Parenting: "Holding the space"

Many years ago both my oldest two children were in a Waldorf inspired nursery school. They were in nursery school there and loved it. Honestly, it was really really good. And that is coming from someone who is convinced home education is better for the majority of children. If it would have been possible I probably would have let my younger children have a part-time Waldorf nursery school experience. Simply because of the calmness, and the fun the oldest two had there. The oldest two were very different children, so I expect my younger children to have enjoyed it as well. I would certainly not have made them, it would have had to be fun. But... I digress.

During the time the oldest two were in the Waldorf nursery school I noticed that the teacher was not constantly hoovering over the children. She (Juffie Hanneke) let them be a lot, also outside. She would pay attention to the children, but be on the side lines. She would certainly prevent problems from arising when she noticed things weren't so smooth any more. She would gently guide the children away from the problem situation. This was something I found totally fascinating. Of course some kids would end up in arguments, as this is also part of normal life. But the way she simply was present and would notice things and prevent things from getting out of hand, was just very impressive. 

I learned that in groups, such as La Leche League (LLL), Attachment Parenting International (API) and Attachment Parenting Europe (APEU) this happens similarly. I have been / am a leader for both. Basically the leader of the group keeps tabs on conversation when the main topic has been discussed. After that usually smaller groups emerge in which people discuss the topic or other topics. What can happen is that people in those small groups disagree, so the leader of the group moves from one group to another in her conversation to just keep tabs on things, so that things do not get out of hand or that concepts that are completely contrary to the goal of the group get put forward as being the view of LLL or API or APEU. That way the meeting is enjoyable for all present.

So I saw a similarity in how things were done in various settings and found it quite interesting to see the interaction in groups of people and realised that this may actually be something that comes natural to a lot of people. So I watched videos of people living in hunter gatherer tribes and read books about how people in various tribes interact. I learned from the book "The Continuum Concept" that also the Yequana have a similar way of interacting, not just between adults, but also with their children. They are in a constant type of contact. This is, especially with hunter gatherer tribes, often quite inconspicuous. And honestly, it should be like that. Hoovering, or helicopter parents, do not do their kids any favours are they are constantly on top of them. This concept of "holding the space" is quite a different one.

Over time I learned how to do it, as unfortunately it didn't come natural to me. So what one does is you go about your business and do all your adult work, chores and what have you. But while you do it, you make sure that they are things you can do without it needing your full attention. Because you do keep a little bit of your attention on your children. So you would not try to learn a new skill, while you are with your children. But you could knit, crochet, cook or such. This of course when you are not actively interacting with your children, as they you have their attention anyway. This is for times of free play. I usually do not go outside with them when they are outside, as they are with friends then and things rarely get out of hand. In case things do not feel right for my children, they simply come home.

The nursery teacher that I previously spoke of was usually doing things like knitting, sewing, crochet, cutting vegetables, making bread dough, preparing things for a craft, or such things. But she always had an eye on the group, despite the fact that she wasn't actively looking at them. It gave a lovely safe environment where the children felt quite free. 

Over the years, since I have observed juffie Hanneke do her work, I have seen a deterioration in the way people in general interact with their children. What I noticed is that with the increase of gadgets, such as smart phones, tablets and such, parents are often very focussed on those and are often frequently irritated with their children for not having the patience to wait until they are done. I have had to learn to keep my gadgets at bay. I can do a lot of work on my gadget when the children are outside or asleep, or actually reading a book or such, but I do have to keep in mind to stop the moment they are done or awake, or simply need me. I am their mother and they should be able to count on me being there for them when necessary. Humans by nature expect their parents to be there for them. Reading about hunter gatherer tribes and watching videos in which I saw the interaction made me realise how much it is natural and how very far from nature we in the western world are away from that. But children in the western world are not born with a different set of expectations than children in other ends of the world. They all have the same expectation set and need to have those met to grow up happy and healthy.

So these days, I am actually not doing bad at all with "holding the space". I did read a lot about it. Especially Melisa Nielsen from Waldorf Essentials, has been very helpful in helping me learn about it. I still read about it as it is simply fascinating to me. But these days I can properly practise it as well. I do have to make sure that I keep my phone and such away during "working hours". I have started seeing my time with my children as precious "working time". At work I cannot be on my phone the whole time either. I have to actually do my work, so why would it be fine to be on it all the time at home. Back in the day when my oldest two were young I actually didn't have anything but a landline and nobody expected me to always immediately reply to them, as that was simply not an option. So these days I have adopted a similar way of dealing with things. I pick up the phone when I have the possibility, such as being in a waiting room somewhere or in public transport. But at home my phone is away from me and I only pick it up when I can. This has resulted in a whole lot less stress for all of us. I actually have started loving it. I do not miss my gadgets. I have also deinstalled facebook from my phone. Initially because it totally messed up my phone, but then realised how much precious time it took from me. I love handwork and facebook was taking time away from that. While I do handwork I am available to my children. On facebook I was not. So these days I still do use facebook, but not constantly. I was already lucky to never have had a contract for my phone with which I was constantly online, so I had not gotten used to that yet :-) Now I refuse to have that.

I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings. Feel free to comment or ask a question. I'd love to hear from you.

Have a lovely day!

Education: learning to read, the story of C

So in school they teach you to read, but what if the method they use in school to teach reading, doesn't work for the brain of your child?

Well.... that's what happened to us. My child (C) could read simple books by the age of 4, C would read them to my mother and myself, nothing complicated, simple 3 to 4 letter words were in them. Then we started school. As we didn't want to have a standard government school, as wanted more arts and crafts for C, we choose a Waldorf school as they do a lot more than just the academics, which I found very important as I'm of the opinion there is more to life than just academics, especially to tease the brain into doing its work.

The years (age 4-5-6) before the academics started (around 7 years of age) were really good. C loved the teacher, who was one of the most wonderful people I have ever met. Juffie Hanneke was just amazing. She was very knowledgeable on the age group and really could "hold the space" wonderfully. It was very nice to watch the children play outside from a distance, which I sometimes could. There was rarely anything such as bullying going on in her class. Fantastic. I cannot say enough good about her. I have unfortunately not spoken with her in many years.

But then C moved from the kindergarten class to the first grade class and had a change of teacher. That is when the misery started. I was scolded by C's class teacher and the remedial teacher for having "taught" C to read the wrong way. I had not taught C to read. C had done this all without help. 
This is actually normal and within the Waldorf community is quite known. In a Waldorf school that works according to the principles of Rudolf Steiner, there is no method taught on how to read. Children are left to crack the code themselves, which they can, which results in them doing it the way that works best for their brain, which has the end result or rarely problems occurring with reading and writing.
C was unfortunately also relatively bored during lessons, this was seen as "not interested", which wasn't the case. C actually could usually tell me exactly what the lessons had been about as C has a very good memory. C ended up having difficulty with the way things were taught and the way the interaction with the various children was going. C was bullied. This didn't help the learning process of C at all, which was not acknowledged by the class teacher, who was of the opinion C was to blame for being bullied. C regularly came home with bruises and came home crying every day. The mornings became harder and harder. C didn't want to go to school and was trying to find all kinds of ways of being able to stay away. As it was not possible to just take C out of school or change schools due to local laws we were awfully stuck.

So C had to stick with it and I had to stick with a child that was getting more and more unhappy and was more and more becoming of the opinion that C was a problem to others. I did not like that at all. I knew C wasn't to blame for the whole problem. I just didn't know the details to it yet.

At some point the remedial teacher came to the conclusion that because C was behind on arithmetic and reading C needed remedial teaching, but in stead of actually getting further with things, C ended up going backwards in the learning process, which I found quite disturbing. The remedial teacher was unwilling to acknowledge that. She was of the opinion that that was impossible and that C had just had lucky shots before, so C didn't really know before.
There was one assistant of the remedial teacher that C got along with really well and who understood C and could work with C the way that was necessary for C. His name was Jos, he was a wonderful man, I have kept contact with him until he died unexpectedly. He explained to me that the problem didn't lie with C, but with the methods used. He explained that C was quite intelligent, no doubt about that, but that C needed a challenge and not dumb repeats. Unfortunately his views were not heard by either the teacher of C, nor the remedial teacher. As he had these same issues with several other children of this school, he ended up quitting because of these problems.

During this whole ordeal I was told that C was going to be referred to being tested for learning disabilities and behaviour problems, as in school they were convinced that C had ADHD, as the son of her class teacher had that as well and C was so much like this boy.
I was sure that was not the case, if anything than it would be something of high functioning autism and maybe dyslexia, which I had filled out in the forms, but it seemed that nobody was interested in that, as C was tested for ADHD and dyslexia, but not autism.

The result was that the verbal intelligence of C was well above 100, but the on paper intelligence was 94, which was the only thing that counted, not the verbal intelligence for some weird reason. I guess it's because school is pretty much only on paper. With regards to the ADHD there weren't enough markers to give C that diagnosis and it was recommended to test C for that in a few more years. I am still very pleased there weren't enough markers as I would not have wanted to go through the ritalin discussion as that would not have been something I would have been willing to discuss.

The result of these tests meant that the school of C was going to refer C to a school for children with Special Needs. This I found mindboggling as there wasn't much wrong with C. Several of these Special Needs schools I visited did not want C because there wasn't enough wrong with C. But one school was interested, later on I found out that this particular school was closely working together with the school C was in and they had a mutual financial interest. But that was also the school that was the furthest away, which meant I would have to send C by taxi as I would not be able to take C myself any more. This all really bothered me, something felt awfully off. 

After thinking about this and know that most of the test results were not making C a special needs child, but a child that could stay in a normal school with a bit of extra help, I came to the conclusion that I didn't want C in a school that was not going to do much for C, only to get C through secondary school at the lowest possible level and make C a practical worker. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I knew C needed more out of life than just a simple job like that.
So I decided I wasn't going to let that happen to C, so I didn't register C for any of the special needs schools, which resulted in the remedial teacher having a fit. She was of the opinion that I was ruining the life of C and wrote me a letter that, as I wasn't following their recommendations (orders?) they were withdrawing from the duty to teach. My thought was, nothing different than the special needs schools, they only do the minimum and nothing more, and that meant from what I saw, a lot of computer games, which were not necessarily the ones I would consider educational and I am very liberal on that.
The remedial teacher also threatened to report us to Social Services as I was neglecting the needs of C. Luckily she never pushed that through.

So C stayed after the summer holidays, the school required C to attend, but didn't make any effort for C any more. This gave some peace for the both of us. After a while it became clear to me that our time in NL was numbered and that we would move to the UK, which I found a blessing as that meant that there was no way C would go to school again. C could play computer games at home just as much as they were doing in the special needs schools, but I was sure I could do more for C than just that.

So we moved and left the misery behind. I was dumb enough to try to immediately "play school" at home. Of course that didn't work. C needed to de-school and not such a little bit. C needed a lot of time to get over the school trauma, which was huge. C thought that C would never read or write or learn anything substantial. C was 10 at this time and completely illiterate (remember that C could read a bit at 4?).

My want for doing school at home resulted in a lot of stress and such and a lot of crying and upset people. So after a year of pushing I threw in the towel and gave up. This was a blessing in disguise. C could now deschool, which was sorely necessary and quite overdue, mess about with stuff and computers and get the brain working nicely again. C did all kinds of stuff that didn't involve paper or letters or numbers. We visited musea, we watched DVD's and did lots of stuff, other than just living. C asked lots of questions which we would talk about.

After another year, C was 12 by now I wanted to know whether C was actually dyslexic or not, so I had C tested by a friend who was doing this in our home. C was according to the results indeed dyslexic, but nothing bad, as C also is a visual learner, which meant that the dyslexia was because of the system of spelling taught in school. If C would simply learn words as pictures, there would be no dyslexia any more after a while. C could remediate it. The tests also showed that C was well ahead of C's age with knowledge, it showed the knowledge age was 14, while C was 12, so 2 years ahead with knowledge. So that meant that C was indeed not a retard, as I had been, in more polite words, told by the school in the past.

Due to the misery that had happened during the time in school of C, I was completely not interested in anything Waldorf any more, which was quite a shame I found out later, as the Waldorf system is not really what is used as such in Waldorf schools in NL. As the Waldorf schools are subsidised by the government, they have to play by the government rules and as such have to do tests and have to do 7 years primary school in 6 years and all kinds of things like that. So in essence it was a public school with some added on arts and crafts the Waldorf way, but not a real, proper Waldorf school.

This I only learned after several years when we ended up living in Switzerland and we had a very proper Waldorf school in the village right next to ours which was totally awesome. I also made a friend in Switzerland who had taught at a Waldorf school and was totally into it. This sparked my interest in Waldorf again and I ended up reading and reading and reading about it, much more than I had ever done before. I had read about Waldorf, but only the books that were available on loan from the school, which was interesting, but didn't go deep into the philosophy. Now I did and I was amazed. My friend Cari and I also had several conversations about Waldorf and she helped me learn quite a bit more about it, for which I am forever in her debt. Unfortunately we lost contact over the years, but I still remember her fondly.
So I adopted a more Waldorf type of talking to the kids and also did lots more arts and crafts with them and we ended up teaching more and more in the Waldorf way. This worked for all of our kids, not just C. They love the arts and crafts and love the toys, in the meantime several of them have outgrown most of the toys, but they still love the look of them :-)

At around the age of 15 C decided that C wanted to read and write properly as C wanted to write fan-fic stories. I stimulated this and within a few months C had it all sussed. I could not fully help as C needed to this mostly alone, C wanted that. So C only asked for help when it was needed. It was slightly more complicated for C to learn it all as C had first learned it without effort at 4 and was then taught that the way C had done it was wrong and was taught in school to do it in another way. So C had to unlearn what was taught in school and C had to find C's own way, which worked out just fine in the end.

My next child was never taught to read in any way and managed, at the age of 9 to learn to read - without much help - in 3 months in 3 languages. This child just took books and went through them, irrelevant of the language. We have childrens books in 3 languages.

After this C became more and more confident that C could do things. It took several more years before C felt fully confident C could learn. In the meantime I think this has been achieved. But for a few years it was still a struggle to find out what C could and wanted to do in the future, work and such. C loves computers and loves drawing and such. It never occurred to me that that could be combined. But at some point my partner came with the idea that maybe C could be interested in Graphics Design. C had no idea what that was, so he had to explain that to C. Once C figured out what it was there as a spark. C liked the idea of it, so C looked into a bit and thought it was worth a shot to do a course or so on it.

Anyway C is now doing a series of Graphics Design courses on Coursera.org and has aced (93.1%) the first course C did and is continuing with the other 4 in the series and is actually having a great time doing it as well.
So much for that child never being able to reach anything and as I a parent I should stop dreaming and accept that my child was slow and such as I was not doing my child a favour by keeping up the pressure and such. The worst insanity I ever heard. As far as I am concerned there are no children that will never achieve anything. Some may need more time for certain parts, or less time, but anyone can achieve much more than is usually thought or even expected. Too much misery being created by thinking people cannot.
No such thing. I was ******* right!

*** Update 13 May 2016: Today C got the results back from course 2, typography and she aced that one as well, 97.2%. It feels awesome to be right :-)

Please do leave a comment or ask a question if you have one. I'd love to hear from you and will do my best to answer questions you have.

Waldorf ebook library

As we home educate in a Waldorf style way, I like to read about Waldorf educating. A couple of years ago I read about The Waldorf library. Since then I have regularly downloaded a book or 2 there to read. It is a lovely library. So many very interesting books. I would love to read the majority of them, but I'm sure I cannot do so any more in this life unfortunately. My reading list seems to grow with every book I read, on which ever topic, as there are often lots of nice books mentioned in the reading list :-)

Rudolf Steiner

There are also journals and articles to be found there. Some you can also download.

http://www.waldorflibrary.org/index.php

There is also a wonderful website on which you can download books to listen to. I really like that website as well, as sometimes for long walks with the dog, or a long road trip it can be great to simply listen to a book which has been read to me. The person reading the books has a very nice voice.

http://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com

Enjoy all the reading and listening that you can do :-)

St. Nicholas, 5 December

I am very late with writing this blog post, but better late than never.
We are educating our children at home in the Waldorf tradition. This is one of the reasons why we celebrate St. Nicholas in our home. As I am Dutch, this only adds to wanting to celebrate it. We celebrate it in a traditional way. 

I always decorate the Nature Table in the theme as you can see above. I have made several of the decorations myself with wool, felt and silk. I still have several others to make. I have the kits for it, but this is a slow process, due to priorities being as they are.

When we celebrate it we keep an eye on when the arrival of St. Nicholas is in The Netherlands. From then onwards I let the children put their shoe out to get a little gift in them, which is a nice pencil, bit of chocolate, some bees wax, a pretty gem stone, crafting yarn, wool roving or so.

On the last day of November when they put out their shoes they know that the advent calendar will be in there the next morning, I love giving the advent calendar on that day.

On the day itself we always have the traditional Dutch Pea Soup for dinner, this we eat together with sourdough rye bread. It is just the way I grew up, so I still do that. During the weeks before I have done my St. Nicholas baking, so I have made kruidnootjes, pepernoten, speculatius, filled speculatius, taaitaai, banketstaaf and such. These we have already had since I started baking, but I like to make sure that we have enough for the day itself.

In the evening we receive a letter from St. Nicholas. In this letter he explains that his helpers have put the gifts for all the family members in various places on our home and that the children can search for them. 
The gifts are useful gifts and things they really like. I always make sure that we stay in budget as I am of the opinion that it is all in good fun and should not cost a lot of money. 

The children love it when I read out the hints on where the gifts are and to go out a find them. We do this one by one so that everyone gets to see what everyone gets. Once all gifts have been unpacked we have hot chocolate with whipped cream and some of the baked goods. Usually we have some left overs of that for a couple of more days.

Our nature walk today Sunday 17 January 2016

As we home education in the Waldorf tradition we daily take a nature walk. Today it was really lovely to go into the woods behind our house. We always take our dog along as this nicely goes hand in hand with each other. The children enjoy the woods, the running and looking at nature and such. Our dog enjoys the running around and playing with other dogs and the children. 

Often the children bring something home for our nature table or for our garden.
Sometimes the dog brings something home as well, usually the odd branch or so.

It had been freezing last night and it was snowing during the night. This morning it was still snowing. This lasted until well past 10 am, which was really nice. Our walk was around noon and there was still quite a nice dusting of snow to be found all about. Unfortunately for the children and the dog it all thawed away during the afternoon.

Martinmas soup

As we are following the Waldorf system of education we do pay some attention to the Waldorf festival. We like them as they have a basis in paganism as well, so we can make them quite earth friendly.
When we lived in The Netherlands it was celebrated quite widely. On the evening of 11 November all the children would go out with their lanterns and ring at peoples door, sing a Martinmas song and get sweets from the people.

Every year we make a Martinmas soup, as we hollow out a swede or 2 to make a lantern with it. ON the picture above you see the soup.
We always have roasted chestnuts with it as well and some sourdough buns to dip in the soup. In the time that we lived in The Netherlands it was quite a busy day because as soon as it got dark the children we coming round the houses, so there wasn't a lot of time to cook and eat.

Traditionally the soup with burn and chestnuts would be eaten before going out for the singing and bonfires. People would take scrap wood out and make bonfires. While watching the bonfires there would be waffles eaten as well. Just plain waffles, nothing serious. At some point in the future I will post a sourdough waffle recipe and link it here.
We make a little fire in our garden for these days. Where we live now nobody celebrates Martinmas, so we keep it very simple. As the children have already had their sweets at Halloween a few days before we don't give them any either.

Enjoy the soup.

Origin: Western Europe

Difficulty: easy

Time: 15 minutes preparation time & 30 minutes cooking time

Serves: 6

Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal, Paleo

Equipment:

• pan
• knives

Ingredients:

• 2 small swedes or 1 big swede
• 600 ml broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 juniper berries
• salt
• pepper
• 1 leek
• 1 carrot
• cream (optional)

Directions:

• Put the broth with the swede, carrot, bay leaf, coriander and juniper berries in a pan and cook for about 20 minutes, until the swede is soft
• Remove the bay leaf and juniper berries.
• Add the leek and let it cook for another 10 minutes.
• Blend with a stick mixer.
• Taste and add salt and pepper to taste

In case you want to prepare the soup partially a day or 2 ahead you can do this by cooking the swede with the carrot and spices. Once the swede is cooked it won't get bitter anymore. Once you have cut it it tends to get a bit bitter when it is laying around for a bit. I try to cook swede as quickly as possible after cutting.

Martinmas

Last Wednesday, 11 November 2015, it was Martinmas. 

This is the day St. Martin is remembered. St. Martin was a Roman soldier who was station near Gaul. As legend goes St. Martin rode into a town and on the outskirts of the town he ran into a beggar who was only wear rags. He felt pity for the man and cut het cloak in 2 and gave 1 half to the beggar. The next morning when he woke up he found his cloak restored to a full cloak. 

As we are using a Waldorf curriculum for home education, we pay attention to this day.

So we made swede lantarns. We hollowed out the swedes, carved some shapes into the swedes and put a tea light into it, as you can see below. From the insides of the swedes I made swede soup.  I served the swede soup with roasted chestnuts for dinner. This is a traditional dinner for Martinmas.

In some European areas, such as parts of The Netherlands and Germany children go past the houses to sing Martinmas songs and will get sweets. It is very similar to trick or treating at Halloween.
Now that we live in England Halloween is what is happening, so we only do some stuff at home for Martinmas.

Nature walk, Friday 16 October 2015

Today when we went on our Nature Walk, which is part of how we educate our children. We use a Waldorf type of approach. We were looking for mushrooms this morning. We also always take our dog with us, two things at the same time. The dog gets a walk and we get to discover what nature has to offer. We found quite an amount of mushrooms. Unfortunately we know nothing about mushrooms yet, but we would really like to learn some day. We will probably go do a workshop on it next year.
Anyone who can tell me which ones we saw, based on the pictures, please feel free to leave a comment. We love learning about them.

1. This mushroom was growing on a place where a branch of a birch tree had broken off. The birch tree was dead.

 2. Same mushroom on the birch tree

3. Same tree, but this mushroom was much higher up on the tree. Gorgeous.

 4. Another picture of the same one. I think this one may be the same type of mushroom as the one in picture 1 and 2.

5. This one we found somewhere on the soil where there were lots of pine trees.

Knitting: Shark test knit

Linda Dawkins asked me to Jon in a test knit for her latest pattern. As I love her patterns I was ever so pleased to be able to test it. The start date is 21 August and it has to be finished by 1 September. I managed to finish it by 31 August, so just in time.

Here is the link to the Ravelry page on which the pattern is:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/finn-the-shark

Here are some pictures of my shark.

Spinning: Spindle

For years now I have found spinning yarn from wool very interesting. So a good year ago I did a course on Craftsy, which Drucilla Pettibone taught. I learned a lot and have since been trying my hand on spinning.
My first yarn was from Coopworth fibre. This is at the moment on the way to get twined, so I have no photos of it at present, but as soon as I get to the twining I will put it up.
My second yarn is presently being made from Jacob fibre.
Below you will find a photo. I am halfway through the fibre. I love doing this. It is a wonderful craft.