Well Mrs. Bossy Pants... how are you doing today? I can poke fun at Mrs. Bossy Pants, because she is my base temperament.  As I have gotten older, I have mellowed a LOT. However... back me up against the wall and I will become Mrs. Bossy Pants to protect myself!

Mrs. Bossy Pants generally likes to be in control... prefers complete control, but will settle for partial control if she must.  She doesn't often work well with other Mrs. Bossies unless the other ones are completely competent and know what they are doing.  Then this mama can kick back a bit because she can trust another leader.  Mrs. Bossy Pants probably started planning for the new school year at least six months early and if she didn't, she will make it a priority to take a weekend and get it done.  She knows how to get things done.  She is a doer.  Being a doer is a GREAT thing!  She loves check lists and gets glee in marking things finished.

Sometimes my parenting backfires.
Does that ever happen to you?
Do you ever just start talking and somehow the wrong words are coming out and you are not sure how to stop them? 
I don't need to be perfect to be a good mom. Neither do you.

An example of my resident phlegmatic, Super Sam. Asks for his piece of comfort. He would like a full belly and a good television show. (GASP! Yes, TV!) For the phlegmatic child, no amount of TV is generally enough. It isn't that they are lazy, it is that they seek comfort. Older phlegmatic children and adults will often want to curl up with a book or even a book on tape. As a mom with children of all temperaments, I have to say that the phlegmatic is probably the most calm, most pleasant, most even tempered child to parent. UNLESS. Unless you need to go somewhere. Unless you need them to hurry up. Unless you need them to eat their breakfast so you can get out the door. Unless you have to be across town in ten minutes and they can't find their shoes or worse they know where their shoes are but they haven't even started putting them on and you asked them to do it ten minutes ago and can't they see you are in a hurry?! Then they look up at you with the sweetest eyes and tears are welling ...

In our series Crafting a Healthy Home Rhythm, I discussed mental health as an important aspect of  having a healthy rhythm and home life for your family.  Temperament is part of that mental health.  Temperament isn't something that Steiner invented, although today his work and the work that goes with Waldorf education is probably the most popular use of it.  When we read about temperament, we are usually reading about it for the children.  Most resources are written for the teacher to apply in the classroom and therefore have us as parents focusing our work completely on the child's temperament.  I believe this is very backward. My guess is that in Waldorf teacher training, they spend some time on this part of adult biography in their foundation studies, so the literature that is written, often assumes that the the adult has done this work for themselves or is at the very least working on it. Most parents are not in this position and generally only come to temperament as a means of und...

Hopefully you have had a little time to contemplate how you want your home to feel.  Now lets talk a bit more about how to get it that way. One big hot button for me is the decline of morality in our society. Things that would have never been ok twenty years ago seem to be ok now and it spills over into our parenting.  

As our children are tiny (0-5) some of the best things we can do is just remove them from the situation - even if we don't want to leave.  I have left the store... restaurants... friend's homes... so many times, but I sent one message "your behavior isn't appropriate, we are leaving."  There is nothing more irritating than leaving a cart of groceries, lol... well there is something more irritating... a child that is out of control!  Sam  learned this lesson well, lol, he reminded the big kids as we walked into the grocery store "Mommy said I can have a pear on the way home, please don't get crazy or she won't buy the pear!" He was 5 years old and understood the rules.....

I remember the first time Erik met the big kids, a few months before we married. I just had Jacob and Ellie with me that day and they were 4 and 6 years old at the time.  Those two were a handful at those ages. I couldn't take my eyes off of them for a second, especially not Jacob and Ellie just followed him everywhere. The evening is still etched in my memory as if it were yesterday. Erik needed something at a big box store and then we had planned to take the children out to dinner at a pizza place that had one of those fun arcades. The entire dinner was contingent on me not needing to fight with the children or chasing them.  I made the rules very clear to them before walking into the big box store, I remember thinking in the back of my head that I loved this man and I really wanted him to see that the children were not nuts! lol. I was very nervous.  We entered the store and I gave my usual talk "if you walk by my side then you don't have to ride in the cart." Both children agreed t...

"How do we as parents, in today's complicated, frantic world, create an atmosphere of regularity, consistency and stability? 

How best can we nurture our young child's capacities for peace, creativity, ingenuity?

The answer is simple, though not always easy. We do it by supporting their life-building will energies with the basic elements of Waldorf early education: physical and emotional warmth; a wholesome, nourishing diet; an atmosphere of beauty and reverence; consistent daily rhythms; calm, loving authority and guidance. 

While each of these elements is important, appropriate rhythm and authority are particularly crucial in developing what Steiner called the "will energies." They also are particularly challenging to manifest today. " ~ Marcy Axness, PhD (Renewal Magazine, A Journal for Waldorf Education) 

When I work with families, one of the hardest things for moms to come to terms with is how to hold the space and proper authority.  Most of us either come from a family of ...

Now many people want to know what on earth God has to do with their child and their rhythm and their ability to homeschool. Everything. We are living in a time when reliance on the Spirit is seen as weakness and we are sold the lie that science has it all. Steiner could feel this lie even in his own time and spoke tirelessly of the connection between the spirit world and science.  We have to come to a place that reveres both.  Many of us have been indoctrinated in the public school system where God wasn't allowed so it will take time to bring those pieces together for you.  What I am asking from you right now is just that you will follow part 1 and be teachable.

A friend once asked me, "You really do pray about almost everything, don't you?" She is a dear friend and we went to church together.  She was impressed by my willingness to just hand it all over to God. Really though... what is our choice? We can fight about it. We can scream and yell about it. We can ask all of our online bu...

I have been studying anthroposophy for many years, both in its application to education, as well as spirituality and human nature as a whole. 

"Every education is self-education, and as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favorable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destinies.”