You Are Your Child's First Teacher, Third Edition: Encouraging Your Child's Natural Development from Birth to Age Six
336
You Are Your Child's First Teacher, Third Edition: Encouraging Your Child's Natural Development from Birth to Age Six
336eBook
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Overview
Today’s society often pressures us into overstimulating young children with flashcards, workbooks, videos, and electronic gadgets in a well-meaning attempt to give them a head start. But children are not little adults—they learn and grow in radically different ways at different ages, and what we do to help could actually hurt instead.
Some of the most important learning years happen before your child reaches school. In You Are Your Child’s First Teacher, respected Waldorf educator Rahima Baldwin Dancy explains the different stages of learning that children go through from birth to age six, giving you the wisdom and understanding to enrich your child’s natural development in the right way at the right time.
A trusted classic for over twenty years, this newly revised edition contains updated resources and additional information on discipline, early childhood programs, toilet training, using home life as curriculum, and more. From language and cognitive development to appropriate toys and nourishing your child’s artistic abilities, Dancy speaks up for a rational approach to child-rearing, one that helps children be children while we fulfill our important role as parents and first teachers.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781607743033 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed |
| Publication date: | 08/14/2012 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 1,005,832 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
How Children Learn in the First Seven Years
The child between birth and age seven experiences the world primarily through her body. The senses are completely open, without filters or buffers, beginning at the moment of birth. The newborn continues to experience each sensation with her entire body and being. This is easy to see in the infant, who is all hunger or the pain in her stomach, or all the blissful sensations of nursing that cause her eyes to roll back and her toes to curl. The three-year-old, as well, is much more open to impressions of the world coming through the senses than is an adult. We can even observe that children’s eyes stay open longer between blinking than do an adult’s.
Two things are happening through sense impressions from birth through age seven. The child is both learning about the world and being shaped by the impressions she takes in, just as a sculptor might work with clay. This phenomenon does not occur very often with adults, who are less open and responsive to the environment than young children, but we can see a similar phenomenon in the molding of the features that the elements of light and weather etch into the face of a seaman or farmer.
This “sculpting” effect of impressions on a young child’s developing organs, which was pointed out by Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s, was not meant to be taken metaphorically. Current research has demonstrated that this is physically true for the young child’s brain, which is still forming, not just growing larger. According to an article in Newsweek, “‘Only 15 years ago,’ reports the Families and Work Institute in the just-released study ‘Rethinking the Brain,’ ‘neuroscientists assumed that by the time babies are born, the structures of their brains [had been] genetically determined.’ But by last year researchers knew that was wrong. Instead, early childhood experiences exert a dramatic and precise impact, physically determining how the neural circuits of the brain are wired.”13 The second thing the child is doing through sense impressions is learning about the world. Through the body the baby learns about near and far, attainable and unobtainable, as when she learns that a spoon can be grasped but the flowers on the table remain out of reach. As she begins to learn the names of things, memory, language, and thinking develop so she can give expression to her own and the world’s emerging complexity. When the child reaches age three and beyond, what is taken in with the senses is also transformed and comes out again in the creative play and imagination of the young child.
The child’s major task in the first year of life is taking control of the body. Sitting, crawling, and walking are quickly followed by running, jumping, climbing, and other feats of dexterity as fine and gross motor coordination increase. Everything is done for the first time—using a shovel, sitting on a seesaw, cutting with a scissors—and then it is done over and over again. The child loves to move and to imitate, learning through doing something with someone else or after seeing it done. And the young child loves repetition, hearing the same story over and over or playing the same circle game, no matter how simple or boring it may seem to an adult.
The young child is also learning about the world emotionally, learning the fundamental lessons about trust and attachment, and later lessons about sharing and consequences. It has long been known that babies and young children in institutions where they are denied the love of a primary caregiver suffer “failure to thrive syndrome” and can die, even though their physical needs are being met. Now PET scans of the brains of orphans who have been institutionalized since shortly after birth show that the temporal lobes, which regulate emotions and receive input from the senses, are nearly quiescent.14 Such children suffer emotional and cognitive problems resulting not only from a lack of stimulation but also from a lack of love and bonding.
The baby is love. Bonding is less a process of babies learning to love their parents—because children will love even parents who abuse them—than of parents establishing the connection that will enable them to make room in their busy lives for another being who needs attention twenty-four hours a day! Children enter the world with a great deal of love and trust. They are not yet able to perceive good and bad, but they take everything as good and appropriate to absorb and unconsciously imitate.
Our Task as First Teachers
One of our primary tasks as our children’s first teachers is to provide them with impressions of the world that are appropriate for them to take in and copy. This means guarding and protecting them from sensory overload in a world of urban frenzy, and surrounding them with experiences that teach them about the world in a gentle way by letting them do things directly themselves and later act them out in their play.
We also need to strive to model appropriate behavior—that our emotions are under control with our children, that we don’t spank them while admonishing, “Don’t hit!” and so forth. Our actions speak louder than our words with the young child, who cannot help but imitate. Through us, children learn whether or not their initial love and trust in the world were well founded.
Another of our main tasks is to understand our children’s physical, emotional, and mental development so we can guard it and let it unfold without hindrance. No one would want to stop a child from walking, but it is also something that we don’t have to worry about teaching the child. The child will walk when she is ready, as a natural expression of the mastery of her own body—the development of balance and the achievement of verticality in the face of gravity that has kept her horizontal for so many months. There is a task for us—to guard, to protect, to understand, to share, and to enjoy with the child the unfolding of his or her abilities. We can do things to enhance abilities by providing an example and allowing the young child to express them freely from out of his own being. We can also note discrepancies in development and areas at risk and take gentle steps to help ensure balance. But with the young child much more is achieved indirectly through example and imitation than head-on through lessons.
No matter what our family situation or lifestyle, we as parents are our children’s first teachers. The importance of what they learn in the home and through their relationship with us cannot be underestimated. By understanding how children develop and some things we can do to help their balanced and healthy growth—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—we will not only help our children but also increase our own enjoyment and growth as parents.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Revised EditionAcknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
You Are Your Child’s First Teacher
A Unique Opportunity • Parents’ Dilemma Today • Cultural Dilemmas • Lack of Support for Mothering • Children Are Not Tiny Adults! • The Child’s Changing Consciousness • The Role of the Child’s Individuality • How Children Learn in the First Seven Years • Our Task as First Teachers • Trusting Ourselves • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 2
Home Life as the Basis for All Learning
Home Life Is Undervalued in Our Culture • Why Is It So Difficult to Be Home with Children Today? • Consciously Creating a Home • Four Levels of Home Life • Home Life as the Curriculum for the Young Child • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 3
Birth to Three: Growing Down and Waking Up
Growing into the Body • What Is Your Baby Like Between Six Weeks and Eight Months of Age? • Learning to Walk • The Second Year: Mastering Language • The Emergence of Thinking • The Young Child’s Senses • The Emerging Sense of Self • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 4
Helping Your Baby’s Development
Stimulating and Protecting the Sensitivity of the Newborn • What Is It Like Being with a Newborn? • What Is It Like from Months Two to Twelve? • Physical Development • The Development of Intelligence • Emotional Development • Language Development • Toys for the First Year • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 5
Helping Your Toddler’s Development
Encouraging Balanced Development • Dealing with Negative Behavior • Encouraging the Development of Language and Understanding • The Beginnings of Imaginative Play • Providing a Rich Environment for Your Toddler • Toys and Equipment • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 6
Rhythm in Home Life
Creating Rhythm in Daily Life • The Rhythm of the Week • Celebrating Festivals and the Rhythm of the Year • Celebrating Birthdays • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 7
Discipline and Other Parenting Issues
The Question of Discipline • Why Does Parenting Take So Much Energy? • Can You Work toward Rhythm with an Infant? • What about Weaning? • Crying Babies • What about Going Back to Work? • How Long Do Children’s Senses Need Protecting? • Toilet Training • Separation Anxiety and “Helicopter Parenting” • Cabin Fever • Other Parenting Issues • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 8
Nourishing Your Child’s Imagination and Creative Play
Three Stages of Play • Experiencing the World through Play • The Importance of Play in Intellectual Development • Ways to Encourage Your Child’s Creative Play • Nourishing Your Child’s Imaginative Play through Stories • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 9
Developing Your Child’s Artistic Ability
Children’s Drawings and Development • The Experience of Color • Watercolor Painting with Young Children • Metamorphosis in Later Stages of Life • Modeling with Beeswax • Making Things with Your Children • Freeing Your Own Inner Artist • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 10
Encouraging Your Child’s Musical Ability
Make a Joyful Noise • Music and Cognitive Development • Singing with Your Child • Movement Games and Fingerplays • Pentatonic Music and the “Mood of the Fifth” • What about Music and Dance Lessons? • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 11
Cognitive Development and Early Childhood Education
Academic vs. Play-Based Learning • Why Not Introduce Academics Early? • The Value of Preschool • Evaluating Early Childhood Programs • LifeWays and Waldorf Early Childhood Programs • LifeWays and Waldorf in the Home • The Value of Mixed-Age Programs • When Is Your Child Ready for First Grade? • What Happens Around Age Seven? • Beginning Academic Work: The Waldorf Approach • What about the Advanced or Gifted Child? • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 12
Common Parenting Questions: From Television to Immunizations
Preparation for Life • Computers • Balanced Development • Television • Toys • Video Games • Immunizations and Childhood Illnesses • The Sick Child • What Makes Children So Different from One Another? • Religion and Young Children • Recommended Resources
CHAPTER 13
Help for the Journey
Conscious Parenting Is a Process • In Conclusion
Appendix: Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education
Notes
Bibliography
Index