Hopefully you have been keeping up with our series and by now you know that rhythm is much more than just painting on a certain day and going to the market on a certain day. Rhythm is the foundation for living. It defines who you are, how you respond to things and also how you are raising your children. Your rhythm will probably look pretty different than mine - it should - mine can be a guide as you get started, but over time you should create your own. This helps you to own it, love it and most of all uphold it! It will likely change as your family changes, this keeps it from getting stale but also helps you to tailor it to your family.

Today, I want you to grab a pen and paper. Better yet, get a pencil. Do you have one that you love? I am an office supply nerd. I love things that are just MINE :) Pretty paper. Awesome pen & pencil. Good stuff. 

First, make a list of all the chores you need to get done, big and small. I am here to tell you that you may NOT wait until your...

This one is tough.  Mental health.  What does that mean exactly?

Good mental health doesn't mean that you don't have bad days.  It doesn't mean you are the perfect mother.  It doesn't mean even than you are medication free. Good mental health starts with being a proactive participant in your own care.  It means knowing when to get help.  It means allowing yourself to feel pain.  It also means knowing how to not throw poo.  Let's talk about poo.  If you are new to our work then you might be pretty grossed out - stick with me.  Poo is gross.  If it gets on you then you can't wait to get it off.  It stinks.  It stains. It is the last thing that we want on us, our shoes, our clothes... what about our loved ones?  We don't like them to have poo on them either. Poo can come in many forms.  I am talking about emotional poo.  Emotional poo is the stuff that comes out when we aren't taking good mental care of...

This is where we have to be super honest with ourselves.  Are we really committed? How badly do we want this?  And if we really do but we are still failing (or just not meeting the mark we are setting) then we have to realize it begins and ends with us.  That doesn't have to be an ugly realization, it just is what it is.  We are made up of our temperament, our past, our current situation and our dreams for the future.  We have to some how make all of those sync.

We have talked a lot about temperament parenting, but I think it needs even more talk.  In the Waldorf world we often focus on our children and neglect to think about our journey with temperament too.  Temperament shouldn't be a label, it is another one of those things that just is.  There is a tendency to lump people in these categories and what I like to focus on for adults is active work on being the healthiest part of your temperament.  Let's run through a few for review, you...

"How do we as parents, in today's complicated, frantic world, create an atmosphere of regularity, consistency and stability? 

How best can we nurture our young child's capacities for peace, creativity, ingenuity?

The answer is simple, though not always easy. We do it by supporting their life-building will energies with the basic elements of Waldorf early education: physical and emotional warmth; a wholesome, nourishing diet; an atmosphere of beauty and reverence; consistent daily rhythms; calm, loving authority and guidance. 

While each of these elements is important, appropriate rhythm and authority are particularly crucial in developing what Steiner called the "will energies." They also are particularly challenging to manifest today. " ~ Marcy Axness, PhD (Renewal Magazine, A Journal for Waldorf Education) 

When I work with families, one of the hardest things for moms to come to terms with is how to hold the space and proper authority.  Most of us either...

This might be the hardest post of this series.  I have spent days in meditation trying to decide exactly the right words to say.  Before I begin, please do not assume offense on anything.  I always try to come from a loving and unbiased place, so if you hear judgment in what I write, come back and read it again because that is not the intent.

My single friends.  I want to talk to you first.  I was a single mom for a time.  During that time I didn't want to talk about or really hear from those with a healthy marriage.  It wasn't my reality.  I only wanted to deal with my reality.  My reality was not a lot of sleep and what seemed like a constant stream of conflict with my ex-husband and all the while trying to homeschool and figure out how to make money. It was a lot of pressure.  If you are in this spot, my heart goes out to you.  In reflecting on that time, I am also reminded of the very sweet things. The fact that I didn't...

Now many people want to know what on earth God has to do with their child and their rhythm and their ability to homeschool. Everything. We are living in a time when reliance on the Spirit is seen as weakness and we are sold the lie that science has it all. Steiner could feel this lie even in his own time and spoke tirelessly of the connection between the spirit world and science.  We have to come to a place that reveres both.  Many of us have been indoctrinated in the public school system where God wasn't allowed so it will take time to bring those pieces together for you.  What I am asking from you right now is just that you will follow part 1 and be teachable.

A friend once asked me, "You really do pray about almost everything, don't you?" She is a dear friend and we went to church together.  She was impressed by my willingness to just hand it all over to God. Really though... what is our choice? We can fight about it. We can scream and yell about it. We...

Someone once told me, "If Dr.Wayne Dyer can be called the father of intention, then Melisa you are the mother of rhythm and the guardian of the will."  Maybe I am.  It sounds a bit silly. I have written about rhythm so much over the years that it becomes second nature to talk about and sometimes I worry that younger moms think "yeah well that crazy Melisa doesn't know how busy my son is!" or "she must have easy children!"  Now those that have been with us for years know that NEITHER is the case!

One of my biggest aims in supporting homeschooling families is helping husbands and wives communicate and relate to each other.  By finding common ground, gaps can be bridged and partners can build some depth in their relationship - depth that meets the needs of both Mom and Dad.  Most of the time when a mom tells me that Dad isn't supportive of Steiner/Waldorf/homeschooling, it is just a symptom of a much larger problem.  There is a big hole in how they communicate and Steiner just makes that gap seem bigger than ever.

My husband, Erik, is a huge film buff.  He's your average man who loves to see things blowing up (that's the 10 year-old boy that lives inside most men), but he's also got a desire to understand where the filmmaker was coming from.  What we found is how Steiner's indications are alive and well in many of the films that he enjoys.  This morning I was relating to him an excerpt from "Handwork Indications" in...

WHY do we teach what we do for each grade?
WHEN do we place children for their ages?
WHAT about moving ahead and holding back?

Waldorf is much different than anything you have ever experienced.
You must suspend all you know about how the mainstream education system. All you know about grades, what age your child should go to school and whether or not they are gifted (or delayed) EVERYTHING. It is only when you do this that you can be fully ready to understand Waldorf. Ready?

Suppose that you can look beyond the physical being standing before you and really understand your child's development - more than that, suppose you can learn to understand what they need at each stage of your child's development. Many of us are attracted to Waldorf because of early childhood and how gentle it is, how it seems to meet the child just where they are...we stay in love with this model until our neighbor or sister in law gets ready to send their child to preschool at age four...then we...

Family history is one of those things that Steiner didn't really talk about in the lectures given to the first teachers.  In his time, many extended families still lived near each other and children had aunts, uncles, cousins all about. Today we are a much more fragmented society.  There are times in our lives where as adults, we relish in that "buffer zone" we have created, some of us because we don't get along with our families and others because jobs or necessity has pulled us away from the place we grew up. 

As a child, my birth father was in the Army and I moved a lot, I missed grandparents and other extended family and then as my parents divorced when I was young, my mother and I lived in a place that was 1000 miles from my nearest relative.  I craved family.  I wanted to sit at the feet of my grandmother and hear stories of her childhood, listen to my grandfather talk about "courting" my grandmother and the early years of their marriage.  He told...