Mumsnet Talk Talk: Topics | Customise | Unanswered messages | Getting started | Acronyms | Useful stuff Threads: Active | I'm on | I'm watching | I started | Last 15 minutes | Last hour | Last Day Talk : _Chat : Christmas with Steiner bores - any suggestions? (188 Posts) Start new thread within this topic | Watch this thread | Flip this thread | Hide this thread | Refresh the display Hide this thread | Refresh the display Show all messagesAdd a message This is page 6 of 8 (This thread has 188 messages.) First | Previous | Next | Last Go to page Please note that threads in this topic may be removed from the archive after 90 days. If you would like your thread to be retrievable for longer than that, please choose another topic in which to post it. By FuckingNinkyNonkFuckingNinkyNonk Fri 18-Dec-09 15:41:26 Add message | Report | Contact poster I'm sick of hearing about their superior parenting and education for their children. I don't have a problem that their children aren't taught to read until 7, or that they are allowed to play and be creative as young children (especially in our current sats climate), but I don't want to have to listen to smuggery at it's worst and misguided smuggery at that. Any suggestions? Add message | Report | Contact poster By justaboutisfatandtiredjustaboutisfatandtired Tue 22-Dec-09 18:26:18 As far as I understand it (from my family friends) the imagination of a child is considered terribly important, so that it would be less likely that a Steiner-educating family would say to a child "that's just a story," or "witches don't exist." It's somehow meant to be damaging (don't know how) Anyway, the practical upshot is that the lines between fantasy and reality can get v blurred. Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 18:36:54 Actually, in the wacky world of Steiner, a childs imagination is only improtant if they are imagining hte right things. We used to get called into Kindergarten all the time as my ds would talk about aliens and spaceships. We were tols that they prefer children to imagine gnomes. Obviously, my ds got his cults mixed up and thought he was at a scientology school. All this Stiener being child led/children encouraged to be free thinking and individual bollocks really gets my back up. It is not child led at all, it is anthoposopy led, the children are all expected to act like drones. Add message | Report | Contact poster By justaboutisfatandtiredjustaboutisfatandtired Tue 22-Dec-09 18:38:17 !!!!!! Really? !!!!! My goodness. My friends witter talk about the sacredness of imagination all the time. Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 18:42:05 Honestly, its all crap trotted out by the schools. Just look at the 'imaginative' paintings decsribed in a previous post, everything is so regimented. All doing the same painting, all making same stupid little wool gnomes. Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 18:45:00 Sorry, didn't mean to sound so angry. It's just that I hear so much about how harmless it all is. My ds ended up with a nervous tick. It took almost a year of gentle counselling to get him over his time at a Steiner school. Hardly harmless in my book. Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 19:17:38 Message deleted by Mumsnet. Add message | Report | Contact poster By justaboutisfatandtiredjustaboutisfatandtired Tue 22-Dec-09 19:37:52 Actually, restless, that blog has had me in tears. The reason is that one of the Steiner people I know - a teacher, the one we went on holiday with - has been trying to cure her stomach cancer with mistletoe treatment. She told us a year ago that it was gone away completely: but now it is clear that it is not, she has a colostomy bag and several other problems. She does not talk about it as cancer, and I think is in total denial. She's a lovely person and I am so and that she has been killing herself by this treatment, or lack of it: I hadn't made the connection between mistletoe treatment and her Steiner worldview, just thought she had found some kooky alternative medicine practitioners. So sad. Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 19:56:12 Justabout that is very sad. My mother had stomach and colon cancer, it is horrendous. She tried alternative treatments as well towards the end of her life in deperation, but always hand in hand with mainstream treatments and always with medical advice. The blog reminded me of their 'cure' for kids with food allergies being fed the foods they are allergic to to cure them. I was first told about that by one of the other Steiner school parents when I mentioned I was going to visit my friend who's ds had a severe dairy allergy. I had to walk away for fear of wrining her neck when she started bleating on about how he should be fed milk to cure him. It would have killed him. Beliefs like that are dangerous and stupid. Add message | Report | Contact poster By ZZZenAgainZZZenAgain Tue 22-Dec-09 19:56:15 does this concept of reincarnation from a lower (non white human body) through to the highest stage (white human body) play any role in the schools or teacher training - is it brought up and discussed or touched on in passing or does it govern how teachers treat the kids at all? Anyone know? Or is this one aspect of Steiner's world view which got dropped along the way? Add message | Report | Contact poster By ZZZenAgainZZZenAgain Tue 22-Dec-09 19:57:27 .. just read about it in the snowing dad's blog Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 19:58:05 I'm sorry. Is she not having medical treatment too? Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 20:00:25 ZZZenAgian oh my gosh yes it does, IME anyway. You would probably not believe my story on that one. I feel like I am brining this thread down a little actually, I am really sorry for that. I will tell you if anyone is interrested, or you can tell me to shut up and I will shuffle off and drink my mulled wine. Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 20:00:53 ZZZenAgain this is a knotty problem for Steiner schools. Add message | Report | Contact poster By shallishantishallishanti Tue 22-Dec-09 20:01:50 OK time for my Steiner story (well one of them) I flirted briefly with Steiner about 18 yrs ago, attracted by the aesthetics, naturalness, whole foods etc. They used to have parents meetings where, ideally, we would crochet and discuss RS ideas. Thus I learnt that it was very important what books you should share with dcs- no writing, and apparently, illustrations only of things that dcs have already seen in RL. Not sure how orthodox that is as I've not heard it elsewhere. So no zebras, elephants etc. But what about fairies? I asked, as they are all v keen on flower fairy books. 'ah, well, I wouldn't have a problem with that you see as I DO believe in fairies' this woman told me with a totally straight face. That was a turning point for me, really... Add message | Report | Contact poster By justaboutisfatandtiredjustaboutisfatandtired Tue 22-Dec-09 20:01:58 I think she is NOW having some medical treatment, she has had an operation on her stomach. She refused mainstream treatment for a long time because she was relying on the mistletoe. We were on holiday with her the week after she'd had the "treatment." She also had terrible skin cancer on her face, which we didn't like to ask about - it had clearly been left untreated/treated alternatively too. Oh God it is just so sad. Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 20:02:58 lolapoppins can I have some mulled wine? Please? Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 20:05:12 I wish someone else was here to share it with! DH went a little overboard and made a huge vat of the stuff and then decided he didn't like it. Waste not, want not. Add message | Report | Contact poster By ZZZenAgainZZZenAgain Tue 22-Dec-09 20:05:52 yes lola, if you don't mind but I have to dash off now. Will look tomorrow. Fascinating the whole thing, really knew almost nothing of this Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 20:06:40 justabout - very sad & possibly needs to be illegal for practitioners not to advise her to seek the correct medical treatment, or at least not put her off seeking it. Of course she has every right to refuse it herself. Poor lady. Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 20:13:14 Shallishanti had a Peter Pan moment there. 'I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!' Every time a voter says she doesn't believe in Michael Gove's education policy, a gnome dies... Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 20:40:04 Well, i have heard of a lot of rascism in Steiner schools. I am half Indian, so quite olive skinned with very dark eyes. Ds takes after my dad and dh and is very white with blonde hair and very light blue eyes. It is a little unbelievable looking back. I was asked outright if he was adopted. I was told it was ‘ok’ if he was dhs child from a previous relationship. Then I was asked if there was any chance he was swapped at birth. When they finally accepted that I had somehow given birth to him (genetics, anyone?) they started to treat him like the messiah, calling him their ‘golden boy’. Then ds, who is a really, really lovely kid carried on acting like himself. He wouldn’t conform to how they wanted him to act, started questioning the teacher when they talked about gnomes and root babies like they were fact, wanted to know why he couldn’t have a pencil to draw with, asked why they had to have the same story everyday and offered to bring a story book in (all this terrible behaviour was presented to us in a report). It all carried on for a couple of months, ds getting more and more miserable, being labelled as a bully because he finally snapped and pushed over the child who had been scratching and biting him for months (the child’s parents were very involved with the school so he was never reprimanded for being horrid to my ds, who was the one blamed for it all). To cut a long story short, the day we finally saw the light and ran screaming for the hills was the day dh was called in for a meeting with his teacher about ds behaviour at drop off time. He was told that ds was a ‘black soul’ put on earth in the incarnation of a blonde haired, blue eyed boy for the purpose of spiritual deception. That I was dark as I had committed evil in a previous life and that evil was living on through my child who was born in order to deceive. I said earlier that in the last few weeks he was there he developed a nervous tick, he used to kind of roll his eyes back while opening them wide, over and over. Apparently, that is a very common sign of stress in very young children (he was just 5 at the time). The kindergarten teacher said that this was the evil showing itself and trying to take a physical form. We were also told that he was brain damaged. (ds doctor had a field day with that one, he is lovely and I called him crying about the nervous tick, he absolutley exploded and wrote the school a really nasty, scathing letter). DH grabbed ds and came home and we never set foot there again. My DH is usually the calm, level headed, unflappable one, but I have never seen him like he was when he arrived home that day. He was shaking like a leaf and crying. The nervous tick (and the bedwetting and night terrors that also occurred in his final weeks) disappeared in a few days of leaving there. Oh, and a week after we took ds out, we received a letter saying he was being expelled for bullying, to cover their backs after we had already left the school. Add message | Report | Contact poster By bellissimabellissima Tue 22-Dec-09 20:46:07 OMG what a terrible story. Horrible. Add message | Report | Contact poster By restlessnativerestlessnative Tue 22-Dec-09 21:00:09 Oh Lola. Didn't realize it was so bad. Awful. Did anyone offer you any support? I'm speechless, really. Add message | Report | Contact poster By lolapoppinslolapoppins Tue 22-Dec-09 21:18:07 Nope. No support at all. We live in a very Steiner area (tho no E. Sussex!) and got nothing but abuse. Not many of my friends in RL have children yet, so they didn't really understand how hard it hit us. Others thought we were fabricating things, they didn't understand just how bizzare it can get. It's taken a long while to get to the point I am now. (Thanks mainly to the support I have had from people on MN). Add message | Report | Contact poster By justaboutisfatandtiredjustaboutisfatandtired Tue 22-Dec-09 22:32:30 It's an awful story, lola. I remember it now, had forgotten the details. This is not meant to challenge your perspective at all, because clearly what happened is criminal, or damn well should be. But on a related topic I should say that in apartheid South Africa some of the first integrated schools were Steiner. (I have several friends who were educated in these schools) In the dreadful days of State discrimination, they were beacons of good practice in this regard. That is not to minimise the problematic stuff that is in anthrosophy etc, or to do away with the awfulness of your story, just to say that in the context of racist white South Africa, the Steiner movement did by and large place itself on the non-racist side of the line (and of course in that situation it is very stark, e.g. will you allow a black and a white child to be educated together, not the kind of question we have to face fortunately in Britain today) I do find it frustrating when Steiner apologists point to this as evidence that there can therefore be NO racism in Steiner, though. Of course there can, just as many white liberals in South Africa were racist! Just not as racist as the Nationalist Government!