Hello. I'm new to your site. I'm glad I found you, however, what started out as a very positive and exciting alternative for our children's education is slowly sinking into the abyss for me! I'm the mother of a 4 year old daughter and 1 year old son. I originally came to your site looking for a group of parents who shared what I'll call our "Waldorf Style" of parenting, and maybe even a Mom's group here in our city that I could connect with.
My husband and I are both fortunate enough to have had exceptional educations nd careers. I worked at a very high level in the entertainment industry for many years in children's programming, so it was NOT a difficult decision for us to omit commercial TV from our kids lives.
We are both staunch environmentalists, and want to impart to our kids the importance of their everyday decisions on the planet and our quality of life. I always tell people that if we do nothing more than raise two more "consumers" in this society, I will be very disappointed in myself.
We also have what I call a "wooden toy policy" in our home. Simple, open-ended. No "one trick wonder" plastic toys that will do nothing but end up in a landfill polluting the Earth.
Guns aren't used for ANYTHING but to kill, and though my neighbors argue it's just "fantasy play", I have to question "what" exactly they are fantasizing about!
We have an organic garden in our yard, we shop at Wholefoods, and we don't use any chemical cleaners in or around our home.
Needless to say, it's been a tough job finding friends I can relate to. I haven't exactly had success finding any common ground with the average Christian fundamentalist
mom in my neighborhood with the (chemically) bleached out hair, acrylic fingernails, cell phone plastered to her head, driving herself out to the local wherehouse store in her SUV, 3 kids in the back seat with their own bleached hair, cell phones plastered to their heads, cheetos in one hand and a game boy in the other, being dropped off at the mall.
I guess I'm just taking a long time to make the point that I've always believed that Waldorf was going to be a wonderful alternative for us when it came time to educate our children.
Now that I am a parent I am faced with the dilemma of finding friends and a community of people who share the same ideas about raising our kids. I am pretty easygoing and down to earth. My husband and I are very common sense and not extremists in any way. Recently, the kids on our block were all line up in a neighbor's driveway shotting another group of kids in the head execution style, and as my husband said "This is the "good" area!"
In a nutshell, the way I see kids behaivng these days, the values (and I DON'T mean religious values) I see, frankly, scare me.
My education choices are limited. We have the public school that sprays pesticides regularly (which of course they swear are absolutely safe), sell garbage food in vending machines and spend the year studying for standardized tests so the property values will remain high in our area.
Then there's the "Christian" schools, or a Catholic school, which both require that I attend mass every week and (I quote) "Keep track of your attendance on the computer". You'd better be there every week if you want your kids to get in. I was actually raised Catholic, and my husband received a phenomenal high school education from a Jesuit school in San Francisco, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the "values" the Catholic Church is teaching "by example" with their handling of the molestation problem. No thanks.
Finally, there are the litany of private schools who appear to be nothing more than "designer" public schools who have been elevated to the highest status symbol around here. ("My 4 year old has all of her multiplication tables memorized already!" ...no, I am not kidding)
Waldorf seemed a perfect fit for us. I relaxed, knowing that would be the answer for us, leaving the stress of "where is my child going to go??" to everyone else around me.
So, as previously mentioned, here I come, looking for a Mom's group, wanting to reach out and make friends. Waldorf friends. People who don't look at me like I have 3 heads when I tell them my kids don't watch TV and play with wood toys.
What I've found was a barrage of extremely frightening information about Waldorf and it's teachers as cult and religion. Teachers who are extreme and isolationists. I live in the Ventura, California area, and truth be told, I only have a choice of ONE Waldorf school that is within a reasonable distance from my home, and I will be driving 2 hours a day (at least) at that, so it's not as though I have a lot of choices here. Some of the people in your posts suggest "shopping around" as though there are 6 or 7 Waldorf schools in my area to choose from.
I thought I had found a group of reasonable, moderate, NON-extremists who shared so many of the same ideas about educating and raising kids that we do. Instead, after spending HOURS reading through various posts, I am horrified and tentative.
One of the first questions my husband asked when I told him about Waldorf was if they were connected with any kind of religious organization. My immediate answer was NO! Spiritual doesn't offend me, but the thought of my children being what sounds like the equivalent of brainwashing (for important spirits to be reincarnated into????) has me running for the hills!
What I wasn't able to find was a "handy list" of questions one has to know to ask. Regardless, how will I know what to respond to their answers? What will keep them from lying? Frankly, it sounds as if the entire system resists any kind of questioning of their policies, and if you disagree or have any concern you will be denied acceptance into the school.
I guess what I'm getting at is... HELP! Anyone with any 'good' feedback? Any way to ignore the "religious" aspects? I don't see it as any different than my children being indoctrinated at any other religious institution, or public school with their visits from the US military to discuss the "value of joining the army", etc.... Everyone wants to sell you something, I guess it's just a matter of the least of all evils?
Any and all feedback welcome. Thank you for your time.
My husband and I are both fortunate enough to have had exceptional educations nd careers. I worked at a very high level in the entertainment industry for many years in children's programming, so it was NOT a difficult decision for us to omit commercial TV from our kids lives.
We are both staunch environmentalists, and want to impart to our kids the importance of their everyday decisions on the planet and our quality of life. I always tell people that if we do nothing more than raise two more "consumers" in this society, I will be very disappointed in myself.
We also have what I call a "wooden toy policy" in our home. Simple, open-ended. No "one trick wonder" plastic toys that will do nothing but end up in a landfill polluting the Earth.
Guns aren't used for ANYTHING but to kill, and though my neighbors argue it's just "fantasy play", I have to question "what" exactly they are fantasizing about!
We have an organic garden in our yard, we shop at Wholefoods, and we don't use any chemical cleaners in or around our home.
Needless to say, it's been a tough job finding friends I can relate to. I haven't exactly had success finding any common ground with the average Christian fundamentalist
mom in my neighborhood with the (chemically) bleached out hair, acrylic fingernails, cell phone plastered to her head, driving herself out to the local wherehouse store in her SUV, 3 kids in the back seat with their own bleached hair, cell phones plastered to their heads, cheetos in one hand and a game boy in the other, being dropped off at the mall.
I guess I'm just taking a long time to make the point that I've always believed that Waldorf was going to be a wonderful alternative for us when it came time to educate our children.
Now that I am a parent I am faced with the dilemma of finding friends and a community of people who share the same ideas about raising our kids. I am pretty easygoing and down to earth. My husband and I are very common sense and not extremists in any way. Recently, the kids on our block were all line up in a neighbor's driveway shotting another group of kids in the head execution style, and as my husband said "This is the "good" area!"
In a nutshell, the way I see kids behaivng these days, the values (and I DON'T mean religious values) I see, frankly, scare me.
My education choices are limited. We have the public school that sprays pesticides regularly (which of course they swear are absolutely safe), sell garbage food in vending machines and spend the year studying for standardized tests so the property values will remain high in our area.
Then there's the "Christian" schools, or a Catholic school, which both require that I attend mass every week and (I quote) "Keep track of your attendance on the computer". You'd better be there every week if you want your kids to get in. I was actually raised Catholic, and my husband received a phenomenal high school education from a Jesuit school in San Francisco, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the "values" the Catholic Church is teaching "by example" with their handling of the molestation problem. No thanks.
Finally, there are the litany of private schools who appear to be nothing more than "designer" public schools who have been elevated to the highest status symbol around here. ("My 4 year old has all of her multiplication tables memorized already!" ...no, I am not kidding)
Waldorf seemed a perfect fit for us. I relaxed, knowing that would be the answer for us, leaving the stress of "where is my child going to go??" to everyone else around me.
So, as previously mentioned, here I come, looking for a Mom's group, wanting to reach out and make friends. Waldorf friends. People who don't look at me like I have 3 heads when I tell them my kids don't watch TV and play with wood toys.
What I've found was a barrage of extremely frightening information about Waldorf and it's teachers as cult and religion. Teachers who are extreme and isolationists. I live in the Ventura, California area, and truth be told, I only have a choice of ONE Waldorf school that is within a reasonable distance from my home, and I will be driving 2 hours a day (at least) at that, so it's not as though I have a lot of choices here. Some of the people in your posts suggest "shopping around" as though there are 6 or 7 Waldorf schools in my area to choose from.
I thought I had found a group of reasonable, moderate, NON-extremists who shared so many of the same ideas about educating and raising kids that we do. Instead, after spending HOURS reading through various posts, I am horrified and tentative.
One of the first questions my husband asked when I told him about Waldorf was if they were connected with any kind of religious organization. My immediate answer was NO! Spiritual doesn't offend me, but the thought of my children being what sounds like the equivalent of brainwashing (for important spirits to be reincarnated into????) has me running for the hills!
What I wasn't able to find was a "handy list" of questions one has to know to ask. Regardless, how will I know what to respond to their answers? What will keep them from lying? Frankly, it sounds as if the entire system resists any kind of questioning of their policies, and if you disagree or have any concern you will be denied acceptance into the school.
I guess what I'm getting at is... HELP! Anyone with any 'good' feedback? Any way to ignore the "religious" aspects? I don't see it as any different than my children being indoctrinated at any other religious institution, or public school with their visits from the US military to discuss the "value of joining the army", etc.... Everyone wants to sell you something, I guess it's just a matter of the least of all evils?
Any and all feedback welcome. Thank you for your time.
