"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...

I have been studying anthroposophy for many years, both in its application to education, as well as spirituality and human nature as a whole. 

"Every education is self-education, and as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favorable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destinies.”

The changes at age 9 are very different from those at any other stage. I found the changes at 6 (traversed it personally 5 times) much easier, but it does give you some prep for 9. The changes at 12, 14, 16 are way easier than age 9 (at least in my experience.) I sort of think of some of the changes like this... If 6 is leaving Eden, the changes at 6 are often sadness and frustration at the loss of being small, the changes at 9, are a follow up to that. At 9, they are smacked with some of the horror of the world, they are mad about their new found independent feelings but they can't do a ton (in their eyes) about their surroundings.

I HAVE found that parents who struggle have kids that struggle more, but that being said MOST kids struggle to some degree. Most get mad, frustrated, irritable, self righteous, indignant and just plain rude at times during the change. The outbursts have a lot to do with home life, exposure to negative people AND in my opinion, temperament.

My melancholic...

I have heard this from many over the years. I try hard to not chuckle because when I started down this path there really was very little in the way of support. Eric Fairman's guides were about the only guides out there unless you wanted to spend hundreds of dollars on one of the two big companies. 

That money was never in my budget so I would each summer buy Fairman's newest book and write what we would do for the school year - it would take me a good two months to get it all in place but then I was set. I remember being so thankful for what was there. I also took this time to really get to know me, I was on a spiritual journey and I realized that Waldorf was as much about healing myself as it was about educating my children. I took the time to read Steiner and to formulate what would later become our books.

Waldorf isn't supposed to be easy, but it is WORTH IT. 

With anything in our lives that is worth having, it is worth working for. 

You were drawn to Waldorf...