For those of you who are following my blogs on aggressive children and behavioral issues, I am continuing the theme here-in my previous posts I compared children against the backdrop of religious influences, birth influences, and environment influences, here I will now compare it light of Steiner's work...

This is basically addressing the trend in some Waldorf circles to label young children with certain temperaments.

Steiner addresses many birth and pre-birth influences on children. He does so using the theology of Redi and Bruno as an example-these two men (who were persecuted) claimed that "the living comes from living"-that the Spirit is alive and transfers ...in a nut shell......For this Bruno was burned at the stake.

Basically-between the 9 (the adult teeth) and 11 year change (puberty) the influences of "heredity" and imitation, and individuality-

finally submerge-

Before that time- a child labeled as a choleric child might be strongly astral, or "imitating" one of it's parents, reacting to it's environment, astrological influences throughout life of course, or acting out preverbal traumas (as in the case of my oldest son's birth trauma, he recently came too me that he used to be in a happy place, and he came to earth too soon, and he didn't want to-this was a strange coincidence because his birth was induced and he was pulled from my womb violently with a vacuum)-

There is no question or debate on the temperaments...at any age, but here is an extended explaination of the anthroposophical stages of childhood.

The focus of Waldorf is protecting the child's intellect and developing the soul of the child-in stages (this is an extremely condensed definition).

For those of you already familiar with Steiner, I continue here in more specific terms:

This means to develop and protect the etheric body in early childhood as much as possible...to keep the child in the "child" realm until they are ready to "come out" of it....if the child is already in the astral intellect realm, then the process would be to strengthen the etheric forces.

So, it is difficult to apply this wholeheartedly-unless you have followed the education from birth (I have not) so...influences will be much stronger, the astral body could be prematurely stronger then the etheric...

The astral body- is the hardening, the mineralization, the sexuality, the rhythm, the intellect-many children in our culture have in Waldorf terms-an underdeveloped etheric body and an over developed, premature astral body.

In the early ages-teachers are more concerned about these two aspects then the temperaments. What the kindergarten teacher told my friend at the Ann Arbor Waldorf who had a six year old that was too astral was to:

Take walks outside in the fresh air everyday, switch to beeswax instead of clay, Watercolour painting, and listening to music with less mechanical earthy beats and add more singing with music strings and flutes....(this is one reason why they do not recommend drum lessons until after puberty)

In the book the "Temperaments and the Arts"by Magda Lissau-Steiner is quoted comparing these two polarized influences of the child and their stages Dionysus and Apollo-Dionysus which is the heavier earth astral influence, and Apollo-the lyre-representing the sun and the etheric body (this is why through Mercurius you can purchase the pure A tone tuning fork which resonates children to the sun).

So if you picture the child growing-and as the child grows you will have a complete adult-who is balanced cosmically within the: Dionysius and Apollo, will and feeling, astral and etheric, life and death, the balance between lucifer and ahriman, expansion and contraction....

or at least, this is the hope....The merging of these opposites can be accomplished with language and art (see my music language program the AMHC).

Up until puberty the child is soft and less mineral, and with the teeth we see the "hardening"into adulthood.. The ego or astral body are literally falling to the earth, and this is why it is compared to the Biblical story of the "fall of humanity" To quote the book above book again,

"If we have a strongly developed physical body, we shall not yet have touched the ground with our feet as a child but remain more connected to the dense water element of the water sphere, just as we were in the womb. Even our bones are not as hard as they will become later on, cartilage is less mineralized and solid. The physical body hardens and contracts..eventually, fluids can and may solidify- and thus, the phlegmatic child becomes a melancholic adult" and here...

"If our astral forces are predominant in childhood, we shall be all movement, rushing, all activity, in choleric liveliness...." (Pgs. 146-148)

As a naturopath,

When a child is having a hard time with the "fall" or coming into their teeth or puberty,

I always recommend Ambra Grisea, constitutionally homeopathically-

This goes along with the realization of death-the bite-where there is suddenly an anxiety about "hitting the earth" disconnecting from oneness (individuality) and the ultimate realization of death.

-as a side note-an exercise which is very good for this is changing the circles when making the Waldorf forms after 9 to always putting a dot in the center-this reflects their journey into the "earth".... and coming into the individuality)

On a deeper aspect, Anthroposophically, it may prove to be more cohesive and simpler to focus on the aspects of etheric and astral-in those terms...

Which is not quite as complex as temperaments, and for lay people (like me!)

It is easier to look at those two aspects right now-with my five year old-(who thinks he is 18) and address the more complex solidified aspects of my 11 year old-which are now temperamentally applied.

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