For parents and caregivers of young children and for anyone interested in understanding the nature of human will.
Living with the young child, we notice a lack of conscious observation and of thinking. Instead we are struck by the child's urge to shape his unique future out of the influences which play from all sides into his unconscious. In Rudolf Steiner's terminology, this takes place in the realm of the will. We feel challenged to learn to understand and to work with the inherent dynamics of the will. ?Meyerkort and Lissau
This book is a rare treasure that penetrates to the heart of what it means to be human. Its portrayal of the magical world in which children live, the world of the will, is accurate and true-to-life and brimming with that joyful life which is the child. It is a world easily forgotten by the intellect, as Wordsworth and Traherne so poignantly observed, yet a world accessible to and indeed indispensable for parents, teachers, and all of us who wish to know children as they truly are, and wish to know the hidden child in ourselves as well! ?Philip Incao, MD
A wide spectrum of readers will appreciate this book by two very experienced Waldorf school teachers, a book which makes Rudolf Steiner's wealth of indications accessible to every person who is concerned about the dilemma of early childhood education today. For people who are not actively engaged with the young child, but perhaps with a teenager or even with adult questions, much can be gained from the research recorded here which proceeds from the human being as a wholeness and only then regards his or her various stages of development with special emphasis on the early years. ?Virginia Sease, Goetheanum, Switzerland
Margret Meyerkort directed the Wynstones Kindergarten Teachers Training in Gloucester, UK from 1973 to 1993 and travelled to many countries to give courses on early childhood education. Rudi Lissau taught at the Wynstones (Rudolf Steiner) School for many years and lectured and wrote on the subject of Rudolf Steiner's social ideas.
