Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Waldorf preschool--could it possibly work?

I have read plenty about Waldorf and honestly I consider it to be verging on cultish, or at least quite nutty. However, I do like the heavy emphasis on outdoor and pretend play and natural materials. We have a really poor selection of preschools available to us presently and Waldorf might be the best of a set of poor choices, but I'm nervous. It would just be two or three half-days a week for the 4 to 5 preschool year, so really not much time. DS really is outgrowing his current in-home situation; a new school is a must for next year.

DS (almost 4) is a very sweet and enjoyable child--less prickly and intense than his sister. He loves pretend play and is socially skilled and pretty easygoing in many ways. However, he is getting kind of...laser-focused lately. He is very good at chess for his age, is very focused on learning everything possible about his topics of interest, and is a strong beginning reader, probably at mid-K level, though this seems to be changing daily. Math seems strong as well and he is able to write. I expect him to be reading fluently long before he would start at this school in the fall.

The school is well-established and beloved. The director knows and likes my son and many of my friends go there. I am comfortable with the group of parents and like them, but I honestly do think a lot of it hogwash and worry that my son would be seen as problematic due to his high ability. However, I am thinking it may be no worse and possibly better than, for instance, a heavily academic religious preschool or corporate center care. We would never get into the one MOntessori in town.

Thoughts? Am I crazy to even consider it?

Supposedly you don't learn to read in Waldorf's until third grade, so...

No, you don't. It would be very nonacademic, which is good, imo! But the belief is that a child who reads early is not living correctly in the physical body and is unbalanced, or something.

I think I'd go with my gut feeling - we have Waldorf schools in our area, and my feeling when I was thinking about preschool for my kids was that the preschools would be a wonderful nurturing place... I wouldn't have been comfortable sending my kids through elementary school there, but think they would have been fine for preschool. I also never heard a philosophy that a child who reads early *on their own motivation* is unbalanced, just thought that the philosophy was not to push reading until children were older - but that might vary from school to school.

polarbear

A couple things about Waldorf --- they seem to expect you to live according to the founder's philosophies, so that's something to consider.

Also, depending on your outlook, this could be a serious problem: Waldorf families tend to be anti-vaccine, and there have been nasty outbreaks at Waldorf schools (here's one example here).

I don't know where you are, but this PDF provides vaccination rates for California schools. Search for Waldorf.

We looked at the local Waldorf for our youngest because they had a good reputation for working with food allergies. The director looked at my kid like he was damaged because he could read and even worse, do second grade math. Her look said we OBVIOUSLY must have pushed him. Uh, no, he just has older siblings and he's gifted. She also gave us her lecture about no plastic toys, not even lego (a deal breaker for DS), and no electronic media of any sort -- our one family movie a week was unacceptable. I decided that I just couldn't go along with it. Some schools are more strict than others.

I would ask them straight out how they would view your child given his high abilities. You don't want him getting the message that there is something wrong with him or that you are not good parents because he can read, write, etc. Maybe your Waldorf would be more accepting.

Every school is probably different. When I looked into a Waldorf for ds4 it initially sounded nice but I specifically got freaked out by the way the kids were forced to do art: they were only allowed to shade, no drawing lines, and the use of colors was very limited. Free outdoor play did not equate to self determination in other areas and I wasn't comfortable with ds being made to follow rules that I could find no sense in.

On the other hand, there's always a school that overall has the least bad things. I know for example my mom sent my brother to a religious preschool despite them not being religious, they cringed when he came home singing religious songs but as parents and home life have a strong influence, the impression on him was fleeting.

Polly

We don't have experience with Waldorf, but we do have experience with a church-based preschool, which became problematic since we are not religious. I felt uncomfortable about some of the things DS was learning, since we as parents didn't believe in it. It's funny, because I specifically asked before we signed up if the preschool incorporated a lot of religion, and I was told that no, the preschool just happened to be housed in a church, and was very light on religion. And to the teacher, it probably was "very light", just not to us. And I really liked the teacher personally, and had no way to gauge this big difference until, for example, kiddo came home with what he called "the God book", which he disliked very much because it involved painting, his least favorite activity. The unfortunate side effect of a religious school with projects that the kid hated was that the kid became anti-church for awhile, associating craft projects with churches, even though we tried to stress acceptance of all different belief systems.

From what you've said, it sounds like you might face some conflict in ideologies at the Waldorf school. But if you know the director very well, maybe this won't occur. And really not trying to get into a conversation about religion, just thought I'd share an example about clash of belief systems and the effects on young people and their families.

This school does not require parents to live by the philosophy--I know lots of parents with kids there and none are banning Legos, though I do think they discourage screentime. We actually do not do screens much at all anyway, so in that sense it's a decent fit. He would surely be exposed to lots of unvaxed kids, but he already is anyway since we hang with a very crunchy crowd. (No infants or compromised people in the household, though, and the whole thing doesn't worry me much on a personal level.)

I do know that they follow the Waldorf "art rules." And I don't like them either.


This is of course a good idea. I wonder if I would get a straight answer.

It sounds pretty different from a lot of what I've heard of traditional Waldorf schools. You said that you have friends whose kids go there. Would you feel comfortable discussing your concerns with them? You might get some more perspective.

I think it's really hard when you're dealing with people who believe strongly about anything -- what they mean when they say they don't strictly follow something or other may not mean exactly what you think!

Another anecdote -- I remember bonding with the preschool teacher over Tolkien before DS started there. There was no way I could have imagined things would turn out as as uncomfortably as they did! And really, I still like and respect her very much, but I would not send another child there if I had one. (She will always be liked as the first person to suggest that DS would need acceleration some day.)