Moments for Connection with our Children by Darlene Denis-Friske

We felt this article was well worth a share to our blog! 

We have probably all heard the term ‘quality time’ in connection with parenting our children, for example: try to spend quality time with your child.

As a Child and Youth Counselor, I have always felt a little nervous about this concept because I fear it has misleading implications. In our busy lives, where time is often at a premium, attempting to reserve or schedule what we perceive is going to be ‘quality time’ might seem like a great idea except for one thing: is our child accepting of our agenda?

I often speak with parents who feel overwhelmed and puzzled by a child who appears to seek their attention through what they feel are negative behaviors: But I take him to hockey, baseball and swimming! I don’t know what else I can reasonably do with him! I’m exhausted trying to keep-up!

Instead of attempting to increase the amount of scheduled quality time with a child, I propose something far more basic and fundamental: increase the quality of simple moments everyday whereby you slow down to connect with your child.

Parenting is not about what you do with your child, it is about who you are to your child.

Dr. Neufeld often discusses the importance of the simple energies of delight, enjoyment and warmth within the attachment space between parent and child. In what ways do I express delight in my children, enjoyment of them, and warmth in how I am with them? These are vital questions that I stop and ask myself every once and a while, especially when things feel stressed, negative or ‘out-of-sync’ in my family. These are the very qualities that I seek to bring into the daily space between my children and myself.

Stop, as you do the laundry, to sit on the floor for a few minutes of undivided attention with your children; smile or hug them spontaneously as you fix the car; sit with them and show interest as they surf the net; join them in coloring; ask them about their interests; touch them gently as you pass by to acknowledge you’re thinking about them; turn the radio up and dance a song together; give them a role in your important chore; play a three-minute chase-and-tickle game; go for a walk around the block together; play follow the leader for a few turns; plop on the couch beside them for a bit; join them in a video-game, bring them a nice warm cup of hot chocolate, help them to complete the chore they have been avoiding all day; turn supper into a picnic; light some candles at suppertime, watch a movie together, engage in belly laughs and fits of giggles with them… the list is endless.

Instead of spreading yourself thin to schedule chunks of ‘quality time’, you will be investing your energy in spreading important moments throughout the day whereby you simply connect with your child.

It never ceases to amaze me how sometimes, only after the fact and in reflection of something that already happened, I realize just how rich the moment was with my child. It hits me freshly in the aftermath that I never could have scheduled or planned the spontaneous “quality” of the interaction… I could only leave myself open to its possibility as I brought my delight, enjoyment and warmth into the space between myself and my child.

~By Darlene Denis-Friske posted on The Neufeld Institute blog

The Role of Movement in Learning

The Role of Movement in Learning

How does movement in the body relate to learning?  Walking into any Waldorf classroom at certain times of the day you will likely see children jumping rope, dancing, doing activities with bean bags, or balls, or other activities related to movement.  You may wonder why so much emphasis on movement and not more time doing seat work? Many tend to think that the activity of learning is limited to the mind, as if the body’s only role in learning is only to carry the mind around where it needed to go. On the contrary, the body is as much involved with learning as the head is.  

In her book, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head, Carla Hannaford writes:

Thinking and learning are not all in our head.  On the contrary, the body plays an integral part in all our intellectual processes from our earliest moments in utero right through to old age.  It is our body’s senses that feed the brain environmental information with which to form an understanding of the world and from which to draw when creating new possibilities.  And it is our movements that not only express knowledge and facilitate greater cognitive function, they actually grow the brain as they increase in complexity. Our entire brain structure is intimately connected to and grown by the movement mechanisms within our body.

In my role as Education Support teacher, my goal for students is to achieve “body-free thinking”.  Because movement of the body and thinking are so interdependent,  if there is any hindrance in the physical body of a student, this may translate as a setback to learning.  This means that the student is having to unconsciously expend extra time and energy on getting their body to function the right way (whether to take in new information through their senses, or through expression of their understanding) that that energy takes away from the body’s ability to support efficient and fluent learning.  There are two important areas I look at in a student who may be having academic difficulties - how are this child’s foundational senses developing?  Has the child retained any early developmental movements?

The healthy functioning of the senses is everything to learning, and when we speak of the senses, we don’t just mean the senses from the perspective of the five basic senses we are used to hearing about (sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing) but also the senses which are foundational to all learning and begin developing in utero; they are: self-movement (or proprioception), sense of life (or well-being), and balance (or vestibular).  When one of these is not fully functioning or developing, learning cannot take place to its highest capacity. 

Take reading for example:  we sit upright when reading to view the page, we hold the book, our eyes move from left to right to view the words, as the eyes take in what they see, the brain decodes the shapes of the letters and connects them to phonemes (or sounds) and then reorganizes those sounds into words, which then become concepts, and which then connects to memory, etc.  Imagine now that the vestibular system of a student is not fully developed, this child will be struggling with step one (sitting upright) even before the eyes meet the page and have a chance to take in the letters they are looking at.  The body will be so preoccupied with trying to bring the balance system into harmony that the child is having to expend much more than the usual amount of energy on trying to focus the eyes on the letters on the page that they are soon exhausted by the effort and reading becomes a dreaded chore rather than a challenge.  

Another obstacle to the learning process is the retention of early movement patterns. In the normal course of a young child's development, starting in utero, goes through stages of developmental reflexes, most of which should be integrated by age three, and in some cases, transformed into more sophisticated reflexes that we use for the rest of our lives.  Sometimes, for many different reasons, the reflexes are retained, rather than integrated, and they create unconscious responses in the body that hinder fluid movement and “body-free” learning. Many of the reflexes are related to the baby’s experience of crawling on hands and knees.  Imagine the young child, shortly before they begin to crawl, rocking back and forth on hands and knees.  This is one of the early experiences where the movement of the body is training the eye’s ability to see near and far; as the baby rocks back, they look down, as they rock forward, they look up and so the vision becomes more sophisticated.  If a child, on the other hand, skips this phase of crawling you may later on discover that this child has problems with reading because the eyes have not yet fully developed that capacity to adjust their near and far vision, and thus they eyes have a hard time making sense of letters on a page. 

The good news is that there are ways to help remediate any such challenges, to remove the hindrances some children (or adults) experience and to help children reach their full potential of confident, fluid movement and body-free learning.  Not to mention there are many things parents can do at home to help support the healthy development of the senses and early movement patterns in young children:

• For babies, avoid the “container shuffle” (walkers, swings, bouncers, carriers) and allow lots of floor time; click here (https://starfishtherapies.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/avoiding-the-container-shuffle-with-your-baby/) for more information on this topic

• Child-directed, unstructured free play (especially outdoors)

• Doing chores (especially those involving “heavy work”) - sweeping, mopping, wiping down tables, raking, shoveling, washing dishes, etc.

• Allowing children to freely explore their environment (let them climb trees and get dirty!)

 At the end of the day we can be grateful to our bodies for the experiences of the world they have helped us collect and convey to the brain for learning to take place.  Einstein said, “Learning is experience.  Everything else is just information.”  Healthy cultivation of the body and meaningful movement will contribute to rich learning experiences that last us a lifetime.

~Submitted by Erin McNamara, Education Support Teacher

A Waldorf Advent Garden

It is the time of year where we feel that our days growing shorter and the darkness of night coming more into our waking hours. As we move closer to the Winter solstice and the Christmas season, we must remember that the light shines in us always.

In Waldorf schools across the world, Advent Gardens are created by the teachers and communities for the children. Each garden is unique as is each community, but common threads run through them all. A sacred space is created by forming a large spiral of evergreen bows which frame a path into the center where one bright candle light stands alone. Children, one by one, walk the path with an unlit candle until they come to the center where they light their own candle from the glowing flame in the darkness. As they move back out of the spiral path they find a place for their own light to shine and leave it there to add to the light of the world. When all the children have placed their candles along the spiral path they stand together and marvel at the beauty and brightness of many small lights united together.

At our school we are blessed with a glorious abundance of nature forces surrounding us. For the Early Childhood families, we create our spiral pathway outside to experience both the darkness and light.*  As children in the early years experience themselves as part of whole world around them and as part of the family who loves them dearly, we let each child take their own special light to lead their family through the dark path. With joy the child receives the passing of the flame in the center of the spiral. Then the child looks for a special place, all of his or her own, to place their little light into the garden. With reverence each person watches as the Advent Garden becomes brighter and brighter until the whole spiral is glowing with warmth and light.

In our busy world it is not often that any of us can experience true peace, reverent quiet and inner joy. The Advent Garden celebration is an outward expression of our individual selves gifting and sharing a small part of us to make the world brighter.  All early childhood families are invited to join us for this magical celebration of light.
 
~Submitted by Beth Krause, Thimbleberry Teacher

Recommended Resources for Meeting the Millennium Child

We had a great turnout for Connie Helms's talk on Tuesday evening on How to Meet the Millennium Child. Connie presented some wonderful information on meeting the basic needs of children that allow them to thrive and find the most success in their learning and social environments. Along with that, Connie asked to have the following information passed along.  

Here is a link to the Simplicity Parenting 2 hour interactive tele-seminar coming up on November 1st at 6 pm titled, 'Digital Devices and Parenting Decisions: How Soon - How Much?". This is sure to be a great resource for all parents; cost is $69.  http://davidlevin.com/simplicity-parenting-workshop/

Connie also spoke about an article on her website addressing issues some children have with the sense of touch. Here is the link for that: http://www.conniehelms.com/sense-of-touch-issues-especially-for-caesarian-fast-birth-or-low-weight-babies/

Along with that, the Simplicity Parenting website (http://www.simplicityparenting.com/) is an excellent resource for parents, they offer classes, articles, videos, etc on a number of parenting topics.  It is a gem of information and support!
~Submitted by Erin McNamara, Education Support