Creating Rhythm with Sharifa Oppenheimer: Donna Ashton: Welcome to the Waldorf Connection Online Expo. Thank you for being here with me tonight. The Expo has been so much fun so far, and we have many, many more exciting guest speakers and workshops to go starting with a lovely woman I cannot wait for you all to meet. Sharifa Oppenheimer. Some of you may know her from her best-selling book “Heaven on Earth” and she also has a kindergarten book. I'm just very excited too speak to her and for her to speak to our community tonight. Here is a little bit about her. Sharifa Oppenheimer is the author of the best-selling book, Heaven on Earth, a handbook for parents of young children. She was the founding teacher of the Charlotte Still Waldorf School of Virginia where she taught Kindergarten for 21 years and served as the Day Care Director of the Early Childhood Program. She has helped develop new teachers through teacher training programs at Sunbridge College in New York State and at Rudolf Steiner College near Sacramento as the master teaching offering practicum on intern opportunities. She has written many articles on Waldorf education helping the parents of her students create supportive home environment. Recently she initiated a home-based kindergarten program, the Rose Garden and she is the mother of 3 grown sons who were educated in the Waldorf tradition. She lives in an enchanted forest in Virginia. Welcome Sharifa. Sharifa Oppenheimer: Hi Donna, It's so good to meet you. Donna Ashton: Hello. I love that enchanted forest. (laughing) Sharifa Oppenheimer: Oh my goodness. It is an enchanted forest. I was just sitting and waiting for 8 o'clock to come and I was listening to the woods rushes singing in the woods (laughs). Donna Ashton: Wow... Sharifa Oppenheimer: So it's very enchanted here. Donna Ashton: It must be amazing. Sharifa Oppenheimer: And so good to be with you and what a terrific conference. Donna Ashton: Oh great to have you...I know you've listened to some of them and I'm glad you're enjoying them. I hope everybody else is. Sharifa Oppenheimer: Yes, I'm quite sure. Donna Ashton: Great. Well, we have got a lot of questions that have come through already... Sharifa Oppenheimer: Good. Donna Ashton: .... and I'm going to just kind of scan through here and see If we can like you start off with a few questions to get us going.. Sharifa Oppenheimer: Okay. Donna Ashton: and here's a great one to get us started, from Honey in Ohio. She says, "Why rhythm and what is the most important thing to do to find rhythm?" She asked for some recommendations of books or websites or whatever to create and learn rhythm, so I guess that may be a good place to start. What exactly is rhythm? Sharifa Oppenheimer: Why rhythm? You know rhythm is the basis of life, the way that we tell that someone is alive is by the rhythm of their breath and the way that we tell that someone is no longer alive is that there's no more rhythm. So, rhythm is at the foundation of all of life and it is the absolute foundation of the life of a child. They have just come to earth. They, they're new in their bodies and rhythm is absolutely essential and this is.. it may sound poetic to say this but It's just actually a physiologic fact that the child's heart rhythm and their brain rhythm, the rhythm of their.. Their body rhythms, their breathing rhythms. This is not an instance. Rhythms are not firmly set in yet and it's so essential particularly at birth and for the months afterward that the child be held very close to the parent's body because this helps to establish the rhythm. So, this holding of the infant right in the beginning is just the beginning of helping our children to establish and to understand rhythm. When we establish good life rhythms for our children, this absolutely underpins their academic capacity. There actually are studies that show that children who come from chaotic lifestyles where there's not a sense of rhythm, they oftentimes can end up with learning difficulties and it's because the ability to sequence, which is the foundation of all academic capacity is sequencing. That is not well established and the child who doesn't have it in their bodies, rhythm in the body and that's home rhythms so that's why. What would be a good resource for a establishing rhythm...well I'll just say it, my book0, Heaven on Earth, is actually a great resource because that's where we begin. The book is about establishing family rhythms and I just go through and I'm a teacher so It's kind of, I wrote like a curriculum for parents so It's not just theory although there's plenty of theory that's in there but it's very, very practical. Just advice, how it is that we can go about establishing rhythms. So does that cover it? Donna Ashton: Great, well that's a great beginning to kind of lead into, you know, the whole thing and I hear people who are using the Waldorf method and it seems to be based on the rhythms and If you don't quite understand what the benefits are and the whole point behind it, it sort of everything is built on that so I think this is going to be a wonderful workshop. Maybe people who are new or just thinking of coming to Waldorf and on home-schooling so they sort of give a taste of like what does she, what do you mean by rhythm? You know, what does that mean? Sharifa Oppenheimer: Right Donna Ashton: You know because if you've really never been through something like that before or had much of it in your life to know what to do for your own children so... Sharifa Oppenheimer: Right and we live in a society that is so arrhythmic, there’s so little rhythm. The society that we live in and what rhythm there is so fast, you know. Everything is so fast. We live in this instant society and when we really study rhythm, what we want to come to is a sense of a balance, rhythm. That there be a balance and we see this of course, the body is, is sort of the perfect blueprint for you know, the sense of rhythm with you know the rhythmic heartbeat and with our rhythmic breath you know there's exhalation and there's an equal inhalation and our society lives in the state of a permanent exhalation. Everything is go, go, go, go....and we have so little time for the inhalation. We have so little time .for there to be quiet, for there to be an inward kind of rhythm or for there to be contemplation for a child, you know. Daydreaming or the imagination is very much an inward kind of rhythm and our society makes so little time for that in the life of the child so I think you are absolutely right. It's difficult for parents to know well, why rhythm when we look around in this society and we don't see it reflected back to us. Donna Ashton: Yeah right, exactly and this kind of leads into another question. Elizabeth in Indianapolis is saying, "My question is, how do we stay consistent in our rhythm with the chaotic pace of life?" Sharifa Oppenheimer: Well, I think that the real essentials when I think of rhythm in the home and I also want to speak to not just rhythm in the home life, but rhythm particular for homeschoolers because then education is then a home life too. The two pieces that I want to address that happen every single day are meal times and bed times. I think that when we look at rhythm it's such a huge question and it covers so many different areas, if we can sort of strip it down to what are the essentials that took place to begin. Well, how do we do it? We really look at the essentials and then go from there and I would like to say it might seem if we're going to talk about the daily rhythm that the right place to begin is the morning but in fact, the right place to begin in a discussion about rhythm is the night before. How bed time goes will have a huge effect on how morning time goes. Is that right? You are a mom. Donna Ashton: Yeah, oh definitely right. Sharifa Oppenheimer: Yeah so I thought that if we just talked about bed time, a little bit and just really look at what are the essentials of bed time and I think that the first essential is to help me make sure that there's enough time for our children to sleep. Now, I'm an early childhood educator, so I work with parents of children who are newborns up to probably the age of 8 and I just always say 12 hours. 12 hours is minimum and actually the American Academy of Pediatric is recommending that many hours particularly for the very young child, 12 hours of sleep. We live in such a sleep-deprived society and I don't think a lot of parents actually know what the behavior is like of a well-slept child.