My mother wasn't like that at all. She ironed my Dad's shirts all right, grumbling all the while, but he preferred the local Chinese laundry, where wrinkles Mom never saw were painstakingly eliminated. I loved her anyway. Barbara Patterson, however, is a Waldorf school kindergarten teacher, and she is making a pedagogical point by holding up her mother as a paragon of rhythm and order. This is quite an ambitious task.
Many parents wish their children success in life rather than happiness.
Patterson and Bradley think differently, and from experience. Their toys are simple, made of cloth or wood, without details in order to allow the child's imagination to supply them. Waldorf education doesn't try to force intellectual development before the child is ready and able to absorb it. In other words don't faint later is better, at least as far as intellectualization is concerned. It seems that the dogma of only five senses is a recent development.