Inheriting Steiner – How a Grandmother’s Learning Shapes a New Baby’s Daily Life
I watch my eighteen-month old daughter talking to the soft-bodied doll that I have made her. I wonder what she sees in the undefined cloth face. I wonder if she will make a similar doll for her child one day and I wonder if she will wonder as I do. While the repetition across generations of early childhood experience is both common sense and much documented, through moments of self-awareness, memories of my own childhood, discussions with my mother and observation of my teenage daughters playing with their new sister, I have found myself questioning if and how the very practice and materialisation of discrete Waldorf principles within the home might be implicated in a future inclination towards mothering in this way. Where does knowledge become reflexive? This questioning is presented via a selection of vignettes that illustrate tenets of a Waldorf approach: the sanguinity of childhood and the incoming will; the breathing rhythm of the day; the child’s task to incarnate into their body. These reflections are contextualised by literature tailored to parenting in a Waldorf way.