[Rahima Baldwin Dancy is an author, Waldorf early childhood specialist and parenting educator. After having worked for many years as a midwife, she now works as director of Informed Family Life and as a LifeWays consultant. She wrote this in December, 2004.]
I have been involved with Waldorf education since 1980, when I first did the Waldorf teacher training and early childhood training courses at the Waldorf Institute in Michigan. There I was given the "task" to interpret Waldorf and Steiner's indications for parents, and the result was , You Are Your Child's First Teacher. Not only has it proven to be a valuable guide for thousands of parents on the insights of Rudolf Steiner on children from birth through age six, but it is being translated into four languages and will also be published in a British edition in 2005.
Although my children are grown, I continue to work with parents by sponsoring Waldorf in the Home and other conferences each year and through managing this web site. I am also working on a book with Cynthia Aldinger on "being home with children--nuturturing them and yourself!"
My husband, Agaf, and I have raised four children who are now 24 to 34 years of age. So we now have the perspective of our adult children on "what worked and what didn't!" We moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2003, and are delighted to be back (I lived here in the '70's--although it's changed, it immediately felt like coming home).
I began work as a midwife and childbirth activist in 1977 with the founding of Informed Homebirth/Informed Birth & Parenting. My first two books, Special Delivery and Pregnant Feelings (written with Terra Palmarini Richardson) will soon be available from our upcoming on-line store. I stopped midwifing in 1998, after serving as a primary midwife and co-director of a free-standing birth center in Dearborn, Michigan for nine years.
In the last five years, I have turned my attention to transforming eldcare and the culture of aging in our country. To me, it feels like where birth was thirty years ago: in the basement in terms of consciousness, and it has to change. the demographics are certainly in favor, as our generation seems to transform every phase it comes to.
I feel fortunate to have been able to care for my parents in meaningful ways, just as I was able to have home births in the early 1970s. I have been caring for my mother, who is 87, half the year and for my mother-in-law (84) full time in our home since 2000. For me, this was like being in the slow lane with toddlers, and I seized on the opportunity when living in California to attend California State University Sacramento one night a week, where I was able to complete a masters degree in Gerontology and Organizational Change.
Because over the years my interests have spanned alternatives in birth and parenting, Waldorf education, and now leading edge practices in eldercare and culture change, I have renamed IH/IBP "Informed Family Life" to reflect the entire bredth of the lifespan. I'm delighted to be sharing parts of it with you!
