Unsettled

(You will have to bear with me here. I have lots going on and came up with this cute little structure for the post that will not let me cut anything out! So read on, all 1,400 words, if you dare. If not, I won’t blame you — aren’t blog posts supposed to be no [...]

Pride

At the beginning of the school year, I wrote about SillyBilly’s classroom. About how I was unhappy with certain aspects of the pedagogy and curriculum, and how I was worried about competitiveness at such an early age.
Some of those concerns have died down or disappeared. SillyBilly is now fine with D’Nealian handwriting. He still loves [...]

Worthy Role Models?

In elevating to a level of demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation. We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring.
–Rabbi Benjamin Blech, professor of philosophy of law at Yeshiva University, on the downfall of [...]

Saturday Steiner

So, I spent the morning doing wet-on-wet painting with a roomful of other Waldorf mamas at Melisa’s house. It was so great to meet people on this path, learning as we go. We nibbled yummy snacks, did some beautiful paintings (Sorry, I left my camera at home and left the wet paintings there! Photos next [...]

Self-efficacy

In the book about the psychological roots of dogmatism that I am currently editing, the author brought in the concept of self-efficacy, which is described by Albert Bandura (who developed the concept) as “people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives.”
I recall learning [...]

Structure

A while back we had lots of conversation about structure, regimentation, and authority. I’m finally getting back to it now, and thought I could share some concepts from Waldorf education and anthroposophy that relate to these aspects of parenting.
Rhythm
Waldorf methods, especially in the early childhood period, emphasize rhythm. The thought is that the child is [...]

School Days

I volunteered in SillyBilly’s classroom this last Wednesday, but I wanted to let it percolate a while before writing about it. It is just so not Waldorf, that I hesitate to write about all of this, for fear of alienating my loyal readers!

One big impression was that the classroom was really, really full. Full of [...]

A Reply to Nana

In yesterday’s post, Nana left a comment responding to my anxieties about sending my kids to private schools that are not Waldorf:
hokay! I’m an outsider here and will probably cause some apoplexy for some of you. Does anyone think it odd that a system (and don’t try to deny that it is, indeed, a system) [...]

Parzival’s Mother

The medieval German Romance Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, is read widely in Waldorf high schools and teacher training courses, as a rich allegory for the modern human’s struggle for inner development (or as Rudolf Steiner put it, the development of the consciousness soul). (See here for an interesting article on how the story of [...]

Teeth and Rebirth

SillyBilly has had a permanent tooth erupting for the last few weeks. It was there, coming up quite shyly behind his slightly loose milk tooth, right in the bottom front. Today the dentist pulled that little shy milk tooth, plus the two next to it for good measure, to allow the permanent teeth to settle [...]