The Laws of Childhood

By Dr. Helmut von Kügelgen

Childhood is governed by sublime laws, and demands humanity and selflessness from the
adult world. For this reason, the small child poses a great challenge to our intellectual
modern consciousness. Should the realm of childhood be protected from the “experts,”
whose thoughts are not born of love and perceptivity? Should the invasive
experimentation, which alters and thereby affronts human destiny, be forbidden? Should
it not still be our duty to our children to think ahead in reverence before daring to
demand something of them—or before with drawing and leaving them to their own
devices? No matter how we act, we form children in our own image: it is not their
consciousness, or even the soul, which has not yet spread its wings to take flight, but
the convolutions of the brain, the fine vibrations of the glands, liver, circulatory system
that we affect.

As a result, the first law of childhood is that the small child s whole body is a sense
organ, open to any and every impression. The child is extremely sensitive to the
immediate surroundings. A smile, an expression of love, a tender word (unequaled
sources of warmth and strength), colors, shapes, arrangement of things, and the positive
thoughts of the people in the surroundings—all shape and form the child as do
nervousness, senseless acts and outbursts of temper.

It is thus not so much heredity that is responsible for the similarity between parents and
child; rather, small children are not yet consciously able to shield themselves from
outside influences. These impressions penetrate right to the marrow of their bones—
their reactions can be seen, for example, in changes in skin color or in digestive
problems. The first days of a child’s life, as more and more psychologists are
discovering, have a lasting influence because the initial impressions grow with the child’s
body, as scars or as healthy tissue do.

The second law is one born of love, a sacred habit that every individual brings along:
learning takes place through imitation, which incorporates the impressions made on
children by their surroundings. An act of love, even if it was merely an act of sexual
intercourse, summoned the child’s being and prepared a body as a physical abode. From
the loving spiritual world of the unborn, the child brings over a feeling of unbounded
trust in the goodness of our world. Thus, there is the desire to imitate everything, and
everything becomes part of the child through imitation: gestures, inner attitudes,
outward conduct, language we use and the thoughts we think. “Imitation” is the magic
word in the child’s education until the age of nine or ten, when it is gradually replaced
by other forms of learning.

The child’s habit of imitating us—filled with great trust and equally great expectations—
exhorts us to be worthy of that imitation. Not lectures, but meaningful actions meld a
“brain" which is capable of thinking meaningful thoughts. Inconsistency has the opposite
effect.
These considerations lead us to the third law, which remains of great importance for
the first years of schooling—and which is still a painful experience for the student
struggling during exams: the forces of growth and memory (visual representation) are
identical. Burdened with pedantic knowledge, children are robbed of the formative
forces necessary to develop and strengthen their growing bodies. This is the reason why
most precocious children look pale and wan, and why children who play imaginative
games have a healthy complexion. Why should young children be weighed down with
the banalities of everyday life? They will learn soon enough to differentiate between
thick and thin, round and square, or between the fireman and the policeman—and will
have no trouble doing so. The most important tiling for the first seven years of life is to
stimulate the child’s creative imagination through play and actual doing.

For this age group more than for any other, the following holds true: The child learns to
be human from other human beings. What happens if this fourth law is disregarded? If the
parent or teacher replaces their own stories, games, efforts and failures with books,
learning materials, or even the television set, they deprive the child of the most
important thing they can give: human contact. The perception of a personality behind
the activities the child sees in turn awakens the child's own personality. For what good
are knowledge and more knowledge if a person has no imagination and is incapable of
forming judgments and acting responsibly on those insights?

There are three different kinds of "sustenance” that nourish children and become part
of them: food, the air they breathe and the sense impressions from the world around
them. So, the fifth law is pay attention to quality. Prepare meals lovingly, using as many
wholesome fruit and vegetables of the season as possible. An attitude of thankfulness for
"our daily bread” increases its value; indifference, indulgence and lack of social graces
reduce it.

In the family, there should be an alternation between outside and inside activities,
sleeping and waking, serious moments and times of joy, Sundays and workdays. All of
these factors make an essential contribution to the quality of the sense impressions
children take in from their surroundings. Should they have mechanical toys or the
stones, shells, building blocks and pieces of cloth to stimulate the imagination? Should
they have woolen underwear or synthetics? Is the instinctive feeling that small children
do not belong in front of the television set (not even to watch programs made for
children!) already dead? Strollers should be built so that children can see and be
reassured by the adult's face, for exposure to a flood of impressions from the street
that children cannot assimilate only serves to make them nervous. We should constantly
remind ourselves that anything that children cannot digest or that is of poor quality only
weakens them. Children challenge our adult world to critical reflection. From their
point of view, much could indeed be said about the quality of our cities, the daily rhythm
of our outer lives and the richness of our inner lives. Children demand humanity from
us.

At what age do they become our contemporaries? In the beginning, they still live in
mankinds earlier, dream-like state of consciousness; later, they will most certainly
overtake us, for it is their task to take up the torch of the new generation. At no time,
however, are they miniature adults. They must be gradually strengthened for the tasks
of our century and equipped to carry its burdens. This upbringing must proceed step by
step. Giving children too little of what they need for their age—or giving it to them too
early—creates problems right from the start. That is why the sixth law under
consideration here is: development takes time, each step being built upon the preceding
one. In the first two to three years, this development proceeds by leaps and bounds.
Children learn more during this time than later during job training or in the university.
The will power to stand erect and to learn to walk is followed by the child’s awakening
to feelings that find their expression in the spoken work. Only thereafter is the first
word that is thought, and not imitated, spoken: the word "I.”

This three-fold development also holds true for the first seven years of child
development. First, children must come to grips with gravity, testing their will with each
step taken. Then, reaching beyond the outstretched hand in the form of words, they
express the first stirrings of the soul. A dialogue with nature and the world of fairy tales
and an exploration of the social and imaginative-artistic aspect of language has begun.
Finally (between the ages of five and seven), uniting word and language gestures, the
child forms the first thoughts, creates new words and philosophies as only a child can.
This law is clearly shown again in the three seven-year periods leading up to adulthood.
Up to school age, and somewhat beyond, children should do things in order to grasp
them, learning through play and their own experience. Up to puberty, they should learn
both through experiencing things and through discussions. What has been learned is no
longer incorporated, instead, feelings slowly begin to take wing.

During puberty, lively interest in people’s destinies, both near and far, should develop,
expanding their horizon beyond their own country. Only now, on the basis of their own
many varied experiences, can young people begin to form their own judgments. At this
point, they have crossed the threshold from childhood to youth. A love of truth,
science, and self-chosen responsibilities and obligations and an urge to act on their own
insights, become strong, leading to career decisions and adulthood. Now the task is to
think before one acts. Willing and thinking—after a strengthening of their intermediary,
feeling—have entered into a new relationship with one another.

What is already present in small children grows with them as they mature. So the final
law is to protect childhood. Shield it from experimentation, from premature
development, from floods of stimuli, from everything that serves to weaken the child’s
powers of imagination. Protect childhood as a source of physical well being, of inner
strength, of self-identity, of social tolerance. If childhood is not filled with joy and
warmth, imaginative games and meaningful experiences, many obstacles are placed in the
path of sound development.

Dr. Helmut von Kugelgen spent thirty years as a teacher at the original Waldorf school in Stuttgart and
was the founder of the International Association of Waldorf Kindergartens. He also served as Director of
the Waldorf Kindergarten Seminar in Stuttgart and edited a collection of booklets on the festivals and the
inner life of Waldorf teachers, now available in English as the Little Series.