Acceptance, Hope, Abandoning Hope, Book Reviews

Dear Rosebud and Dewdrop Families,

      First, I offer this chapter from The Blessing of a Skinned Knee entitled, "The Blessing of Acceptance."  When Wendy Mogel wrote her book about using Jewish wisdom for sensible parenting, she wanted to entitle it The Blessing of a Broken Arm but was told it would not sell well.  I was introduced to Mogel's writing during a talk by Jack Petrash, a veteran Waldorf teacher in that other Washington on the East Coast.  Petrash asked how many in the audience were over 30 and then congratulated us for surviving even though we drank from hoses and ate snow.  Petrash and Mogel do a lot to free us from parents from feeling the need to be perfect, make things perfect for our children, or make our children perfect (I recommend reading The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller about this final topic; Miller argues that most of us as adults are still trying to be image of perfection our parents held for us).  In Waldorf Education:  Teaching from the Inside Out, Petrash clarified for me the need to realize that as a teacher, my strengths are also my weaknesses, that I have no hope of being a perfect teacher, and that my best goal is to find myself erring slightly in a couple of directions as I move toward a dynamic equilibrium.  Specifically, Petrash writes that some teachers will be very good at attending to every student need, but this does not lead to effective teaching for the entire class; interruptions can be constant.  Indeed, part of learning to be an effective teacher is learning when to ignore the ostensible need of one or a few ("No," "Not now," "Later") so that the ship of the classroom can stay on course (my metaphor; I use it in a few toddler specific pieces such as "Planning Ahead" and "Weathering the Storm When Your Child is Having a Tantrum").  BUT, teachers can become so good at keeping the curriculum going that they ignore too many individual needs of students.  My reading of Petrash is that all teachers (and all parents, since we are our children's first teachers) are striving to find the right balance between form and freedom, authoritative guidance and loving understanding, and the like.

      Recently a friend lent me When Things Fall Apart:  Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron.  The book is wonderful, and it helps me articulate a frustration I have with some otherwise helpful books on teaching or parenting such as Siblings Without Rivalry.  Chodron shares the meditative practice in which we abandon hope that things will get better or become perfect; rather than leading us into depression, this guides us to an aware and awake presence in the here and now (where our children need us to be).  While, yes, we should be helping our children when conflicts become stuck (I'm not advocating for teachers or parents to allow chaos or bullying to rage without checks and balances), to hope for siblings or classmates with no rivalry sets parent, teacher, and child all up for failure.  Many otherwise great books about Waldorf early childhood education, similarly, present such a perfect picture of what goes on in the classroom or home in which a parent has exactly the right nature table, silks, and pieces of wood (not that these things aren't wonderful) that they can, I find, turn some or all of us off because the ideal they portray seems unattainable.  I admire in Michaela Gloeckler's artricle on Non-Verbal Education (from last week's post) the comfort she has with messes, swear words, and imperfections.  When you read a book and the description of classroom or home life seems too perfect, remember Gloeckler and imagine that there are probably messy parts of the classroom or home, too (without trying to be sinister about it; indeed, we want to have loving kindness toward imperfection).

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde