by Ona Wetherhall O’Hara, October 2024
Thoughts on the importance of modeling, the strength of imitation, and how threefold principles and seasonal festivals can support us.
A couple weeks ago, I made a fire and baked our (dragon) bread in our outdoor cobb oven we have at our Rosebud pre-kindergarten program. Two children came with me each time I went to the oven to make and feed the fire and bake, checking on the rolls a few times, and most of the class also watched at one point or another from the porch. The next week that activity came to life in the children’s play and each day engaged more and more of the class as first one, then two, then 5 children and more started feeding little sticks to a hole in a log, going to the sandbox to make a confection, dumping it into the hole, taking it out and offering it to children and teachers, and beginning again. Young children learn and develop so many skills through imitation and in turn their social, emotional, and cognitive development is supported. Remembering and utilizing that may be our most powerful tool as parents and teachers.
How we work, worry, and wonder become the roads on which our children journey to becoming independent humans. The forms we hold are the vessels their freedom lives in. Of course, this weighty task holds much to inspire us to be the very best version of ourselves as a model worthy of imitation for that which is most dear to us; our children. But we often need support. Human support and parenting support. The world of parenting is almost feeling endangered; we are so full of doubt and guilt, we are anxious and fearful, we are overloaded and our nervous systems are fried, and we are losing the ability to tap into our intuition and to trust ourselves and others, and we are modeling this for our children. And we try to intellectualize with our children and constantly ask them to make choices, forgetting that they operate on the wings of nature, which, at the end of the day nurtures their needs beautifully, and often ours as well. This is where we can look to threefold principles and seasonal festivals to support, inspire, and inform us.
Courage, Compassion, Wisdom.
After a summer of long sun bursting days, Autumn brings a threading of the needle from the Fall Equinox to the Winter Solstice (the shortest day) and hearty lusty festivals filled with reflections of courage (Michaelmas and the taming of the dragon), compassion (Martinmas and the offering of warmth), and wisdom (the spiral of light for reflection and connection). These vital human elements are also reflected in the sentiments of hands, heart, and mind; goodness, beauty, and truth; and willing, feeling, and thinking. We are all on a path of human becoming, always searching for purpose, trust, and meaning. We seek this for ourselves, for our children, and for our community. We long to know ourselves and we need each other and empathy for this. Universally human and divinely individual elements spiral together through the eye of the needle in striving, wonder, and intention.
Reminding ourselves to tap into and reflect out courage, compassion, and wisdom will support us so when we look back on what may be our most influential season of life, we can take pride in the way we showed up. Seasonal rhythms invite and implore us to embrace and celebrate our spiritual nature which connects us not only to the cosmos but to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Nature also helps connect us to how our children naturally engage; first through experience, then emotion, then thinking, which is the opposite of the way we adults tend to approach life. We strive to model and cultivate respect, appreciation, admiration, and wonder in meaningful and beautiful ways. It is often challenging to find the energy for this striving when we feel the fatigue of life and thinking trying to overpower us. Help can be found by looking at some of the threefold foundations of our educational pedagogy. This threefold working in harmony is the wonder, the promise, and the hope of humanity. For ourselves and our children, while sweating the small stuff, and the big, we can pause, find our courage, our compassion, and our wisdom. We are rising up because we are raising up the future of our world.
Ona Wetherall O’Hara, October 2024.
Kimberton Waldorf School Lead Pre-K teacher, Early Childhood Leader, Governing Team Member.
Parent of a KWS Graduate, Senior, and Kindergartener
