Waldorf News

Trust in the Toddler

Trust in the Toddler

By Kate Hammond

A simple pop-up puppet can be a thing of wonder for a toddler. One minute it is looking at you, the next moment it is gone!

The motif of being present and hiding away has a strong connection to self, as the words from a traditional children’s song indicate: Where is Thumpkin? / Here I am! The growing sense of self in the young toddler continues to enthrall parents, teachers, and scientists as we strive to understand more about this critical period in our children’s lives.

We know from brain science that the first three years of life are a time of incredible learning, and critical for a foundation for well-being and success. Alison Gopnik speaks of this time as the “R&D” of humanity – when young children are blessed with possibility and plasticity.

This is a window of opportunity that has unique characteristics – the primary one being that the brain has no previous learning or knowledge. Therefore, the patterns and neuropathways that are formed can serve as a foundation for future learning.

Rudolf Steiner speaks about this period as a time of opportunity and great wisdom. At this time, the young child learns not through instinct but through a higher, expanded, and “wiser” self.

We can see this in language learning. The child learns language through being immersed in meaning, in living language that has a purpose and a structure.

Imitation is part of this learning, and behind this lies the self: making connections, deducing rules, imagining, and creating language out of what they have experienced in their environment.

What supports these delicate and crucial processes?

The young child has innate wisdom: let’s trust this wiser self.

The baby will learn to walk by going through the same sequence of movements (e.g. rolling, crawling, sitting) as all other human children.

This happens most healthily when the child is allowed to move independently without adult intervention and instruction. (The important factor is that they have upright, walking human beings in their environment to imitate.)

When we hold the child’s hands and walk them before they can do this independently, we are interfering with the natural sequence that provides a foundation for life. Through this sequence, the primitive reflexes are integrated.

The young child teaches themselves to focus. A toddler will gradually build the ability to move from a state of peripheral awareness to one of focus through their own activity. We are all surrounded by sensory input.

The young child’s consciousness is directly affected by the sensory environment. They have fewer “filters” – they are less able to filter out the world and focus on one task.

There is growing evidence that the more the child is living in an environment where the sensory input is overwhelming, the higher the chances are that the child’s ability to learn will be compromised, with a possible link to autism and attention deficit disorders (see N. Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself; J. Hari, Stolen Focus).

The best environment for a child is one where there is a limited amount of sensory input (e.g., lower levels of white noise from traffic, planes, etc., fewer artificial fragrances, lower levels of Wi-Fi or mechanical vibrations, lower levels of processed food, etc.) and an environment where they can control their own processes and their own focus.

If, for instance, their attention is captured and guided by a carefully designed vignette such as a CoComelon video, they are not focusing through their own forces but are being manipulated by the show.

This is not building a strong ability of the self to focus. Instead, they are learning to rely on the environment for stimulation or input.

When the toddler is in an environment with a lower level of sensory stimulation (such as the home or a carefully selected learning environment with a handful of children), we can trust them to move from activity to activity at their own pace.

It may be that they spend 10-15 seconds looking at some soap bubbles they have on their finger or a good while longer observing a leaf moving in the breeze.

The crucial thing is that they are not interrupted. Sometimes, as adults, we are so enthralled by our children that we will interrupt this focus by moving closer, crouching down, or (more often) speaking or asking a question.

In my work with toddlers, I have learned to observe these moments from the sidelines and if I need to communicate with a child, I will wait until the child is between activities before initiating contact. Gradually, the child will begin to be able to focus longer and longer as they build on these early moments of concentration.

Such moments of focus can also have the aura of sacredness. When my oldest son was a toddler, we were walking in the woods when he bent down and picked up a cigarette butt. He held it so delicately and looked at it with awe in his eyes.

In my new motherhood state, I was in a dilemma. Should I take it from him? What should I say?

It taught me that children have a deep and wonderful capacity for awe and that this is something that can nourish our lives in complex ways. The ability to observe without judgement and comment is a kind of gift: it is a trust in the world.

When we trust our toddlers and provide an environment where they can learn and flourish, we reinforce their deep trust that the world is a good place to be.

Kate Hammond is on the faculty of the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. She is a Waldorf alumna and has a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. Kate graduated from Emerson College with a certificate in Waldorf Teacher Training, specializing in Early Childhood Education, and has taught kindergarten, preschool, infants, and parent-child classes. She is Level 3 trainer in Spacial Dynamics® and the intrigued mother of two teenage boys.