The initial period of childhood is essentially about adapting to and
incarnating on Earth and establishing a provisional balance between the
"spiritual" and the "physical," between the prenatal cosmic and the
earthly factors. During this time, according to Rudolf Steiner, "all the
forces of a child's organization emanate from the neurosensory system.
. . . By bringing respiration into harmony with neurosensory activity,
we draw the spirit-soul element into the child's physical life."
Peter Selg investigates how children's early experience of the world
begins as an undifferentiated sensory relationship to their
phenomenological environment. This aspect of a child's incarnation leads
to learning through imitation and to the process of recognizing "the
Other" as a separate entity with which to interact.
In this cogent work, Peter Selg describes the early stages of childhood
from the perspectives of conventional scientific and
spiritual-scientific-- anthropological and anthroposophic--research with
the purpose of encouraging a new educational attitude in working with
young children. In his numerous references to early childhood
development, this was Rudolf Steiner's most important and urgent
purpose.
∞ ∞ ∞
"Steiner directed attention to the special character of the senses in
childhood, particularly in the first few years of life. Through their
senses, children are fully exposed to (and to some extent at the mercy
of) objects and people around them.... In many of his lectures,
especially those dealing with education and developmental physiology,
Rudolf Steiner emphasized that the anthropology of early childhood must
not only recognize the child as a 'comprehensive' or 'universal' sense
organ, but must also give that recognition top priority in any
consideration of what is involved in the child's life and experiences.
'Children are completely like sense organs in how they take in the
contents of their surroundings'" (from chapter 2).
