“Pass me the hammer, Daddy” – Family Harmony Found in Work and “Real” Play

Parents of children under seven, lean close.  I’ve got a secret to share about creating harmonious and enriching family experiences that may just be satisfying for both parents and children.  Work and “real” play are the answers in many Waldorf-inspired homes.

If you are familiar with Waldorf-education, you may have already discovered the weight Waldorf educators place on play.Exactly how does a child define play? How do you support it in your own home?  At what level do you get involved as a parent?  What activities can you do that don’t leave either the adults or the children bored or unfulfilled?

Read on to discover how Marc Feyh and his children build fairy worlds or how Paul Kaiser and his son work side by side at building and farming.

Work and “Real” Play

Have you ever noticed your child’s innate radar for honing in on the moment you get engaged in front of the computer screen or dare to answer the phone?  My son instantly channels the spirit of Dennis the Menace, leaving me rushing off the phone to mop up a flooded kitchen (who knew the spray faucet could also clean counters and walls?) or to rescue my boy from a collapsing ironing board that seemed moments away from ending his short life.

But, what happens when you get down on the floor to build a fort or muster up the energy for freeze tag in an attempt to give them what you imagine must constitute your full attention?  Does your energy lapse?  Does your mind wander back to “more productive” things?   Can you stay at the game for even a fraction of the time that one of their playmates will?  And then there’s that awkward transition from parent to playmate to back to parent again that can <cough> make it really difficult to keep appropriate  boundaries.

So how do you connect with your child in a way that is meaningful , deep, and breeds harmony between adults and children?

It all starts with a laundry basket in our home.  I find it amazing that I can bring a laundry basket into the living room and kick off a whole hour of bliss.   I hum a little song as I bring in the basket, set it on the couch with a smile, and dreamily set to folding napkins into neat squares.  Suddenly, I’m present with my boy, but quiet and almost meditative.  He’s got space to play and be, but the safety and security of having me silently there.  He’ll wander over, ask me if he can fold the towels, and I pass him a stack with a sincere and simple thank you.  Without speaking, I might also fold a towel to remind him how its done.  With great satisfaction he folds his own neat square and beams up at me.  We keep smiling and folding until his attention wanders.

Around that time, he’ll usually spy the laundry basket, which should win a prize for the world’s longest reigning favorite kid toy – even though you’ll never find this at the toy store….  It becomes his mouse house, where he’ll narrate to me his adventures of being Little Mousy Brown.  While he fully submerges in his dream world – just where he should live through age seven according to Steiner – I happily make progress on our never ending laundry pile. I also feel happy to make time to observe my child in wonder as he uses his imagination and physical skills in ever advancing ways.

And this scenario gets played out over and over as we “work” together on projects throughout the day.  We bake bread, move compost around our yard in big piles with the wheel barrow, stack wood, sew, felt, and build things together.

The magic for making work into play lies in these components:

1. The parent must be present and undistracted
2. The parent’s gesture of work should be joyful and peaceful
3. Humming or singing goes very far to set the mood or tone
4. The goal is focused on the process not the result – so the parent needs to stay rooted in the resulting quality of the experience even if the laundry pile gets left to be finished later
5. The child should be free to turn some of the tools into instruments of their own play e.g. the laundry basket or turning the wheelbarrow into a wagon ride for them between loads
6. The parent sees the child’s floating off into their own dreamworld as part of the goal – avoiding bringing them back to finish a task or otherwise “awakening” them with talking

What can you do in your home to create these magical work/play sessions with your child?  What tools/toys are needed?  Allow local creative, Waldorf-inspired dads Marc Feyh and Paul Kaiser to share some of their insights with you.

“Real” Play with Marc Feyh

Can you imagine growing up in a home where your dad operates a fairy house building operation (The Fairy Museum) and works on his inventions for automated medical devices?  Imagine the noises, smells, and discoveries in his ever changing work space, where you’d gather bits of copper wire or acorn tops for your own imitative play.  Marc Feyh puts a third feather in his career cap by also preforming as a Jester at local fairs where he sells his handmade, leather jester sticks. Not surprisingly, Marc’s young children spend much of their days as children turned “tinkers” through their rich, imaginative role playing.

“My kids weren’t satisfied with just playing with one of my apothecary sets.  They wanted to pick up my tools, and hammer out their own creations.”  Rather than getting frustrated and devoting energy to chasing his kids out of his workshop, Marc had a better idea.  Why not give them their own work bench?

Marc wire brushed down his brother-in-law’s childhood work bench (made years ago by Grandpa Leonard), and added a fresh work top with rounded corners and routed edges for safety.  Then he gathered all of the small, child-sized tools he’d inherited from his own Grandpa Kibler, and put together a special workspace in his living room.  During the Winter Holiday, Marc unveiled this prized, working, toy.  Consider all the generations of creative folk that are wound up in this bench.  Marc’s kids, Adalie and Baylen, now spend part of each day in front of their work bench.

It’s quite something to watch the accuracy of the kids’ imitation of their dad.  Little Baylen never steps up to his work bench without first putting on his goggles.  (A safety lesson Dad didn’t even need to give with words!) As Waldorf Educator, Lynne Oldfield attests in her book Free to Learn, in the “first seven years of life, children are naturally inclined to imitate and be active.”

Now that both Marc and the kids have tools and “projects”, it’s easier for them to get together and create side by side.  Marc can direct the kids to gather their tools and get them started on building their own other worldly creations.  Then, he finds his own hands free to start another piece for his Fairy Museum collection.  Yes, the kids might only stay interested long enough to make a forrest folk tipi out of three sticks before they run off to turn the sticks into fishing poles or walking sticks. Still,  this family is  co-creating, spending quality time together, and Marc is able to get more work done with more family harmony.

“Real” Play with Paul Kaiser

Paul Kasier is a fine wood artist and farmer.  His expansive wood working shop (where he creates for Night Heron Woodworks) spans the top of his huge barn, and overlooks the rolling hills of his lush Community Supported Agriculture Farm (Singing Frogs Farm).  His boy, Lucas, is growing up in this mecca of working play opportunities.   Paul is thrilled that his boy doesn’t begrudge picking up a shovel, but instead would be heart broken if his dad didn’t let him help.  Paul purchased Lucas child-sized, metal tools to give him “real” tools for his play toys.

Imagine how little Lucas must be nourishing his senses with the pungent smells of freshly cut rye grass, or the warmth of a freshly gathered organic egg, or the weighty feel of a two by four that will soon support a chicken coop.  Waldorf educators have long placed an emphasis on nourishing a child’s development through natural sensory opportunities.  Where ever Lucas follows his dad, he’s sure to find an abundance of such experiences!

Paul does much of his tasks by hand, such as sanding down fine pieces of salvaged wood that he’ll later transform into a table or preparing the ground for a new crop by using a broad fork.  While the work is physically daunting, Paul approaches it with joy, pride, and satisfaction.  Lucas needs no words to explain what type of attitude Lucas should take when acting out his own version of “work” – he curls up his tongue and gives great gusto to every task.

As Lynne Oldfield outlines: “cognitive based learning is avoided in favor of a movement-based self-initiated experience (imitation)…which lays the foundation….for a life long habit of taking initiative – a love of action….an enormous asset later in life.”  (p. 63, Free to Learn)

Lucas, too, has a work bench, that his father crafted for him.  Lucas, too, is loving his own space to work and create alongside his dad.  Forget the plastic hammers that are truly toys!  Lucas loves using his real tools.  He’s learning lessons like it takes a very long time to hammer a screw through a piece of wood…and you should see how much time passes as he  stays with the task.  (Maybe his dad will help him learn to use a drill and screw driver to get that screw in more easily later!)

Come on out and meet these two inspiraiton dads and check out what they’ve been able to create at the upcoming Sono-Ma Studio Soiree on March 24, 2011 from 6:30 – 8:00 pm.  Be sure and RSVP to hold your space today!