question with Dr. von Kugelgen, who encouraged her to get colleagues from Wynstones to help. The training course began in 1978 with seventeen students and ran for fifteen years. It was always supported by the International Kindergarten Association in Stuttgart. During these years Margret was one of the contributors at the annual teachers’ conferences in Hannover, Germany. She tried to be innovative every year, giving, for instance, a workshop on the ninth Lesson of the School of Spiritual Science in relation to the education of the young child.

In the mid 1980’s, Margret and Frances Wolls of Wynstones School began the Teacher Education Circle. Karla Kinniger from Edinburgh and representatives from other training courses joined them, including Emerson College, Elmfield School, King’s Langley and others.

Margret stopped working in the kindergarten in Wynstones in 1980, but continued lecturing and training around the world. To mark the occasion of the first kindergarten teachers’ conference in North America, she offered a puppet play of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” with four string puppets, which she showed by herself, and a lecture “How Can We Work with the Karma of the Young Child?” (The lecture has recently been re-edited and published by WECAN in The Gateways Series, Volume 2; Working with the Angels. The Young Child and the Spiritual World.)

Margret co-authored The Challenge of the Will together with Rudi Lissau which was published in 2000 by RSCP. Her last public workshop was given at the regional conference in Hereford in the spring of 2002. For her it was a new approach to the needs of the young child; “Education as a Question of Relating” (published in KINDLING, Issue 2, and Gateways Fall/Winter 2002, Issue 43). Margret has now officially retired from her work of lecturing, giving workshops and visiting kindergartens.

Out of my own interest in the subject, I asked Margret about puppetry. She spoke about her developing in the late 1970’s what has come to be called in America the “story apron.” She understood Rudolf Steiner to have meant that the importance of this pedagogical tool was to support rhythm in the development of the young child, contraction and expansion. She therefore considered the size, colour, design, etc. of the story apron in response to his pedagogical indications.

Recently, Margret took all her notes and recycled them. At my expressed horror, she explained that every generation of teachers needs to be free to develop pedagogy out of an evolving spiritual science.

The following considerations relate to the steps that children need to have completed in order to happily and confidently participate in guided movement programs such as the morning circle.

In the process of working with issues of movement, the question of what is needed for a healthy development of movement has condensed for me into one single main aspect: Uprightness.Rudolf Steiner has placed great emphasis on uprightness as the archetypal human gesture, and my own work with children has confirmed this for me.

In the last decade important publications have appeared related to the theme of movement and young children. A range of different support programs is offered around the world for prevention and treatment of delays in the development of movement. Some of them are used in Steiner early childhood programs in Australia. I especially would like to mention the work of Sally Goddard Blythe and the Institute for Neurophysiologic Psychology (INPP) and her discovery of the connection between “retained reflexes” and learning difficulties of children. This research has gained international recognition and has also influenced the “Extra Lesson” work in Australia. I would like to add to this some more recent research into the development of movement, which has become available in Germany in 2005 and has lead to a different approach in movement therapy.

Uprightness: The spiritual picture

Two spiritual processes are at work behind the development of movement in the first three years of life:

• the process of spiritual growth forces working from the head downward in the formation and fine tuning of the skeletal-muscular system and the inner organs, and

• the process of learning to walk, speak and think in which the I works together with the will forces from below upwards.

The spiritual origin of movement is the I, who works in the forces behind movement, as described by Rudolf Steiner in his lectures to teachers (Steiner, Study of Man, Lecture 12). The intention to move which originates in the I may become conscious in the human being or remain totally unconscious as is the case when young children learn to stand upright and begin to take their first steps.

The working together of the two streams, the will stream from below and the formative forces from the head down, brings about three important milestones in child development.

First milestone: the acquisition of uprightness

As the child randomly moves arms and legs and at the same time perceives her movement with her senses, the child becomes more and more conscious of her body and able to direct movement. This process moves through the body from the head downward. As the child tirelessly attempts to first bring the head out of the horizontal plane into the vertical position, then the torso and then the whole body, she works with her will and ego forces, which rise up from the lower part of the body.

Second milestone: the change of teeth in the seventh year

Here Steiner describes the co-working of both streams in the form of a “battle” through which a new stage of development is achieved. The battle happens between what he calls the “musical” forces rising from the body and the formative growth forces descending from the head, and serves the process of pushing out the second teeth. The musical forces

then recede back into the body. The etheric head forces are freed, which enables the child to achieve new, more advanced abilities in imagination and thinking.

Third milestone: puberty

Musical forces from below rise up again and meet with formative forces coming from the head in a kind of big clash in the region of the larynx. In this process the changes of puberty occur, and again there is a significant step in the development of thinking (see Steiner, Balance in Teaching; Klocek, Chapter 3). Steiner was able to spiritually perceive that growth and development arise out of the working of two opposite streams or forces. In other developmental pictures we are directed only to one stream, that from the head down (the cranio-caudal stream), to the process in which the formative forces take hold of the entire body and work on refining the skeletal-muscular system and the inner organs. Steiner also was the first to see the unique significance of human uprightness in the physical and spiritual development of the human being and in the process of spiritual collective evolution.

Regarding the development of the individual human being, it takes two and a half years to develop uprightness fully, not only one year. It takes all that time for the I together with the spiritual hierarchies to fine tune the skeletal/muscular system, the speech organs and the human brain as physical foundation for the development of the human soul forces of willing, feeling and thinking.

Standing upright at around twelve to eighteen months is only the first step. The entire process is not completed until the hands have reached a certain independence from the lower body and are able to act in accordance with sense perception for exploring the world, and the head is able to be held in balance and becomes independent of the movement of the limbs so that the child can experience thoughts. Uprightness and balance belong together; it is the greatest achievement of the child, if he is able to stand still. Dr. Michaela Glöckler once summarized this milestone with the following words: What are we wishing for in terms of movement achievement by the age of three? The answer: that the child stands with full uprightness in the world, expressing through his posture and gesture: “This I am” (Glöckler, 2002). Up to this time, according to Steiner, the child is a “hermit” and not yet open to other human beings’ will and intentions.

At the age of two-and-a-half the spiritual beings and the higher I start to withdraw after having established the child’s orientation in space, his ability to speak and to think. At the same time the child becomes able to separate his impressions of the outer world from his perception of self. In consequence the child reaches a more detached way of perceiving what is around him. This results in more acute observations as to what adults are doing and in a new interest in experiences that adults are offering.

Now the opportunity arises for adults to take on the role of “helpers” in guiding the child further into life activities. This is the time when a more formal movement program or circle time can be introduced.

Uprightness: The physiological picture and therapeutic approaches

According to the model of cranio-caudal development, the child grows “from the head down.” The increasing differentiation of the structure of the brain enables the child to develop new movement patterns and skills. Involuntary or uncontrolled movement gradually becomes directional. Yet often this does not happen properly. Research into the sequence of developmental movement patterns has been conducted with the aim of identifying the causes for the increasing number of children with delayed or incomplete movement development. These developmental irregularities are linked back to problems with the hierarchical sequence of processes in the brain and to an inability to integrate sensory and motor activity.

Sally Goddard’s research into the phenomenon of “retained reflexes” and her therapeutic approach are based on the hypothesis that all children go through the same sequential pattern of “primitive reflexes.” While these reflexes have an important role at a certain point of development, they do become a hindrance for further development if they are retained beyond their time. Goddard designed a developmental movement program with the aim of overcoming these retained reflexes. In this movement program the sequence of reflexes is

repeated in the order in which they are normally occurring and in which they are meant to disappear under normal circumstances. These so-called “floor exercises” are used in Extra Lesson work and to some extent in the kindergarten work as well.*

Through her work with children Goddard has made some interesting discoveries about the vital role of the sense of balance and the vestibular system in the prevention and therapy of learning difficulties. As balance is situated in the lowest parts of the brain, it is fundamental for the development of free deliberate movement. Therefore in her therapeutic program Goddard emphasizes the stimulation of the vestibular system. She was able to produce evidence that musical therapeutic programs clearly benefit children with movement disturbances and resulting learning difficulties (Goddard Blythe, The Well Balanced Child).

In 2004 a former co-worker of Goddard, Wibke Bein-Wierzbinski, published a dissertation proving the therapeutic success of a movement program which does not repeat the sequence of primary reflexes, but is based on specific movements which she claims play a key role in movement development. She questions programs based on the theory of repeating all stages of primitive reflexes and suggests that a child may have overcome the primitive reflexes initially, but then at a later time and possibly under stress may have returned to primitive reflex patterns. She suggests that all primitive reflexes may be present in an inactive state within the human being and that they can “flare up” under certain circumstances.

Bein-Wierzbinski proposes that the repetition of the sequence of primitive reflexes should be avoided in therapeutic programs, and that only certain key developmental movements, leading towards uprightness, should be practiced and reinforced in a developmental therapy. She found that there is a critical age at around four to six months for these key movements. If they are mastered correctly, they will set the child on a track of subsequent normal development. Bein-Wierzbinski suggests that these particular movements should be practiced and strengthened through therapy.

They are described as follows:

• Firstly a full stretch as occurring naturally between four to six months of age, with the back straight, legs straight, arms straight, head up. The head tilt backwards and the pulled up legs as in the Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex should be avoided.

• Secondly a movement with the opposite quality to the full body stretch: bringing the foot to the mouth with the help of the hands. The entire body is curved.

Both movements together form something like an expansion—contraction movement sequence. Bein-Wierzbinski was able to show that if these two movements are performed correctly and frequently, then the process of becoming upright proceeds normally.

In her therapeutic program she focuses on the spine as the area of development of uprightness. She found that if movement is no longer initiated from the upper body and head but from the area of the lower spine and hips, then the head is able to move or stay still independently of the rest of the body. The whole picture of limitations in movement activity through retained reflexes does not occur. Therefore in her therapeutic approach she uses exercises of leg movements guided by the rotation of the hip rather than the turning of head and shoulder. This will cause a shift of the gravitational point from the upper part into the lower part of the body.

There are now movement therapists in Germany, who are working from Steiner’s indications and have started to work with “Rota Therapie.” Ingrid Ruhrmann focuses in her movement program for children with retained reflexes on a simple set of movements based on variations of turning sideways and rolling over as they naturally occur in movement sequences such as crawling, rotation, sitting, rotation to change direction, crawling in new direction, rotation, sitting, and so on.

In addition she uses Anthroposophical therapies

* Originally Audrey McAllen’s program did not include these floor exercises. Neither did she recommend beginning the Extra Lesson program in the first seven years of life. She states that this remedial/therapeutic work should only be done with children older than seven years to allow the etheric forces the full period of early childhood to complete the development of the physical body.

to strengthen the etheric and astral forces of the child through water applications, nutrition and rhythm. She teaches mothers how to use Rota Therapy at home in a playful way. It is heart-warming that the child before three years can be held on mother’s lap during the therapy and thus be in a protected space. Ruhrmann was able to confirm that basic hip rotational movements will stimulate normal development into uprightness.

Existing reflex patterns are ignored in Rota Therapy; the aim is to strengthen the deliberate movement at that crucial point from which movement development will proceed normally.

Supporting movement in young children

If one wishes to enable the child to feel comfortable and free in the upright position, one needs to be able to recognize when development is not following the normal order of steps or when steps are omitted.

Healthy movement at age two-and-a-half should include:

• Upright posture, the child is able to stand still (balance)

• Free head rotation without causing either arms or legs to move

• The head does not tip to the front nor is the neck extended towards the back.

• The arms swing freely while walking

• Movement is intentional

• The hands can be brought together in the sagittal plane at will

• The hands move freely in the horizontal plane, above and below the horizontal midline (butterfly)

• The speed and force of movement can be varied at will and adapted to different situations

• The centre of gravity and the rotation point of the spine is in the hip area

• The face is relaxed while moving, which means that the child does not spend extra effort in maintaining posture and balance (Ruhrmann, 2006).

Uprightness must be regarded as the foundation for all further differentiation and refinement of movements, such as those brought in morning circles. If uprightness and balance are not yet achieved, the child will not be able to fully live into the action/movement patterns of the circle, and will have difficulties imitating the gestures of the teacher and confidently moving within all spatial dimensions.

The steps to uprightness are the young child’s work

The child needs time and the appropriate space to practice these. Adults should step back and watch the little ones’ progress with love and minimal intervention.

Emmi Pikler’s documentation of the development of movement of the children in her care at the Loczy orphanage in Hungary (see Pikler, Give Me Time) has shown how the child explores and practices a wide range of movements: rotations, pushing forward of backward, lifting and turning. Through this process the child experiences her own capacities in mastering her body and develops confidence and a sense of freedom.

Regarding the connection between the development of the dexterity of the hands and speech development, Wilma Ellersiek has shown through her hand gesture games how we can support movement development of the very young child, starting on a one-to-one basis (see Ellersiek, Giving Love—Bringing Joy).

The life forces are stimulated in hands and feet through gentle hand touching games accompanied by rhythmical speech or song. Gestures such as the opening and closing of the hand, holding and releasing are practiced.

From Sally Goddard’s work the need of stimulation for the vestibular system has become apparent and this should flow into our work with young children. Mothers have always intuitively stimulated the baby’s vestibular system through gentle rocking. Later the child is rocked on the lap to the rhythms of nursery rhymes. Once the child has achieved the upright position, the child delights in being rocked more vigorously backward and forward, sideways or up and down in a see-saw motion. Swinging up and down or being held by the hands and whirled around will have a stimulating effect as well. From the third year of life the healthy child will find pleasure in rolling in the grass, jumping and sliding, sitting on a swing, or turning and spinning in the upright position. Many of the traditional outdoor movement games contain vestibular stimulation.

I would like to make the point that in the work with children under three there is no need for a formal movement program as we practice it in the work with children aged three to six in Steiner kindergartens or pre-schools. Whenever one experiences circles in play groups for toddlers, the circle seems to be more directed towards the mothers’ experience and learning while the child is “taken along.”

In a group situation with children under three, whether in child care or in toddler play groups, the play area is the space for free movement and the child’s play time is the movement program.The space, however, needs to be prepared with the possibilities for climbing, for exploring different heights and ways to get up and down. It is a space for practicing differentiated, child-initiated movement. The involvement of the adults in their domestic or craft work will provide an opportunity for children to observe the movements and gestures of the grown ups. The child absorbs these gestures deeply. Some of these may be imitated and reappear in the child’s free play.

The adult accompanies the child’s “movement work” with warmth, love, and reverence and as much as possible without interference. Steiner’s warning not to impose the adult’s will on the young child, as this may damage the child’s further development, needs to be taken seriously.

We turn now back to the beginning, to the spiritual mystery of movement. It is the I who moves the limbs and thus imprints each child’s individuality onto the body movements.

It is one of the most difficult challenges to learn to perceive this imprint of the individuality. The following questions arise:

• How can we learn to understand the individual signature of movement?

• What is the spiritual intention or destiny that expresses itself in individual variations of developmental movement patterns?

• Why are reflexes retained or re-enlivened in a child?

• Why do some people have to live all their lives with retained reflexes?

• What is the lesson to be learned through physical challenges?

• If the physical hindrance evokes a greater effort of will in the child, will this effort later bear fruit?

Holding such questions within and pondering about them, will help to see the child with intensified human interest and compassion. They are the big moral questions of education and of therapeutic intervention. May we never forget to ask these moral questions. Through professional training one can learn to identify patterns in the development of movement. Through inner spiritual work one can become sensitive to the hidden forces behind movement and tune into what wants to evolve as the child’s destiny. As Rudolf Steiner says, “To be a teacher and educator one must work with what is taking place in the depths of human nature” (Steiner, Study of Man, 67).

Conclusion

How does one educate the young child under three? Rudolf Steiner’s answer to this question is very clear. The child educates himself under the guidance of spiritual beings. The adults around the child contribute through their own self-education. The fruits of self-education become visible for the child in the quality of our gestures and these gestures are imitated by the child and work in physical growth and development.

Beyond this the child also unconsciously absorbs movements and rhythms of the earth and the cosmos and these one can see beautifully in the levity and dance-like quality of the movements of the young child. To contemplate how we could work in accordance with planetary forces in movement programs would be a further step towards a spiritually based education of the young child. A quotation by Rudolf Steiner may just hint at the dimensions of this issue.

Our purpose is to imitate, to absorb the movement of the world into ourselves through our limbs. What do we do then? We dance. . . All true dancing has arisen from imitating in the limbs the movement carried out by the planets, by other heavenly bodies or by the earth itself. . . The head rests and the soul, being related to the head, must participate in the movements while at rest. It begins to reflect from within the dancing movement of the limbs. When the limbs execute irregular movements, the soul begins to mumble. When the limbs perform regular movements, it begins to whisper. When the limbs carry out the harmonious cosmic movements of the universe, it even begins to sing. Thus the outward dancing movement is changed into song and into music within (Steiner, Study of Man, 144).

Renate Long-Breipohl is coordinator of early childhood courses at Parsifal College in Sydney, Australia, and teaches and lectures internationally. Her two lectures on “The Developing Adult” from the 2008 international conference on the theme Meeting the Needs of the Child Today will soon be published by WECAN (along with lectures by Michaela Glöckler and Johanna Steegmans).

References

Ellersiek, Wilma. Giving Love—Bringing Joy. Spring Valley, NY: WECAN, 2003.

Goddard Blythe, Sally. The Well Balanced Child: Movement and Early Learning. Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press, 2004.

Glöckler, Michaela. Personal conversation, July, 2002.

Klocek, Dennis. Knowledge, Teaching and the Death of the Mysterious. Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2000.

Ruhrmann, Ingrid. “Examples for Remedial Support.” In M. Gloeckler, Education—Health for Life. Dornach: Kolisko Conferences Publication, 2006.

Steiner, Rudolf. Study of Man. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966.

———. Balance in Teaching. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2007.

Pikler, Emmi. Give Me Time. Translation by Alexandra Sargent of an excerpt from Lass Mir Zeit (Munich: Plaum Verlag, 1988).

Web resources

Bein-Wierzbinski research: www.paepki.de

Rota Therapy: www.rota-therapie.de

The human being is a bridge

Between the past and future existence.

The present is a moment; moment as bridge.

Spirit grown to soul in matter’s husk

Comes from the past.

Soul growing to spirit as seed encased

Journeys toward the future.

Grasp future things through past ones

Hope for evolving things through what has evolved.

So grasp existence in evolving growth;

So grasp what will be in what exists.

This image can serve as a bridge as well to contemplating the second major topic Dr. Karnow offered in his keynote addresses. The first theme, described in the Spring 2008 issue of Gateways, considers what mood of soul the teacher must develop in order to understand and serve the child. We need to cultivate selfless emptiness so the being of the child can speak into us and guide us in what to do. We must shed our sympathies and antipathies, our expectations and judgments about the child. We let the development and experiences of the child resonate within us and then guide us into future action on the child’s behalf. We do not label. We develop reality-based thoughts formed not on abstract ideas, but upon what we observe.

This leads to the second major theme, observation of the child as a threefold being. Dr. Karnow described that Rudolf Steiner worked for thirty years before he shared the content of his thoughts on the threefold organization of the human being. These are ideas we need to work with more and more seriously, as this threefold picture is the motif of our work. This gives an approach to understand the time structure of the human life so we can begin to know what to do. When we are working with the “difficult” child, we are struggling to understand the threefold nature of the

human being.

This time structure and the threefold human being are discussed in Riddles of the Soul. Rudolf Steiner perceived through his years of research that the human being has three aspects which find expression in both the physical body and in soul activities. There is the nerve-sense system (including the brain and nerves), the rhythmic system (including the heart and lungs), and the metabolic-limb system. These are the physical expressions of this threefold nature. Connected to these systems are soul activities of thinking, feeling, and willing, respectively. The physical base for thinking is the nerve-sense system. Feeling, emotional life, lives not in the nerve-sense system but rather in the rhythmic system. In conventional psychology, everything is assumed to function within the nervous system, but Steiner’s observation-based research said that this is not so. Feeling life lives in the rhythmic system. Willing activity lives in the metabolic-limb system. Steiner states:

Just as, when something is mentally pictured, a nerve process occurs upon which the soul becomes conscious of its mental picturing, and just as, when something is felt, a modification of the breathing rhythm takes place through which a feeling arises in the soul: so when something is willed, a metabolic process happens, which is the bodily foundation for what is experienced in the soul as willing (Steiner, Riddles of the Soul, 133-134).

The whole physical/physiological human being is the basis of the life of soul, not just the nervous system. For those active in Waldorf education, to make the above observations may seem commonplace. We speak of thinking, feeling, and willing all the time. But Dr. Karnow emphasized it is important that we consider these deeply; these are vast ideas and profound insights. Truly understanding the development and expression of thinking, feeling,

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and willing can be the “foundation stone” for the teacher’s work.

Rudolf Steiner further explains that thinking, feeling, and willing develop in the course of time. Aspects of these physical and soul processes, which operate in time, permeate the whole human being; yet each system is also identified with a physical region as well. The head, the physical center of the sensory and nervous systems, has its concentrated development during the first seven years of life. The trunk and rhythmic system have focused development, leading toward maturity, in years seven to fourteen. And development of the metabolism and limb system is the focal point between the ages of fourteen to twenty-one, when the body fills out and develops muscles and a solid physical form.

While this development, which we can physically see, is occurring, there is also development occurring for an “invisible” human during these seven-year periods. From birth to age seven, the etheric body—the body of formative forces—is growing and molding the physical body. From seven to fourteen, the astral body—the body of consciousness, of sympathy and antipathy—is educating the feeling life. Then from fourteen to twenty-one, the I or ego force is working to grow and strengthen independent thinking forces which can flow into deed through the human will. When each of these “invisible” bodies has completed its work in these ways, it is liberated for new tasks in the soul life. These soul elements of thinking, feeling, and willing are not only rooted in the physical body but undergo liberation and transformation when bodily processes complete their phases of development. The energies which have been dedicated to physical growth become available for new processes in the soul life. Specifically, the first seven-year period completes the forming of the child’s physical body through the activity of etheric growth forces. Then the forming activity is transformed into powers of thought.

This is described in the first chapter of Fundamentals of Therapy by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman:

Forces functioning in the ether body are active at the beginning of the human being’s life on earth—most distinctly during the embryonal period—as the forces of formation and growth. During the course of earthly life a portion of these forces emancipates itself from this occupation with formation and growth and becomes forces of thinking, just those forces which, for the ordinary consciousness bring forth the shadowlike world of thoughts.

It is of the utmost importance to know that the human being’s ordinary forces of thinking are refined form and growth forces. A spiritual element reveals itself in the forming and growing of the human organism. And this spiritual element then appears during the course of later life as the spiritual power of thought.

That which forms the body comes to a level of completion and is now available to be forces that allow us to have content in our mind. We have a visible human being forming—the physical body which we can experience with our physical senses. As this attains completion in its formation, the “invisible” human being is being born. The true bridge spanning the past into the future manifests only when the invisible I or individuality is born. Before the birth of the I, everything is from the past. Our capacity to think comes from the transformed forces that have formed and grown the physical body. How we think is grounded in what type of form we have accomplished in the physical body. If we can observe and understand the form of the body, then we can develop windows into understanding how thinking, feeling, and willing manifest themselves. The physical human being has a physical physiology; the invisible human-coming-into-being also has a soul-spiritual physiology. As we observe children’s behavior, we are actually talking about an anatomy of the soul. This anatomy of soul is rooted in the physical body, in the substance of the human body.

Now Steiner takes this picture of the threefold human being yet a further step. He points out that each of the seven-year periods has within itself a threefold aspect as well. He states in Soul Economy: “One can recognize such seven-year periods throughout the entire course of human life, and each of these periods again falls into three clearly differentiated shorter periods” (110). The big seven-year phases mentioned above follow the developmental motifs of nerve/sense system, rhythmic system, and metabolic/limb system respectively. Yet within each seven-year period, there is a mini-recapitulation of these developmental motifs.

Since our work as early childhood educators is primarily concerned with the time from birth to age seven, we will use that as the focus for our consideration here. From birth to two years and four months, development concentrates upon the nerve/sense system and is most visible in the development of the head. From that point until four years and eight months of age, the rhythmic system is in the forefront, and changes in trunk are the visible physical expressions of development. In the final stage, which lasts through the seventh year, the maturation achieved in the metabolic/limb system shows itself through structural changes in the arms and legs.

From this physical picture, let us return to consideration of what is happening with the “invisible” soul development for the child. When this growth task is completed, the etheric forces become available for use by soul activities. Steiner states: “Now, at the end of the first seven-year period, most of these etheric forces are released to flow into the child’s soul and spiritual nature.” He points out that

. . . a supersensible contemplation of man will reveal to us, apart from his physical body, another finer body which we have called the etheric body or the body of formative forces. From this etheric body spring not only all the forces sustaining nourishment and growth, but it is also the source of the faculties of remembering and of making mental images, of ideation. It becomes an independent entity only during the change of teeth, at which time it is born in a similar way in which, at physical birth, the body is born from its mother. This means that up to the change of teeth the forces of the etheric body are entirely working in the processes of the child’s organic growth, whereas after that time—though still remaining active in this realm to a great extent—they partly withdraw from these activities. These released forces of the ether body now begin to work in the soul realm of mental picturing and memory, as well as in the many other nuances of the child’s soul life. (Steiner, Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, 110).

When the etheric forces have achieved a certain completion in growth of the physical body, those forces are liberated for the soul activities of thinking, feeling, and willing. With each visible, physical completion come changes in the behavior and consciousness of the child. This is true for each full seven-year cycle as a whole and also for the threefold divisions of each larger cycle. As the etheric body completes it growth tasks, this body of formative energies becomes available for soul activity in thirds as well. So we will see changes in consciousness, emotional and will life in distinct thirds within each seven-year period, too. The more we study human development, the more we will be able to observe the changes in consciousness that correspond with physical developmental completions. The changes in physical form will guide us into knowing whether different soul capacities have been liberated for the tasks of school, for example. If the physical development is incomplete or atypical, as will often be true with the “difficult” child, we can begin to understand why and how there may also be unusual aspects of behavior and consciousness, which are the expressions of the “invisible” human soul. By looking at outward forms of the human body, we practice a special kind of perceiving. Dr. Karnow described this as a flexible “seeing thinking,” a kind of conscious clairvoyance where the thinking is willed into us by the child.

Dr. Karnow emphasized Steiner’s insight that points of physical development and changes in conscious soul life are not only related but are interdependent. If we truly school ourselves to know what these changes are, we will have a map guiding us in our child observation. We must know what is normal and typical for the child and appropriate to each age phase before we can begin to observe deviations or exceptions which the difficult child might present. Knowing the hallmarks of these nodal points is essential in helping us observe whether developmental completion has been achieved and a child is ready to go on to a next step, such as going on to first grade.

A primary source for understanding the threefold division of the seven-year phases is Dr. Bernard Lievegoed’s Phases of Childhood. Dr. Karnow has added this volume to the pedagogical “bibles” of Study of Man and Education for Special Needs: The Curative Education Course. Dr. Lievegoed took the indications so briefly sketched above and gave detailed descriptions of how these developments are manifested in both the physical body and in the soul life in thinking, feeling, and willing. It

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is not possible in this article to do justice to the detailed and precise descriptions he offers to guide the teacher’s observation of the child. The book is a masterwork that deserves dedicated study. Below are offered only some of the basic motifs to help us develop a framework for organizing our own picturing of these processes.

Dr. Lievegoed begins by pointing out how the proportion of head size to the rest of the body changes. In a baby the proportion of head to body is 1:4. Up to about two years, the head predominates as the focal point, due to its size. By two years, the ratio has changed to 1:5, and by age six to 1:6. Until a new growth spurt begins at about age two, with growth in the trunk area, the upper half of the baby’s body predominates. “The upper half of the body runs ahead of the lower half; the head in relation to the trunk, the shoulders in relation to the pelvis, the skull in relation to the facial structure, the eye sockets in relation to the lower jaw, and so on” (Lievegoed, 31).

From about two-and-a-half to five years, the toddler figure is evident. With the head-to-body proportion now reduced to a 1:5 ratio, growth is seen in the trunk. At this time growth in height occurs mostly through stretching in the trunk region, not in the limbs. There is primarily growth in breadth of the body, with a characteristic large tummy, and the angle at the bottom of the rib cage still flat. On the head, the chin has come more forward and gives the face more expression.

From five to seven years, there is dramatic growth in the limbs, as they grow longer and more slender. A waist develops, the stomach grows flat, the spine develops an S-shaped curve, and the collarbones become more pronounced. Body movements appear more angular and more purposeful. The body develops greater freedom of movement and there is much motor activity of the whole body.

The school-ready child will show physical aspects, as the face begins to change around the age of seven, marking the beginning of a whole new phase. By this time the head to body ratio is 1:6. The eyes, which have been below the halfway line of the head until now, have moved upward, making the forehead less dominant. The eyes now appear smaller in the face and can look expectant and more conscious, observing the world with some judgment. Dr. Lievegoed describes that “the whole impression is one of slim agility and easy, comfortable mobility, of an elegance which was lacking in the toddler.” Children tend to be rather thin at this stage, as well.

There is parallel development of soul life of the little child as well. Up through the first two years at least, the child is an open sense organ who responds through the body to all things that come into her sensory life. Experiences and expressions of pleasure or pain, joy or sadness are body-based. Emotions depend on the state of the physical organism. Behavior is based on drives of the body.

The toddler, in roughly the second third of the first seven-year period, begins to become aware of the world as something separate from her. She is not only influenced by the world but begins to influence it as well. Play arises in an exchange with the environment. The imagination for play arises out of what is in the child’s surroundings, not out of an inner imagination which marks the next step of development. The child can respond to the world only in the present moment. She plays with things in her horizon, with what is available now. Play can take on a rhythmic quality that seems to flow in an imaginative stream. Behavior is no longer based primarily upon drives. The child at this age loves to live in rhythms which can smoothly carry her along.

With the beginning of the final third, a big change comes in play and imaginative life. The child is able to take a step back from the world and consider it, rather than be so directed by it. Lievegoed calls this “creative imagination,” which stands separate from the world and which can imaginatively change the environment as play dictates. The environment is used to create the inwardly-held play imagination rather than suggest or even dictate to the child what to play. Play has a goal directed by the child’s will. In practical life, the child begins to be aware of what he can do and be frustrated by what he cannot achieve according to his own expectations. He begins to look to the adults in his environment and to respect them for what they can do rather than by what they intellectually know or attempt to explain to him.

Dr. Lievegoed summarizes: during the period from birth to seven, the first third is dedicated to developing the foundation of the nerve/sense system of head, senses, and nerves as the foundation for later thinking. At its conclusion, the etheric force births itself from the head region. The second

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third shows development in the young child’s feeling life and the emergence of creative imagination. The etheric forces liberate from the trunk region at this phase’s end. The final third shows development of intentional will, as the child forms an inner imagination which he then executes in the world through his will. The final partial birthing of the etheric forces is achieved when the limbs show the mature and elongated form of the school-ready child.

A general summary relating to each of the seven-year phases from birth to twenty-one is further given by Dr. Lievegoed:

Every metamorphosis in thinking coincides with an important change in the appearance of the head, the expression of the face.

The periods of the changes in feeling correspond to the periods of growth in breadth of the trunk.

The critical periods in the development of the will coincide with moments of growth in height, when the limbs in particular grow much longer.

As shown above, this is certainly true for the first seven years. It also applies to the changes in physical growth and of consciousness seen during the cycles of the school-aged child and of the adolescent.

This consideration began with the image of a “bridge” which connects the past with the future. Dr. Karnow stated that the true bridging occurs with the birth of the I, the true individuality of the human being. What have been described above are all steps along the way to the resounding birth of the I at age twenty-one. How well that event will occur depends mightily upon how each of these earlier steps and developmental phases were completed. As teachers, we are “incarnational” guardians for the children. What we provide for them in early childhood is important for the whole of life, not just for this immediate time during which they are in our care. We serve the children well when we know what archetypal developmental stages are, both physically and in terms of consciousness, in emotional life, and in the expression of the child’s will. Only then can we observe when development is proceeding in a healthy fashion and when there are impediments to the incarnation process. If we know the hallmarks of development, we can observe where things are on an archetypal course and where there may be delays or incongruities. If we can observe the match or mismatch of chronological age and developmental manifestation, we can gain a sense of where the child may be frustrated or stuck in development and gain sympathy for his or her struggles. This opening up to the child’s situation can inspire insight into the “difficult” child and guide us to help the child move beyond the obstacle in his or her path.

This series began considering the inner work of the teacher. This educational guardian must strive to develop a selfless emptiness, which becomes an open space into which the being of the child can speak. This second article has attempted to expand our understanding of what is a true picture of the human being in early childhood. This concluding thought from Rudolf Steiner ties these threads together:

What really matters in education is the mood and attitude of soul, which the teacher carries in his heart with regard to the being of man. . . What really matters is that each teacher carries within himself a true picture of man and if this picture stands there before his inner gaze, he or she will act rightly, though outwardly possibly in very different ways (Steiner, Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, 110).

Nancy Blanning presently serves as a therapeutic and remedial teacher at the Denver Waldorf School. Her special focus is on developing movement enrichment for young children. With her colleague, Laurie Clark, she has co-authored the book Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures. She also does consulting work with Waldorf schools in North America, teacher training and mentoring.

References

Lievegoed, Bernard. Phases of Childhood. Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books, 1987.

Steiner, Rudolf and Ita Wegman. Fundamentals of Therapy. Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1999.

Steiner, Rudolf. Riddles of the Soul. Spring Valley, NY. Mercury Press, 1996.

Steiner, Rudolf. Soul Economy and Waldorf Education. Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986.

Schoorel, Edmond. The First Seven Years. Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2004. This excellent book gives a comprehensive look at the birth of the etheric forces from birth to seven, in regard to all of the phases described in this article.

The theme of this conference acknowledges that there are growing numbers of children who challenge us. Dr. Karnow asked what methods we employ to understand the “difficult child?”? What are our criteria for what is normal? If we provide age age-appropriate content, then the children should, within a certain spectrum, be able to accommodate what the teacher brings. This assumes that we are bringing age-appropriate, Waldorf-inspired content, which permits the maturation of the child’s individuality through the lower senses (touch, life, self-movement, and balance). This builds a physicality that will provide the framework for a healthy development of the higher senses (hearing, word, thought, and ego.) The careful working to build health in lower sense activity will provide the right foundation for later, more subtle, soul- / spiritual development. The early childhood educator helps prepare the child in his body for the grade school and the experience of the middle senses (smell, taste, sight, and warmth), and for the high school where the area of experience is the upper senses. The early childhood domain is the lower senses, the body, the will.

As we begin to consider “difficult” children, Dr. Karnow emphasized this that it is essential to understand that all experiences we bring to the child through education affects physical development. This was illustrated by the example of Otto Specht, Rudolf Steiner’s first student. Steiner’s work with him, which can serve as an archetype for our work as educators. Otto Specht was a hydrocephalic boy whose case was considered hopeless. To educate him was thought impossible. Nonetheless, the mother of this boy had trust in Rudolf Steiner and asked him to take on the boy’s education. Steiner required that he alone would decide everything done with the boy, to which the mother agreed. He very closely structured the curriculum given to Otto and guided the movement of his limbs in very specific ways. Through these activities, the size of Otto’s head shrunkshrank. He not only improved physically but completed his education and became a medical doctor. In this situation Rudolf, Steiner was a young man educating a difficult child. This child could not learn and was essentially deformed. But through the education Steiner developed, the child not only improved his intellectual capacities and completed his education, but his physical body changed as well. Each child wants to incarnate into the physical world and bring “the latest news from the spiritual world.” The question for us is, does today’s education create a body that the spiritual being of the child can inhabit? “Difficult” children are confronting a struggle in finding home in an earthly body.

Dr. Karnow described that in the first period of life, the child is all body, and all experiences affect body development. Everything we do affects the totality of the whole being, even through chemical and morphological changes that occur in the body. Not only the soul life — emotional, intellectual, and psychological — is affected. In other words, everything we do with the young child affects his physicality, his physical body. Pedagogical activities work upon the physical, while the medical activities works on the etheric. What we present in the pedagogy is received through the senses and works deeply into the body. Regarding the “difficult” child, the physical body can be the bridge through which we can foster healthy development through the educational experiences we bring.

The physical body can also be the vehicle through which we can come to understand the “difficult” child. The ability to observe is key in approaching perplexing children. Dr. Karnow remarked that when he goes to a school as physician, he does so with anxiety. He is asked to observe, and he follows Rudolf Steiner’s guidelines as to what to do — just look. One has to empty oneself of anxiety, having trust that some insight will come. Something catches our attention toward that child, perhaps a heavy ear lobe that does not tell anything by itself. It has to connect to something else, a movement, perhaps. Dr. Karnow quoted from the 1st first chapter of Fundamentals of Therapy: “It is of the utmost importance to know that the human being’s ordinary forces of thinking are refined form and growth forces. A spiritual element reveals itself in the forming and growing of the human organism. And this spiritual element then appears during the course of later life as the spiritual power of thought.” When we observe soul behavior, such as speech, movement, movement of thoughts, forgetting, and so on,etc. we will only find the answer to why the behavior is occurring by looking back at the body itself. This is where the physician is a helpful colleague to the educator because he looks at the body. The teacher looks at the soul and describes the soul manifested in the child’s behavior. The doctor lives in relation to the body. The doctor is asked to give a reason for why the child is unable to behave differently from what he or she does. Up to about age 21twenty-one, we see organically driven behavior and we want to understand what its cause. Early childhood teachers are dealing with organ-driven behavior, determined by the child’s physicality.

There needs to be a dialogue between doctor and teacher. How can we understand behaviors that stir our interest, or that annoy? We understand behavior is organically driven. So what are we to do about it? Otto Specht’s behavior was organically determined. His physical condition did not allow him to participate in a normal school. So Rudolf Steiner saw he had to evoke a change in the organism. If we want to evoke a change in behavior, we have to evoke a change in the organism. We usually come up with reasons of things in the child’s environment to account for difficult behaviors — media, diet, family life — but the true answer lies in the physical body of the child.

Yet how can we come to truly observe the child so that we can gain a sense for what to do to evoke a beneficial change? Dr. Karnow spoke of times past when human beings had active converse with the gods in mystery centers, the sources of spiritually revealed knowledge in ancient times. Rudolf Steiner states in Vvolume 6 Ssix of the Karma lecturesKarmic Relationships that whatever originates in medicine today is fundamentally an aftermath from insights shared by the ancient Mercury gods. But things have run dry in our times. Humanity must rediscover how to have new conversation with divine beings. To help us do that is the mission of anthroposophyAnthroposophy. If we think of our work as a process of entering the spiritual world and being guided by the beings who live in it, this gives meaning to our work that transcends the moment and deepens our task. Every Waldorf school is a mystery center, but only if we realize it and act accordingly. This we can do through the gifts given by Rudolf Steiner through anthroposophyAnthroposophy.

In his Difficult Children book, Henning Kohler Köhler speaks of our coming into relationship with the “difficult” child as a path of initiation, a conscious entry into relation to the spiritual world. How can one undergo this initiation? One needs to create a posture of creative “not-knowing.” We want to go into a situation not knowing anything and thereby create an organ of “not- knowing” receptivity. This needs intense participation. The observer enters into a situation where the being of the contemplated child contemplated actually melts into oneself; observer and the one observed become one. This is an act of emptying out and becoming selfless, of not being burdened by ideas, preconceptions, or expectations, but of being open. The nose or ear or hands or feet or movement or tone of voice could capture our attention. To become one with another, the observer has to become empty, still, quiet, and warm. If one does that, the inspiration of what needs to happen will come. Steiner calls this a “thinking-feeling” into the other. Then the observer will be “thought” by the being of the child as act of creative identification. I become one with you. This is a turning around of the activity of an educator or observer from what is customary. It is a non-labeling approach. It is totally open, and one does not know what is going to happen. True communication, true dialogue can happen when this emptying has occurred.

To achieve this emptying requires enormous inner work on the part of the educator. Labeling a child as “difficult” points to something in ourselves rather than the child. We admit we cannot handle this child in the context of the other children. This child explodes the bubble in which we want our children to be contained. We want the children to do just what we want. Dr. Karnow referred to Kohler’s Köhler’s observation that one of the biggest impediments to our moving forward is our addiction to contentment. In our classrooms, we want everything to be harmonious and nice. When we are led by this desire to be comfortable, we are not open to hearing the true child speak.

The point stands out from Kohler’s Köhler’s book that we need a new artistic mode of educational thinking and observing. When we look at something artistically, the form we perceive becomes an expression of what created that form. Through the form, we can begin to see the invisible aspects of the human being. To do this, we have to learn to grow wings. The visible is a kind of darkness, an abyss. This is what we see when we just look at the outer physicality. We need to develop wings to penetrate through the darkness and see the light and spark and be able to bring it to birth, to save it.

Throughout the lectures, Dr. Karnow made repeated reference to his pedagogical “bibles” — Study of Man and Curative Education. These two are courses in “wing development.” The answers to all our questions lie in these two books. He urged teachers to commit dedicated study to these volumes. We can grow wings by taking up spiritual ideas about the nature of the human being. To appreciate the three-fold nature of humanity, which these lectures describe, gives us eyes to see with and wings to fly over the chasm that separates us from an understanding of the child. Especially when we meet together in a circle, sharing our different perspectives, we can perceive and become participants in creative forces that give us tools for understanding and tools for working.

Dr. Karnow reminded that life is structured in time. Human development is a process in time. Our society is one that expects quick answers and solutions, so this process puts us at odds with this modern expectations. As educators, we have to understand that what is done with a child now will have its results in the future, in later life. As helping companions to the child, we must also have patience that the dialogue with the true spiritual being of the child will not happen instantly. The processes of emptying, looking, listening, and sensing require time and patience. We must be able to withstand the discomfort we feel in not being able to come up with an answer right away. We have to wait to permit the world to imprint itself into us so we can realize the meaning of what we see. This requires patience and tolerance to live with the frustration of not having a quick answer.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Karnow shared a verse given by Rudolf Steiner to Dr. Ita Wegman, which pictures the theme through the three days of lectures:

The human being is a bridge

Between the past and future existence.

The present is a moment; moment as bridge.

Spirit grown to soul in matter’s husk

Comes from the past.

Soul growing to spirit as seed encased

Journeys toward the future.

Grasp future things through past ones

Hope for evolving things through what has evolved.

So grasp existence in evolving growth;

So grasp what will be in what exists.

Dec. 21, 1921

This verse is spoken at the faculty meetings of the Otto Specht School, a new curative endeavor in the Fellowship Community. It was begun to offer another program to carry “difficult” children whom the regular classroom cannot embrace. The program’s existence points squarely to questions we teachers carry: —Is Waldorf education here for all children? Can this education meet every child’s needs? Dr. Karnow answered this. Yes, we are here for all children, but there may be circumstances where we cannot meet all the children’s needs. If a child is asked to leave, we must be honest and clear as to why. Is it because we are addicted to contentment, or because it is truly impossible? There are situations where a child is carried despite difficulties and where, through time, a transformation has occurred. We must keep in mind the time element.

We can also remind ourselves that Waldorf education is confined not only to a nice classroom. The world is a classroom, as it is a mystery temple. Waldorf education can happen everywhere, and some children require this wider vista. Every situation of daily life can become curriculum for Waldorf education. An attempt to realize this is being made at the Otto Specht School, which has the benefit of being situated in a community for the elderly. It is surrounded by woods and streams, large gardens, greenhouses, an orchard, and a dairy farm with sheep and chickens, all permitting creative educational efforts.

To conclude, Dr. Karnow returned to Henning Kohler’s Köhler’s statement that difficult children do not exist. Children with difficult behaviors do. We need to develop a knowing-understanding through an “emptying-out” attitude, where we do not label, we do not react. The children need us to say “yes” to them, which will be our virtue development because they require us to be on a path of inner development. We can picture ourselves as musicians who “lift” our musicianship to a soul capacity where we can bring about social harmony and create music in social situations. The children who experience this lifting into selfless, social skills will be affected in their bodies. We affect the children’s bodies by who we are and what we do. This fundamental transformation of attitude — saying “yes” to the child — is what is required.

The final keynote ended with these words: Yes, Waldorf education is for every child. No, we cannot always meet the needs of every child. Yes, life is difficult.

Life is beautiful.

More than ten years ago I wrote an article on the morning circle for the Star Weavings newsletter. Much has happened since then. We have seen more children with movement disturbances, and we have learned to understand more about hyperactivity and attention deficit. In the area of remedial work, practitioners from different backgrounds have worked with movement programs in order to assist school-aged children with learning difficulties.

In defining the specific task of the early childhood educator in the realm of movement, I would like to start by looking at the spiritual foundation.

Movement Is Will Activity

In his lectures to the teachers of the first Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner describes the realms of thinking and will as opposites within the human soul ( Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 2). Thinking and the ability of forming concepts link us to the past, to pre-earthly life. It is an activity based on the soul force of antipathy — that is, the ability of stepping back and reflecting. Will activity lives in the soul realm of sympathy, with the inherent gesture of uniting. It is directed towards creating something new, which will bear fruit in the future. Will is closely linked to and relies on sense experience.

Steiner describes will as inner movement, which passes through all four members of the human being, and at last becomes deed. Ideally it originates as intention in the ego, yet often will seems to act “blindly” — the intention is hidden. In the astral body, will takes on the quality of interest, of being moved inwardly. To be interested in things is a feeling-will activity. Intention and interest then work on the etheric body, which acts as the driving force within the physical body. This force then causes the actual action. In the action itself, will as a process of movement comes to an end and loses its quality of inner activity (Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 4).

Steiner describes further that the movement of the limbs is caused by a “force body,” through which the ego impresses itself on the muscle and bone structure of the physical body (Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 12). In Being Human, Karl König likens movement to the image of a musician (the ego) playing on an instrument (muscles and bones). Movement is the music that arises in this process. This picture of the inner soul-spiritual movement and its passing into the physical-etheric body is a key to understanding movement and working with it.

Part 1: The Development of Movement in the Young Child

Karl König has given three images for the purpose of understanding movement disturbances. They also serve well in describing the essence of the incarnation process of all human beings, and provide a good foundation for understanding the first three years of life. The images relate to the incarnation into the Earth realm, the ability to make judgments related to the earthly environment, and the emerging of ego consciousness.

1. Movement in the Context of Incarnation into the Earth Realm

Incarnation is the process of finding one’s place in the world, of becoming conscious of and comfortable with one’s position in the three spatial dimensions of the Earth: the vertical or frontal plane, the horizontal plane, and the sagittal plane (which divides right from left). For the young child, the frontal plane arises when the upright, vertical posture of the human being is achieved, in which the standing human being separates the front space from back space. The child experiences the space in front quite comfortably, as the eyes can see what is there. The space in the back is more difficult to become comfortable with. While the front is explored actively through all forms of moving forward, the back space is the unknown and is explored through the sense of hearing. To become comfortable with the back space is crucial for the development of trust. If the child does not achieve this balanced position between front and back, then insecurity and a fearful attitude towards life may arise.

In kindergarten education, we work more with the front and less with the back space. But there are games that one can play for the exploration of the back space. One can listen into the quiet space after the song is over, one can play the lyre or the cymbals behind the back of a child, or play games that require the closing of one’s eyes and listening.

In exploring the front space, there are of course all the different ways and paces of walking, running, and stopping, which need to be practiced all through early childhood. Varied, lively movement patterns are a constant source of joy for the children. A few steps into the back space may be added to encourage the child in using his senses of balance and hearing.

Incarnation is very much a process of “moving into,” of contracting from the far soul spaces of the cosmos into an earthly body. One can study this in the movement development in the first year of life, even in the movements in the womb. Some of primary reflexes are wonderful images of the gestures of contraction and expansion. The withdrawal reflex gives the gesture of curling up, the Moro reflex the gesture of expanding into the back space. The tonic labyrinthine reflex expresses contraction in bending forward and expansion in bending backward. The symmetrical tonic neck reflex shows the expansion in the wonderful upward stretch of head and arms and the contraction in the lowering of head and arms below the spine level towards the ground. These reflexes supersede each other in strict sequence within the healthy development of movement, and they are replaced in the course of the first year of life by the postural head righting and equilibrium reflexes as steps towards upright standing (Blythe, The Well Balanced Child).

While these unconscious, instinctive gestures are replaced on the physical level with willed, conscious movement, they remain in the form of the archetypal gestures of contraction and expansion within our souls, and they remain within the psychological repertoire of individual reactive patterns. They are deeply human gestures, performed by the young child physically and the older child and adult inwardly. They should not be likened to or practiced as animal gestures, as they are gestures of the incarnating ego, filled with bodily religious devotion.

But the practice of expansion and contraction in other forms will be a wonderful help for the incarnation of the ego. Eurythmy, in its educational and therapeutic forms, has always understood the harmonizing and balancing quality of these archetypal human movements. All through early childhood they can be practiced, starting with the gentle stroking of the baby’s curled-up hand, followed by a variety of finger and hand games of opening and closing, and arriving at the whole body movements of curling up and standing straight or the moving between the center and periphery of the circle. Wilma Ellersiek’s hand-touching games are a wonderful example of how we can work with the very young child towards a comfortable moving between these two poles of human existence.

2. Movement in the Realm of Feeling: Recognizing the World Around Us, Identifying, and Making Judgments

Karl König relates these abilities to the movement of the arms and hands. In gaining uprightness, arms and hands are freed from carrying the body and have the potential to explore the world. The image is that of the arms moving like wings on both sides of the body, above and below the horizontal plane, perceiving the different qualities of the space above and below, of the region of the limbs and of the head region. Hands make sense of the world in touching objects, in identifying/judging what is there and responding inwardly to this experience with sympathy or antipathy. This discriminating faculty develops strongly from the second year of life onwards, in conjunction with the development of speech. It is interesting to see in diagrams of the brain that the hand actually takes a large space in the part of the cortex that is responsible for the control of movement. The speech centers are located close by. Speech therapy has long discovered the connection between movement and speech development and the special role that the hand plays in the process of the differentiation of speech.

On a physical level, speech development is dependent on the successful integration of movement with the visual and auditory senses. On a soul-spiritual level, the acquisition of speech needs the model of the speaking human being, the tone of voice, the color of a particular language, and the rhythm of speech. There is a link between speech and music, which has been acknowledged recently by Sally Goddard Blythe, Director of the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology in the UK. In her book The Well-Balanced Child, she indicates that music can play a decisive role in overcoming problems with both speech and subsequent learning. In Steiner early childhood education, it has always been good practice to model moving in conjunction with speech or in conjunction with singing. Steiner kindergarten teachers practice this with the children on a daily basis in the morning circle.

The work of Wilma Ellersiek needs to be mentioned in this context as well, as her rhythmical musical hand gesture games provide an excellent educational and therapeutic tool for the development of speech and movement based on the involvement of the child’s rhythmical system and life of feeling.

3. Right-Left Discrimination and the Awakening of Ego Consciousness

The third step in the development of movement is related to movement on both sides of the axis of symmetry of the body or midline, and to gaining awareness of right and left. König names three steps in the first year of life, which are a preparation for this achievement:

The first step occurs when the eyes of the child begin to look at an object (frontal plane) and the gaze then becomes focused (sagittal plane).

The second step is achieved when both hands of the child grasp an object and the hands thus move from the horizontal plane into the sagittal plane.

The third step occurs in walking, in the alternation of the left and right leg where the frontal and the sagittal planes are explored. This is a parallel movement of the legs on both sides of the body without a crossing over. Both feet and legs perform the same movements, yet with a time difference caused by the requirements of keeping balance in walking.

All three planes are used in varied combinations and manifold ways before a full integration is achieved.

König’s observations can serve as an indicator towards the right approach to the learning of the right-left discrimination. All through early childhood, the child continues practicing to move both hands in a parallel manner. The individualization and independence of the hands as a prerequisite for the crossing over from one side to the other develops only gradually.

Dominance — in right-handed children usually defined as preference for the upper, right, front option within the three planes— is the last aspect to develop and is finally achieved only around the ninth year. This step coincides with the major step of gaining consciousness of one’s individuality. At the age of nine, the child has reached the adult proportion of the equal length of the body height and the outstretched arms. It has been observed in eurythmy lessons with children around age nine that they now for the first time perform comfortably the exact cross-position, the gesture of the ego. It is interesting that musically the child progresses from the pentatonic to the diatonic inner musical experience at the same time.

In early childhood, the right-left discrimination should only be gently prepared. The consciousness of the child should not be focused on working out which hand or leg should be used. Most of the guided movements in the morning circles should be based on parallel movements of both arms and hands. In some parts of the circle the hands can take on different roles such as nest and bird, pot and stirring spoon, cat and dog, little Miss Muffet and the spider, and so on. If verses such as “The moon on the one hand, the sun on the other . . . the moon on the left, the sun on the right” are used, they should be practiced without correcting children, if they do not show signs of left-right discrimination as yet.

Part 2: Movement Programs in Early Childhood

1. Movement and the Child Under Three

The development of movement, speech, and thinking in the first three years of life is guided and protected by spiritual beings. They work through the environment, and the human being is seen as a model for such faculties as uprightness and walking. Without the model of human beings, the child does not achieve uprightness, but without the deep yet unconscious intention of wanting to be upright and walk — and this is the spiritual side — the model would be of no avail. Both have to come together. In the early years, the child seems to be guided from inside, and seems to intuitively “know” what he or she needs to do: an endless practice of the most varied movement combinations. Rudolf Steiner advises us to leave the child undisturbed and uninstructed at this early stage of development. The child self-educates with the help of spiritual beings. The undisturbed exploration of movement “from inside out” is the precondition for the development of a sense of freedom in the child. This situation changes around the age of three. Now Rudolf Steiner recommends eurythmy as being of great benefit for children. Obviously the child has reached a level of development where the child not only unconsciously absorbs what lives in the environment, but is approachable to being guided into certain movement patterns and imitates them.

2. Imitation and Guided Movement with Children from Age Three to Seven

The child at the age of three lives in a natural desire to participate — filled with sympathy for the surroundings and with more ability to experience the self in relationship to other human beings. This participatory consciousness still mirrors the wonderful harmony and interweaving spiritual activity of the pre-earthly existence and of the early stages of human development. The child imitates out of a natural attitude of devotion and trust in the goodness of the world. As kindergarten teachers, we imprint our way of doing things into the still-malleable physical organs of the child. Hence, the great importance of the quality of our gestures. These gestures are imitated by the children and enter into the physical body of the child more deeply than the spoken word or the singing. We can observe various stages in the process of imitating movements: from the purely inward moving that may show itself only in the facial expression, to the small occasional hand movement, to the movement of the whole body.

The impulse to move lives much stronger in children than in adults. It is a natural expression of the strength of their will forces and their healthy etheric forces. Steiner points out that children in the fourth year naturally want to dance. He adds that if eurythmy could be introduced at this age, the children would be strengthened in their ego forces for developing responsibility regarding their tasks in life in their twenties. He did not give reasons for this, but one can ponder oneself on the specific situation of the child at this stage of development.

On the one hand, the child is most active in the will, the consciousness is still dreamy, and the element of sympathy pervades the child’s movements. In this the mood of sympathy, children naturally love to participate in the morning circle and to connect deeply with the teacher who is guiding them in movement.

On the other hand, there appear the first signs of the emerging ego consciousness. The child self-identifies as “I” and thus begins to separate in consciousness from other human beings. This is expressed by the child saying “no,” “I don’t want to,” “I don’t like it,” “you are not my friend,” and so on. This new ability can easily turn into the first expression of self-centered individualism. Steiner speaks about this double-edged nature of the ego, its egotistical and its non-egotistical side, and he points out that the future development of humanity will depend on the overcoming of the egotistical element.

The three- to four-year-old child naturally still has the potential for movement, which is not yet self-expression and which is therefore non-egotistical. Through guided movement, the element of devotion and sympathy can be strengthened in the children and can counteract the tendency towards an early-awakened self-consciousness, which weakens the natural vitality and the will forces of the child.

Eurythmy as well as the circle work based on imitation lead the child away from self-feeling towards an interest in and a feeling connection with what lives in the surroundings. This includes working with the feeling quality of language, of vowels and consonants, and with the rhythm and the musical quality of words and sentences, as expressed through the delicate movement patterns of the larynx. This is a whole new area of working with children in the realm of speech, following on the working with movement as described here. Stephen Spitalny has presented some initial thoughts on this. In therapeutic eurythmy and in chirophonetics, the connection of vowel and consonant sounds with movement is used; but in early childhood movement education, the conscious use of the sounds and rhythms of language has not been developed as yet. Wilma Ellersiek has done pioneering work in this field.

3. Archetypal Gestures in Working with the Morning Circle

As indicated in the section on the development of movement, there are movement patterns that express in image form the process of incarnation. They may be called “archetypal,” meaning the representation of the essence or primal quality of an object, process, or being within the soul. In relation to the incarnation process, moving between expansion and contraction, in and out, above and below, up and down, front and back, and right and left have this archetypal quality. These movements follow the direction of the etheric forces in the child working from the head downward, and the direction of the soul-spiritual forces in the human being working upward through the limb system and the rhythmic system into the nerve-sense system. Within the physical body the expansion-contraction polarity is present in the breathing process, in the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, which is the physical foundation of the life of feeling.

Within the morning circle, this breathing rhythm and the polarity of contraction-expansion are overall guiding principles. There are manifold images that lend themselves to express this polarity: opening-closing (performed with hands or as a group in a circle), going out-coming in (flying birds), lifting-pressing (the different walking of fairies or giants), jumping down (connecting with the earth), sleeping-waking, growing-withering (plant realm), hiding-reappearing. While they appear as will-filled movement, they must be brought to the child in such a way that the soul of the child is touched.

Working with the seasons of the year can help to express the feeling quality of moving between expansion and contraction as well. The mood of expansion belongs to spring and summer, the mood of contraction relates to autumn and winter. The expanding movement of spring can be performed as upward movement with the arms, the mood of summer as a kind of hovering or swaying movement in the region above the head. The contracting quality of autumn is expressed through the will-filled forward movement and the inwardness of winter by bringing movement to rest.

In studying the nature of the plant world or animal world in a specific area, one will discover hidden links to the seasons. Birds, butterflies, and bees have a spring-summer quality, whereas some of the domestic animals such as cows and sheep fit in well with a more wintry mood. Plant cycles relate to the seasonal changes as well.

One can try to discover archetypal gestures in all realms of nature. In the realm of the human being, one can work with the gestures of care and love for other human beings, plants, and animals.

It is one of the great benefits of guided movement that one can bring the rhythmical element back into movement. Children of today do not find their way easily into rhythmical movement by themselves. Life has become too arrhythmic and children are surrounded by mechanically or electrically produced movement. They are drawn into imitating mechanical movement and quite easily fall into repetitive, lifeless movement patterns themselves. Through guided movement and images that speak to the child’s feelings, it is possible to bring back the natural liveliness into the movements of children.

Part 3: Observations and Suggestions for Working with Behavioral Difficulties in Movement Programs

Quite often, movement with children and especially the morning circle is not the joyful, harmoniously flowing experience it is meant to be. Instead it may be dominated by the teacher or cargiver struggling with all sorts of disturbances.

The cause may lie in flaws of the circle itself, in the inappropriateness of the images and gestures presented to the child. It may also lie in the adult not being fully in charge of the group or not inwardly fully connected with what he or she is doing. The possible reasons for difficulties need to be explored, but they are not the theme of this article. Instead, we will turn to analyzing some responses of children to guided movement that are disruptive to the morning circle.

1. The Developing Child

Many of the challenges in movement programs result from the developmental stage the children are passing through. There is a time for growing into the ability of participating in the morning circle, there is a “peak” time of enjoyment, and there is the time of growing out of the morning circle. Refusing to participate or rejecting certain movement sequences may just be a sign that the child is “not yet there” or “not there anymore.” The way in which children pass through these three stages varies greatly. It is influenced by factors such as temperament, strength of will, development of the lower senses, and the individual way that the child approaches the world. The child may be shy or courageous, quiet or forthcoming, cautious or daring, gentle or forceful.

The criteria for healthy development would be the following:

• An awareness of body boundaries of self and others.

• Uprightness and comfort with forward movement

• Showing joy in life and signs of well-being

• Awareness of what is going on in the surroundings

• The ability to imitate.

The following examples assume that the child in question matches these criteria to some degree.

The child who is “not yet there”

A child may say after two minutes in the morning circle: “My legs are tired, I want to sit down.” Another child complains about tummy aches or headaches and wants to sit down when the preparations for the morning circle are on the way.

This may be an indication for the child not being comfortable as yet in moving with the group. Such a child should be allowed to sit down and watch until such time that he or she is eager and ready to join.

It may also be an indication for weakened life forces when children show signs of not being comfortable with an extended period of standing in an upright position. The childhood forces of levity do not counterbalance the physical weight sufficiently, and legs can become very tired and heavy then. This phenomenon of weakened life forces appears not only in the movement program, but all through the day. Steiner early childhood education — with its strong rhythmical features, extended creative play, and the emphasis on the nurturing quality of the domestic arts — is a wonderful help in strengthening these children in order to participate fully in the movement program at a later stage.

The child who is “not there anymore”

A child makes faces and bizarre movements, thus seeking and attracting the attention of other children. This child is very aware that he or she is counteracting the purposes of the morning circle, and observes what reaction this will provoke in the teacher.

Such a child is often very awake in the senses, advanced in verbal expression, and, even though not necessarily one of the older children, may have left the stage of the young child’s dreaming, participatory consciousness. Such a child is weakened in her ability to imitate, as the individualization and separation process has taken place too early. It is not always possible to reverse this process, and participation in the circle may not be beneficial for that child but only bring disturbance to the rest of the group. The child may enjoy instead an extra time with the helper in the group and benefit from a one-on-one situation.

There are the six-year-olds who move along energetically, change direction, speak the verse twice as fast as the rest of the group, and thus live out their newly gained mastery of limbs and speech.

These are the children who are growing out of the kindergarten at a regular pace. Usually these older children can be addressed verbally and they accept the authority of an adult calling them back into line. At some times during the day, one has to give them space to live out their abundance of energy and their joy in life.

The child who turns away

There are children who “drop out” when a downward movement is performed. These children let themselves fall down with a bang and land flat on their tummies, face down. Once they are there, they usually stay and need a hand to stand up again. They do not seem capable of performing a slow downward or upward movement.

While this phenomenon could be interpreted as caused by a lack of will, there also seems to be an element of regression into earlier stages of development, away from uprightness and away from the challenges of the world. One should think of those children with compassion, as they express in their language that being human and being upright is something they cannot fully cope with as yet. Given the fact that ego consciousness appears in children ever earlier today, this reaction of not coping is of no surprise. These children need patience and encouragement with a smile and a helpful gesture, but sometimes they just have to stay where they are and experience the group weaving the circle around them.

The child who seeks contact

There are children who use every chance to bump into each other, pull, push, tumble, or just roll on the floor. Any strong movement performed in the circle, such as the blowing of the wind or the galloping of a horse, is widely exaggerated and this will usually find some followers among the children.

Whenever I observed this phenomenon, I felt that it had to do with incarnating into modern civilization and with the destiny of the sense of touch and the experience of resistance. Modern life, with its tendency towards comfort and passivity, may not give sufficient stimulation to the sense of touch and not enough experience of boundaries. In bumping into each other, a meeting takes place in which children can work out their body borders and sense of self in a very physical way. This is of great importance for later social skills. It is an important question, how to incorporate experiences for the sense of touch in movement education, as well as in other parts of the kindergarten day.

2. Stagnation in Development

So far we have been looking at children who progress in their development, even though there are some apparent difficulties. These are temporary or limited to one area and usually would not adversely influence activities such as play, participation in artistic and domestic work, or following routines. Yet there are children whose entire being seems to be affected by some kind of hindrance, which can be described as a lack of ability to move freely. This has consequences for the entire life and being of this child at a given time. It is a stagnation in the physical, emotional, and social development caused by a complex mix of hindrances that have built up in the physical body and soul of the child.

It is common practice today to approach movement disturbances by trying to improve the bodily condition through appropriate exercises, which then hopefully have an impact on the improvement of the soul condition as well.

Steiner describes the body and the soul of the young child as not yet separated. What is done to the one is done to the other. However, he saw the educator’s task in the healing of the soul. Accordingly we may attempt to reach the developmental goal of the first seven years of life, the development of a healthy body, by working from the soul aspect. That means that any movement activity, any preparation of the environment, any artistic activity would then be done in such a way that it speaks to the soul of the child. The soul forces in the child’s body cause the movement of the etheric forces in and around the bodily organs. If it were the only the physical forces in the body that matter and not the soul-spiritual forces, why would we bother having a beautiful environment for the children, or beautiful images in our stories, or beautiful gestures in our morning circle? How would the sense impressions of beauty get to influence the child’s physical organs, if within the physical body there was not a soul-spiritual being to perceive them and react with inner movement?

I would like to encourage early childhood educators to plan movement programs in such a way that they reach and move the child’s inner being. This is crucial for the normally developing child, but even more so for those children in whom development has become stagnant. In my experience, these children cannot relate to the morning circle work and do not benefit from it without additional support. I would like to contend that the key to the effectiveness of this support lies in reaching these children’s inner being. There are two aspects to the inner being that need to be considered. The soul aspect, which has to do with consciousness of movement and the will to move, and the spirit aspect, which has to do with destiny as expressed in ways of moving and in the specific path of movement development. Here the teacher has to work closely together with practitioners of anthroposophical therapies.

In the following paragraphs, I will give a brief description of three groups of children with more general developmental problems that are related to or expressed in the realm of movement.

The withdrawn child

Henning Köhler (author of Working with Anxious, Nervous, and Depressed Children) has convincingly described how disturbances in the four lower senses can influence early development in all its aspects. In the withdrawn child, the sense of self-movement has not developed in the right way during the crucial time of the second and third year of life. Moving and exploring has either not been experienced enough or has not conveyed to the child the sense of freedom and confidence in mastering the body. On the contrary, the child’s consciousness registers movement as potentially dangerous and reacts with fear and withdrawal. Verbal encouragement as well as working with imitation and example in movement will not have much effect. Once the critical second and third year have passed, the achievement of confidence in movement will rely on the building up of trust and confidence on the soul level. This can be achieved by providing a close and warm human relationship with such a child and by observing with empathy the subtle behavioral cues that may help to unlock the door to helpful intervention and further development. These cues are likely to be found in the area of play as well as in the area of movement. A health professional may give advice on further assisting measures in the realm of caring for the specific bodily needs and in balancing bodily processes.

The irritable child

These children have been in the focus of attention for the last ten years. They are the ones who cause disruption in the life of the kindergarten and in home life. Some of the disruptive behavior described earlier in this article will apply to these children as well. They would be able and may be very willing to participate in the morning circle, but they get overstimulated and agitated so easily that it is impossible to hold them within the activity.

Henning Köhler has interpreted the developmental stagnation in these children as caused by a body boundary problem together with an improperly developed sense of touch. They are either “thick skinned” or “thin skinned.” In the first instance, to the children feel too enclosed in their bodies and will react with irritation and agitated behavior as a way to get out of the “prison.” In the second instance, the child does not have enough of a protective layer towards the environment, and any sense impression or touching is experienced as too much, even as painful. The child reacts with agitation in an attempt to override the sensation of discomfort or pain. The disturbance in the soul-body relationship of such a child relates back to the first year of life.

Therapy for these children needs to be based on a combination of medical treatment and an appropriate educational approach, which primarily takes away from these children any form of pressure and any form of overstimulation. Steiner early childhood education has to offer much for these children. By working with rhythms modeled on the balance between breathing in and breathing out, one can reduce pressure and enable the child to move from a contracted soul condition into a more open space of experience. The relationship with such a child needs to be loving and undemanding, but less close than with the withdrawn child.

The defiant child

There are children who resist both the morning circle and other aspects of a Steiner early childhood environment. At the age of four or five, they have around them already an attitude of mistrust and defiance, which one would rather expect from children approaching the age of puberty. These children may ridicule what is done in the circle or in storytelling, or they may show no interest in the toys or usual play activities of other children. They do not seem to have any specific problems with their general physical development or their senses; they are neither agitated nor withdrawn. Their stagnation lies in the soul realm, in not being able to move freely between sympathy and antipathy. They are living too strongly in isolation and the experience of being different than others.

Whether these children are a new phenomenon or have always been there can be disputed. Perhaps we just meet more of them now or have become more conscious of them.

Köhler describes his work with these children in his book Difficult Children: There is No Such Thing, especially in the chapter on the girl Mariella, whom he depicted with much empathy in a poem.

Why would a child psychologist use the art form of poetry rather than produce a professional case study to picture such a child? In meeting these children, we are experiencing the limits of a pedagogical or therapeutic relationship. All that is left is the meeting of two human beings. There is no benefit in following a set of guidelines or just applying methods of behavior modification. The work with these children is built on trusting that the genuine interest of the therapist in the soul-spiritual being of the child may lead to the dissolving of blockages and towards a new beginning.

These children challenge us kindergarten teachers to think about our rhythms, routines, and activities in the Steiner early childhood work, to think about what is important and what not, to experiment with new rules or less rules. Steiner speaks about the ego consciousness appearing as early as at eighteen months of age and the ego becoming stronger as human evolution continues. These children with their strong ego presence provide us with the task of penetrating with our soul faculties more deeply into the secrets of the human being. This will enable us to develop an education that provides the early-individualized child with the right environment and the right relationships for the development of their inherent strength in a positive way.

References:

Ellersiek, Wilma. Giving Love – Bringing Joy: Hand Gesture Games and Lullabies in the Mood of the Fifth. Spring Valley, NY: Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, 2003. (Two further volumes with games for Spring and Summer, Autumn and Winter have also been published and the fourth volume is in preparation.)

Blythe, Sally Goddard. The Well Balanced Child: Movement and Early Learning. Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press, 2004.

König, Karl. Being Human. NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989.

Köhler, Henning. Difficult Children: There is No Such Thing. Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2003.

———. Working with Anxious, Nervous, and Depressed Children. Fair Oaks, CA: Association of Waldorf Schools in North America (AWSNA), 2001.

Spitalny, Stephen. “Ringtime as Pedagogical Opportunity – Some Thoughts.” In Gateways 30, 1996, republished in Star Weavings.

Steiner, Rudolf. The Essentials of Education. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.

———. The Foundations of Human Experience. NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1996.

———. The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity. NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1992.