Sensitivity Can be Good

http://www.tvallowance.com/research/susan-johnson.html

Dear Nursery Parents,

This is the first of several articles inspired by questions asked in a conference. A parent wondered how it would be if her child--who doesn't see tv now--were exposed to it later--would it become either too addictive, or would the child be too sensitive and overwhelmed by the experience. I apologize if I am not paraphrasing correctly. We talked about how as adults who watch very little television, we were more and more disturbed by how everything seems to ratchet up--the news, for example, seems as flashy and disturbing as an R rated movie might have been 25 years ago.

I thought of Dr. Johnson's article, available at the link above and many places. Susan Johnson is a doctor who also took Waldorf teacher training and provides a wonderful service by weaving together her perspectives as a mother, a doctor, and someone familiar with pedagogy. She has produced a number of great articles (another will come from me soon) on a variety of parenting and education topics. In the article, Johnson speaks back to a medical colleague who accuses her of causing her son to be too sensitive by shielding him too much from violent images. I'll let you read her retort.

I also think of all the work Eckhart Tolle inspires adults to take up in his various books in lectures. He asks us to be aware and present and not just fall asleep into whatever culture--such as media--throws at us. In this way, I think it a good problem to grow up a little too sensitive--another way is to say growing up ready to be awake or enlightened--so that you don't just take for granted what you might see on a screen or society.

I hope this helps.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

Boundaries from a parent

http://www.janetlansbury.com/2009/10/securing-boundaries-no-walk-in-the-park/

Dear Nursery Families,

The above article was sent to me by a trusted friend, familiar with my work in Waldorf education and with the wisdom of Loczy (from Hungary) that has come to America with Magda Gerber and the Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE). At first the article may seem strict, but there is a beautiful moment toward the end: a young child tells her mom that she was hoping she would set a limt.

Our children want us to be confident captains and zen captains, both in charge and at peace with what is. I remember many stories of how happy children were when their parents made the decisions. Kim John Payne does an excellent job of describing the choices we make. As parents, we make a lot of choices for our children as far as food, times to go to school, and the like. We leave our children as free as possible to decide how they will play with their toys or play objects. It is ideal to provide children complete freedom in choosing what imaginaive scenarios to create. They are also hoping we will set limits on behavior that becomes exclusive or otherwise harmful.

With warmth and light and striving for wisdom,

Willliam Geoffrey Dolde

Adult education next week

Dear Nursery Families,

I look forward to convening a group of nursery and parent & child families for a lecture and discussion in February or March. In the meantime, I encourage you to attend one or several of Nancy Pfeiffer's sample middle school classes next week. As a school, we would like to do a better job of articulating our middle school curriculum to early childhood families, and these sample lessons would be a much more effective than any lecture about middle school curriculum I could give.

Details for the sample lessons were in last week's newsletter.

Enjoy your weekend.

William Dolde

Blessing of Acceptance

Dear Nursery Families,

I had the fortune or misfortune to have my car broken into last weekend and my luggage stolen.  While it was stressful at the time, my window has been repaired, and I find I can live without or replace (with some help from insurance) other items in the car.  The event helped inspire me to listen to the words of Eckhart Tolle a lot and to think about his stories of monks or wise men who accepted tragedy or blessings with equanimity and a sameness of bearing.

In this state of mind, I thought of an article I often distributed to parents called, "The Blessing of Acceptance," from Wendy Mogel's book The Blessings of a Skinned Knee.  Waldorf teacher and lecturer Jack Petrash holds Mogel's book in high esteem, and has read from it at talks I have attended.  Her chapter on acceptance can be really helpful, I find, when things don't work out as perfectly or as smoothly as they might in an ideal sense.  I hope some of you find it helpful when the flow of home or school life encounters rocks and bumps.

Here is the article.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

Clarification

Dear Parents,

Lynne and parents have given me some clarifications about the clothing. Sweaters over overalls are not necessarily a problem--Lynne can often reach under and unhook the sweaters. Belts, full bod
y underwear, anything that requires a child to be basically stripped in order to use the bathroom can be very challenging. Lynne is very glad to help children; children also like to do things for themselves and sometimes show intense frustration if their admirably warm clothes hinder their independence too much. Again, it is always a question of balance.

We do have school on Monday. It is not likely that our class will join the grades classes for an assembly related to the spirit of Martin Luther King. I will probably play and sing songs from Rise Up Singing that would likely have been meaningful to King and his followers, bringing a bit of the mood of the day without throwing children too much off their secure rhythm

Blessings on your weekend,

William

Snow and Rain and Polar Bears

Dear Nursery Families,

It has been wonderful to see the children at play on these frosty days back at school.

I was particularly impressed with one transformation today. A couple of boys were pretending to be lions. I had them doing tricks in a circus for a while, but another group of children seemed to be having fun pretending to be afraid of the lions, which was fine. But the lions also were scaring children who no interest in such intensity. I finally followed a hunch and spoke to the children who were egging on the lions by pretending to be scared. I enabled them to observe that the game wasn't working for some others; then one of the lions said, "Let's be chipmunks," and a child who had seemed genuinely frightened jumped right in and started playing.

There seems to be no best way to dress for this relatively cold weather--some of children are on the petite side and get quite cold quickly. It should warm up later this week. As it warms up, please balance the needs of warmth with the needs of independence in using the bathroom. More than a few children are wearing sweaters over overalls and the like that make it hard for them to use the bathroom independently--or even for Lynne to help them in an effective way. Please don't buy new clothes based on my request; do, please, in purchases and clothing for the future, consider your child's developing autonomy. Again, I know when it is really cold, we want to make our children as warm as possible. All in all, we want the clothes to be as practical as possible.

We have welcomed a new boy to our class (details and roster will come in a non-public forum), and he has fit right in. We have a couple of children who are on shorter or longer stays away from our class, so our whole group may not be together for a week or two.

It is snowing as I write this. It may change to rain. Please check schoolreport.org for South Whidbey Schools or call our main number 360-341-5686 to find out if our school (which follows South Whidbey) is closed or delayed. If there is a 2 hour delay, our whole school opens at 10am. We will be outside a brief time before baking bread inside, so if you find yourself arriving at 10:30, it is possible we will already be inside.

Many children were in our parent & child class last year, and I have been reprising the Polar Bear puppet show from that class. I will repeat it a little or a lot depending on how it holds the interest of the children--then I will present a show about little rabbit, who finds 2 carrots buried in the snow. He eats one and brings the other to a friend he thinks must be hungry. The carrot makes it way back to little rabbit. We are singing and reciting rhymes about snow, so it is a gift to have the genuine article to enliven our imaginations.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde