Gerber, Pikler, Steiner, RIE, Loczy, Waldorf

Dear Families,

First, remember that you as parent & child families are invited to our Michaelmas celebration as guests (other grades and the nursery and kindergartens will be making food for all) next Monday, September 29 at the fields behind the school. Our school's newsletter, which I have forwarded on to families who do not already receive it, has a schedule for the evening and background information for the festival. Feel free to choose to come to, say, the first part of the celebration and leave before the play and the bonfire. Some young children (my 5 and half year old son, for example) may find the dragon portrayed by the 6th grade to be too intense during the play, and you may want to wander to the other side of the school and pick berries or the like if it seems best. I also realize that the bonfire and singing may push into bedtime routines. At the same time, if it works for your schedule and you are willing to be flexible if this or that part of the event doesn't quite seem just right for an infant or toddler, it is a well-attended and lively gathering--and in this manner provides a good chance to get a sense of the Whidbey Island Waldorf School community.
Last week's article on conflict had a few references to Magda Gerber and Emmi Pikler, and I think it would be helpful for me to provide more background information. This article about the lives and work of Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber is by Susan Weber, founder of Sophia's Hearth in Keene, NH. Although Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, provided a wealth of information about a panoply of topics, when he helped start the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart in 1918, the school began with grade 1. It soon became clear to Steiner that it would support the movement to develop Waldorf kindergartens. Although he did give some insights to the founding kindergarten teachers, he died before the first kindergartens opened. The initial Waldorf impulse did not include nursery classes and parent & child classes or care situations for infant and toddlers. As the 20th century came to a close, and it was ever more apparent that there was a need for nourishing and nurturing care and community for very young children and their families in light of Waldorf education, master kindergarten teachers such as Susan Weber and Rena Osmer (now of Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA) travelled the country to see if there were existing models of infant and toddler education that had wisdom to share with Waldorf early childhood educators. The article by Weber describes her "discovery" of RIE. Weber has gone on to weave the wisdom of Magda Gerber and Emmi Pikler into her vision for the creation of a place--"Sophia's Hearth"--that would provide care for children with or without their parents from infancy to age three, along with midwifery services, as inspired by Waldorf education.
While it is hard to summarize the life's work of Pikler and Gerber in a few sentences, here are some of their insights that help us most.
1. Rather than treating times of care such as diapering, feeding, dressing, and bathing as time away from playing with or teaching or enjoying our infants and toddlers, we can use these together times as times of attentiveness, learning, and bonding--leaving both child and caregiver filled with joy and ready to play or work independently or in proximity.
2. We can as much as possible allow infants and toddlers the joy of achieving gross motor milestones such as rolling, crawling, sitting, walking, climbing, balancing, swinging, and jumping in their own way and in their own time. We provide them a loving atmosphere with lots of time to explore and play.
3. As Magda Gerber says, "Who knows better how to be a baby than a baby?" Allow the child to explore and show interest in this or that. We do not need to inundate young children with lots of toys or educational materials. We provide attention and love and a safe environment for children to discover the world.
4. Tell your child what you are going to do (e.g. "I am going to pick you up now.") from the very first.
Although Rudolf Steiner is much more overt about the spiritual elements of his picture of child development, careful reading of Gerber and Pikler shows that they, too, have a profoundly respectful and spiritual understanding of infants and toddlers. I am in the process of ordering books by or inspired by Gerber and Pikler for our parent's library at the school. These include Dear Parent: Treating Infants with Respect and Your Self-Confident Baby by Magda Gerber, 1, 2, 3, The Toddler Years from the Santa Cruz Toddler Center, and selections from Emmi Pikler's work translated into English in an academic bulletin. Emmi Pikler's research from Hungary had a powerful influence on child development research in Europe. Because Dr. Spock's book on childcare was perceived as so all-encompassing, American publishers were loathe to translate Pikler's works into English during her lifetime. You can learn more about Gerber and the parent & child classes she founded (Resources for Infant Educarers) at www.rie.org and of the ongoing work of the child develpment research of Emmi Pikler at www.pikler.org. You can learn more about Susan Weber's work bringing together Pikler, Gerber, and Waldorf at www.sophiashearth.org.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde