Waldorf in the Home

Imitation seems to be how young children learn. What was I giving them to imitate? I began to notice my inner and outer gestures and attitudes. What was I offering that was not worthy of imitation? What things did I want to be sure to include? Some days definitely should not be imitated, but overall I could be gentle with all things and do each thing as I would like the children to do it.

I could gently touch the leaves of a tree or bend down to speak with amusement to a droll stinkbug. I could slowly take up and open a book with reverence and delight. We could take the neighbors some parsley from the garden, or flowers when they were ill. When the children were around I always said good things about people, never anything that cast an unkind light. Even in uncongenial situations I picked out some wonderful thing to notice.

Those are lofty goals, but simple everyday activities also depend on imitation. What you do matters more than what you say. You do it, show it. For example, when handling vegetable knives you always use a cutting board and do not hold a cucumber and cut toward your thumb. You pour from the beloved rooster pitcher by holding one hand under the bottom. You pet the dog gently, murmuring sweet nothings. Your gestures are calm and orderly, wiping the table, or a child's face. You speak softly -- especially when you do not feel like speaking softly.

To my surprise (and dismay) I found that not every child is going to choose to imitate how you do things. I noticed that some things affect one child and not another. I look at my four grown children and see some common qualities, some shared ways of interacting with the world -- a calm and trusting approach to life, and a tendency to take an interest in everything. But I also see distinct personality differences. As Joseph Chilton Pearce reminds us, a child cannot take up any behavior without having seen it somewhere in their environment. But from the buffet of what they see, each child chooses some things and not others. Such is the mystery of individuality.

As well as keeping the child's tendency to imitate in mind, I wanted to lighten our life with imagination. Imagination had two aspects for us, seeing suggestions of form and gesture in the things around us and thinking in pictures. We could see a lizard in a curiously shaped stick or could find some "bridge" for playing "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." The lid to the laundry basket became a shield for St. Michael. Anything might suggest by its form what else it might be.

I think ingenuity and creativity come from just such beginnings. You can see many different ways to achieve something or solve a problem.

Imagination carries over into life in other ways also. The ability to imagine your life differently, to change the story, develops from hearing stories and making pictures in your mind. (Television anesthetizes that ability. It gives you the pictures. You don't get a chance to practice making your own.) Books give a few pictures and you go on from there. In a sense they show you how this picture-making is done. Folk tales and fairy tales have magic. They come from the dream world and encourage you toward feeling-imagination. They speak the soul's language.

But events in your family life can also become stories. I remember one of those.
Paul had received a piece of gum from someone (definitely not from his mother). But somehow when he took it out of his mouth to look at it fell out of the car window. I made up a story about what the gnome who found the gum did with it. That gnome wondered over that curious pink thing. What was it for? He made it into a bench, but it stuck to his bottom when he sat on it. He made little balls of it to decorate his doorway, but a visitor's fingers got stuck in it. The gnome finally rolled it in the dirt and hid it away where it could not cause any more trouble.

Imagination makes life so fun; it is a kind of speaking in pictures. "The tricycle lives outside." "The truck feels that its nose hurts if you bash it against the couch. And think of the poor couch." "This is a very special tape player; it needs to be touched softly." "Your hands are wanting to see themselves again, so we need to wash them." "Here comes the little swan (blue and white ceramic) carrying your medicine. She wants you to be well." Or "Quick, get a rag, we need to clean up the floor where you dropped those words!" (Where did she hear such things?)

Rules and regulations don't need to be spoken. When they are told through imagination, a lightness comes in. Instead of using lectures or stern reminders, you distract, divert or make feeling pictures. At times, and with other children, you might need to comment that there are certain things that are done in this "kingdom" that might be different from other "kingdoms."

Using imagination can of course stray into becoming just silly, but it doesn't have to be cotton candy. It can be deeply true and good and unaffected--a different view of the world. Young children live in a pantheistic world, a world of beings rather than laws. A world of color and feeling and connectedness. Even as adults our hearts are activated by metaphor, by speaking the language of the soul. Our lives become part poetry, not just prose. Imagination lets us act out of delight rather than out of duty.

Another quality that enhances life is gratitude, and it can become such a habit that you hardly realize you are doing it. You can be grateful that right in your own neighborhood there is an ancient juniper tree, calm, benign, strong and grounded, with low branches that seem to invite you to climb up. It becomes a dear friend to touch and greet when you are out walking -- and something special to show visiting friends. Aren't we fortunate! What a lovely neighborhood.

You can be awed and grateful that you find persimmons at the store, or whatever unlikely thing you were looking for. You can rejoice in a sunny day or a cool wind or rain. How grateful you can be for rain when you live in a dry land, or the glorious sun in a wet land. There are some days that seem like a gift.

How glad you can be that, not far away, there are pussy willows in spring. Their branches with furry little blankets are not always found near people's houses, and they are such a special part of spring. Purple asters seem to like your yard and sunflowers pop up in unexpected places. Twin chipmunks play in the wood pile and a baby robin hops on the porch and looks in the door. What an amazing yard we have. And in the house we have a beautiful bowl from Japan that Grandma gave us for special occasions. And a rooster pitcher that pours water out of its mouth. Our windows only let in starlight at night and the fireplace gives us fire.

Even the car can evoke gratitude. You feel so fortunate to have a car so you can go to buy groceries and run errands. It may be old and ugly, but that is not what you look at. That it made it to town and back once again is something to be grateful for.

We called one of our cars "Ruth" because she was faithful. She never failed to take us places. "Whither thou goest I will go. Whether thou lodgest I will lodge." "Wherever you go I will go. Where ever you live I will live. Your family will be my family, your friends my friends." In summer we washed it's outside and freed its inside from bread crumbs and scraps of paper. You can open the hood and thank the fire spirits that help it go. Or speak to the elementals who live in the engine. (Children over nine do not find this appealing. They just look around to see if the neighbors might have overheard.)

Gratitude for the smallest things--for a beautiful rock--or for the largest--the gift of life itself, the opportunity to be, to grow and become. Feeling continually blessed provides what the soul needs, what the spirit needs.
--From Esther Leisher
[Click to read Part I on "Noble-Minded, Generous-Hearted and Affectionate" and Part II on "Reverence and Rhythm"]