Download the article: Observing the Young Child
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere and into the here. . .
And how did you come to us, you dear?
God thought about you and so I am here.
George MacDonald
When Waldorf early childhood colleagues are together, we are always talking about the children in our classes, care groups, and homes. We carry these children in our hearts and have a deep desire to serve them. I have heard many stories, and have a few of my own, that demonstrate how a single school year, a few months or sometimes even a more brief encounter, are evidence of the help and support teachers can offer children in this life-phase of their journey on earth. There seem to be children coming to our classes who are more individualized than in decades past, and the face, the movement/activity of childhood is changing. And it occurred to me, like in the MacDonald poem, God must be thinking a lot about us because these children are finding their way to us in increasing numbers. At the February 2006 WECAN conference at Sunbridge College, among mounds of sparkling snow, I witnessed over three hundred teachers who were up for the challenge of wanting to know better how they might serve these children of today.
I had the good fortune to be in the Remedial Teacher Education course at Sunbridge College, and this past summer I listened and participated in the fruits of my colleagues' research and projects. I presented some of my own work and invited my fellow students to work with ideas I had shaped for observing the four foundation senses in the young child's movement, expressive speech and play. As a teacher educator, I am engaged in organizing information and giving opportunities for direct experiences to new teachers so that they might have a good foundation for observation and child study, an essential component for better serving each child. Reading visible movement can yield important information for understanding the invisible in the child.
In studying the works of Rudolf Steiner, Karl Konig, Audrey McAllen and others, there is emphasis laid on the healthy development of the four lower senses (touch, life, self-movement, balance) as being the foundation for health in the four middle (sight, smell, taste, warmth), and four higher senses (hearing, thought, language, ego). The young child integrates and organizes the information from its own activity (movement) and sense impressions establishing a basis for life-long learning. Observing our children is the scientific side of our work. Understanding more about the twelve senses and how they are always interacting can broaden the viewpoint for some of what we see and hear in our children. This objective observation must then be joined with our response and our spiritual activity of thoughts and meditations for us to really "see and hear" what the child is revealing to us through what we observe.
It is hoped that preparing adults to be with children through the presentation of case studies of children exhibiting phenomena that demonstrate disturbances in these senses will support the new teacher. These objective descriptions (case studies) are a tool for building mental pictures of the child in one's imagination. This faculty of imagination is critical in the teacher's reflective practice for gaining insight at the subtle, spiritual level that can affect true understanding. In the first two to three years of teaching, new teachers often experience stress in managing situations during class time. It is hoped that the pictures and case studies will arise in the new teacher as images and ideas of how to beneficially approach a child in the moment of incident. For the experienced teacher, there can be greater meaning when related areas in the study of human development broaden our context, and in turn deepen our insight.
What I have outlined below is a work in progress. I reviewed observations from my own classroom experiences and harvested from other Waldorf early childhood teachers of children ages three to six years. I invite the reader to join me in this research and let me know if you find these descriptions to be true, or not. I would welcome additional examples from the reader's observations in the young child's movement, expressive speech and play.
I used each of the four foundation senses as a category (touch, self-movement, life, and balance) and then applied movement, expressive speech and play phenomena as three observable aspects for each of these categories. These phenomena provide vocabulary and understanding for what the teacher is seeing and experiencing with the atypical child exhibiting challenges in the indoor and outdoor classroom setting and through social interaction. The teacher might observe one or many of these as possible indicators of the need for support in the child's sense of life.
Touch
Movement. Avoids new touch experiences, or certain textures are avoided (water, sand, mud, rough wood), tactile defensive; the child does not like to be touched; is very particular about clothing, wears too loose or too tight, wears clothes a season behind (likes soft, well-worn clothes); touch must be firm and not slight; may exhibit under-sensitivity.
Speech. Speech sounds may be slurred or not articulated with precision; strong negatives in expression.
Play. Avoids being touched by others; frequent posturing for kind touch by adults or children; strokes face and arms with soft things. [note: with tactile defensiveness, the behavior can be paradoxical they avoid unexpected or unsolicited touch, but crave touch and will seek firm pressure on their own terms]
Self-Movement
Movement. The child bumps into things and people; "crashers and bangers;" continually misjudges spatial needs going up/down steps, sitting into a chair; child in constant motion; has many bruises due to bumping into things, boundary-less sense of self; difficulty remaining upright.
Speech. I do not yet have enough observations