You Are Your Child’s First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Chlldren from Birth to Age Six
Nowadays parents are bombarded by any number of approaches about how to be with their children. YOU ARE YOUR CHILD’S FIRST TEACHER introduces a new way of understanding the human being so that parents can be best equipped to serve as their own children’s best teachers. Chapters include: Caring for the Newborn, Helping Your Toddler’s Development, The Development of Fantasy and Creative Play, Nourishing Your Child’s Imagination, Rhythm and Discipline in Home Life, Readiness for School, and more.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Interesting
This book has many good pointers for raising a well balanced, compassionate child. Easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to put into action.
5 Stars BEST “baby” book EVER
this book has taught me more about positive child rearing than all the books I’ve read combined - whether you plan to have your child go to a Waldorf school or not, this book is invaluable for “raising” a child well
4 Stars Life’s first lessons
Rahima Baldwin Dancy wrote this book for parents who want to help their children learn as much as possible between birth and age six. These are the most formative years in many ways, and everything the school age child learns after age six has less overall impact than the crucial early learning. The first three years are especially critical. The new born baby, far from just eating, sleeping and crying, is taking in information about the world at an astounding rate.
It’s not just a matter of intellectual growth, however, but of raising a well rounded person. The phenomenon of ‘hothousing’, when parents try to hurry their children’s intellectual development by cramming them full of assignments at a very early age, does not lead to a well rounded child. These are the same types who practice ‘baby gymnastics’ and hire motivational coaches for their toddlers, and the author of ‘You Are Your Child’s First Teacher’ is scathing towards them.
“American popular psychology and business interests have interpreted ‘infant stimulation’ to mean that you constantly need to be stimulating your baby with bits of coloured plastic and flash cards,” writes Dancy, who believes that more enriching stimulation comes through holding, rocking, talking etc. “Even though babies can be taught to read with enough condition-response training, they are not reading for meaning and are using a lower part of the brain.”
Perhaps this book, in attempting to redress the balance, goes slightly too far in the other direction. The book is heavily influenced by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, who believed that science and maths shouldn’t be taught in the first seven years. But this all depends on the child. I used to love reading about science, even around age four and five, as it was truly fun, especially the stuff about dinosaurs (paleontology) and outer space (astronomy). As long as it isn’t made tedious and technical, there shouldn’t be any problem with teaching these kinds of areas before the age of seven.
On the other hand, it should be remembered that children are not highly rational, and the author asserts that giving them overtly rational explanations at a young age is like giving a hungry child stones instead of bread: “When young children ask questions like “why does the sun shine?”, they are really asking about purpose rather than mechanics,” she asserts, “and are much more nourished by an answer like “to keep us warm and to make the grass and flowers grow” rather than a lecture on thermodynamics.” This will be anathema to totalitarian empiricists like Richard Dawkins, who claimed at one point that he wanted research done into whether fairy tales were harmful to children, and whether they should be banned!
The author excels at explaining the different stages of consciousness that a child goes through: “Between the second and third years a major change in consciousness occurs with…the first saying of the word ‘I’. This change is the reason most people can’t remember very much before the age of three.” She does a good job of explaining the stages of mental, spiritual and physical development of a baby. Babies ‘grow down’ rather than grow up, with their eyes being the first thing they learn to control, then the head, torso, and finally the legs.
She doesn’t recommend playpens, because they trap the baby in a boring, enclosed enviroment. Better to let the baby explore at will (after making sure the room is totally safe of course). A study of children who performed outstandingly in later life showed that they almost invariably had parents who were “loving but firm”. “It’s time to brush your teeth” is better than “Brush your teeth now please” for a toddler in the ‘terrible twos’ phase of development. It is harder for them to argue against this. Adding a song or ritual helps, e.g. lighting a candle near their bed when it’s bedtime, and then letting them blow out the match.
Another strategy suggested for ‘terrible twos’ throwing a tantrum is to simply pick the child up and take him to another room. Stand there stony faced and silent until he has calmed down (usually just a few minutes), and then return him to the original scene. This apparently works better than ignoring the child’s behaviour on the one hand, or losing one’s temper on the other.
The importance of play is stressed, as it develops the child’s imagination and creativity. The author used to work as a preschool teacher, and observed a dramatic difference between those children who watched TV and those who didn’t. The ones who didn’t watch TV were far more imaginative in their play. There is an interesting section on ‘Understanding Children’s Drawings’: “Until the age of three, spirals are drawn from outward to inward, only gradually forming a centre that reflects the child’s growing realisation of self…the flash of ego consciousness is documented by the ability to draw a circle.”
Folk tales and fairy tales are full of spiritual and psychological truths, and should be encouraged from the age of around four. They shouldn’t be ‘rationalised’ either, as the child takes them in on an instinctive level, and becomes immersed in their subtle and mysterious symbolism, which then becomes part of the psyche (or if you prefer, an echo of the timeless realm the child departed at birth). Too much emotional dramatisation should be avoided in telling such tales to a young child, as the emotions aren’t developed enough before the age of seven or so to appreciate this. Instead, under-sevens listen for the cadence and rhythm of the language, and repeating the same story over and over is fine. The book gives a helpful (but not nearly complete enough) list of fairy tales and their suitablilty for different ages based on their varying degrees of complexity.
5 Stars Great Resource
This book is a great read whether you are interested in Waldorf Education or not. It gives wonderful insights into raising and educating your young children.
5 Stars Insightful
I love this book, it has some very insightful parenting ideas, things that have really helped me. Along the same lines, check out Making a Family Home. It would make a nice companion to this book.
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