The importance of rhythm
When a baby is born, he has no regular rhythm. He doesn’t know day from night–even after twenty-some years, I remember this part very well! He doesn’t have a rhythm for eating or sleeping. His organs are finding their rhythms, as well. The newborn may breathe up to 80 times a minute, while adults and children who are at least 9 or 10 years old breathe 10-20 times per minute.
Also, we live in a time and place where we are not necessarily in touch with the rhythms of nature. We don’t have to sleep when it’s dark or wake at dawn (well, maybe sometimes we do). For many of us, our work doesn’t change with the seasons and we don’t have our weeks organized with certain tasks for certain days. It can seem limiting to have these kinds of regular rhythms.
An old nursery rhyme about weekly rhythm
Do you know this nursery rhyme? I didn’t until I became a Waldorf teacher.
Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Bake on Wednesday,
Brew on Thursday,
Churn on Friday,
Mend on Saturday,
Go to meeting on Sunday.
And this weekly rhythm certainly wasn’t part of my childhood-or if it was, I never noticed. And although I tried to bring more rhythm into my days, I have never been this organized–also, I don’t brew or churn and rarely mend.
What rhythm will do for your child
But for a baby or young child, regular rhythm can support the healthy development of body and mind. It can help a child to feel secure in the world and to learn the difference between day and night. It also helps with discipline when children know what is coming next.
Beginning to build a healthy rhythm–start where you are
So how can we begin to build a rhythm for our family? In Waldorf-world, we think of this rhythm as an in-breath and out-breath, that is a breathing rhythm. We try to find a balance between the two. For example, in my classroom, we would start our morning with circle time. This was a kind of in-breath, where the children were asked to come together and follow along with what I was doing. That would be followed by the out-breath of free play where the children could move freely and decide for themselves what they wanted to do. After that, we had the in-breath of clean-up and snack, followed by the big out-breath of playing outside. And the younger the children I had in my class, the shorter the in-breaths and longer the out-breaths.
It’s always a good idea to begin where you are. Pick a day, an ordinary day if you have such a thing, and think back on the activities you did throughout the day–maybe write them down. This could be things like waking up, had breakfast, went to the park, meeting friends for lunch, nap, or whatever–but just big categories. Then try to label them as in or out-breath. A lot of activities are combinations of both, so don’t sweat it, just make your best guess. I could never decide if story-time was an in or out-breath, because even though the children were invited to sit and listen, they usually found it very relaxing and engaging. Just see what you notice.
Try making a small change
Then try to think of one (more) thing that you could try to do more regularly at the same time each day or on the same day of the week. I find it’s really good to start small and build up. In a wonderful article in the Spring 2009 issue of Lilipoh magazine, Rahima Baldwin Dancy wrote an article about using rhythm to support you as a parent.
Life is the curriculum–some places to start building rhythm
She divided what she calls the “living arts”–the art of creating a home and family into five categories: Nurturing, domestic, social, and creative. Children want to learn about the world, about your world. They want to be part of what you do. They are more interested when very young in learning how the world wo rks than in taking classes or being provided with other “enriching” experiences. Cindy Aldinger talks about that in her book, Life Is the Curriculum.
Think about what kind of activities fit into these categories and how you might both make them more rhythmical and include your child in them–here are a few examples of each to get you started:
Nurturing–feeding, bathing, changing diapers, reading, singing
Domestic–cooking, sweeping, washing dishes, folding laundry
Social–eating together, playing games, singing together, conversation
Creative–drawing, painting, crafts, sewing
And this is only the beginning…..
There is much to say about creating rhythm–and you can be sure that I will have more to say! But this should serve as an introduction to this important idea, and hopefully will give you food for thought.
If you are interested in Cindy Aldinger’s book, here is an affiliate link:
There are many more books that can help with rhtyhm which I will be sharing in the not too distant future.
In the meantime, thanks for stopping by.
xoxo