Insights from Waldorf Education- the kind of education the top CEO’s of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley are choosing for their kids- so there must be something to it.
This is a summary of the work by Helle Heckmann, discussing guidance for those caring for young children under 3 years old. Most of us just put our kids in day care starting around 3 months, because, well, we have to. Most families now have both parents working, and any other option is far too expensive (here in California, even a part time nanny can be $3k per month, as opposed to day care which is around $1600 per month for a young child under 3 years old.
But this is NOT about what is best for parents- but more importantly, what is best for the child.
Maybe we can learn to make certain sacrifices as an adult, even rally to make changes, imagine some new visionary models to the way society can be structured that takes into mind the needs of a child, first and foremost.
We know parents need to use the air mask first in an emergency- so that we have someone alive to take care of the others. So we do have to keep in mind every parent’s needs to get by on a day-to-day basis. We tend to give as much as we can, until we can’t. This is about finding a balance- learning there is something that may be worth some rethinking in our lives to try to find the best fit for our own families- which are as unique as we all are as humans. But let’s use this day of freedom and access- access to more information, old and new, as never before, and the freedom to review and discuss it.
Waldorf education, to an outsider, can look like something we would have imagined our grandparents to have gone through. Wooden toys, no screens, teachers in dresses singing light, simple, songs. Only organic foods, as simple as possible, possibly made together. This is the kind of education the top CEO’s of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley are choosing for their kids- so there must be something to it.
First of all, all the plastics are full of compounds that actually mess with our children’s hormones and endocrine systems. All the wood is also so pleasing to the eye. Everything is slow, calm. Even voices are soft. Walking through the hall and peaking in the classrooms is like entering a children’s fairy garden, or about as close as you can get to that.
And as a person who likes herbalism and older traditions- feels like the mushroom core, pagan reverence for the gardens and trees you would imagine as done hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Or at least, how my mind sees it.
When you look at the things they celebrate, birthdays have their own tune, children bringing in a picture of themselves, one for each year. Then they celebrate light- putting a sun at the center, walking around the candle, very earthy, very physical and mystical. To some it may seem christian, because of the sprituality, but it is actually pre- and proto- (during the formation of) christianity.
No, Waldorf education is not Christian, though it is often perceived that way due to its spiritual, non-denominational approach and the inclusion of Christian festivals in its curriculum. Waldorf schools are secular and aim to educate students of all backgrounds by focusing on spiritual values and a comprehensive view of humanity, a philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner and called Anthroposophy.
The Waldorf Way with Tiny Humans: Why This Gentle Approach to Early Childhood Captivates Parents Worldwide
A deep dive into Helle Heckmann's "Loving Care for the Child Under Three" and the timeless wisdom of Waldorf education
In a Copenhagen kindergarten called Nøkken, something remarkable happens every day. One-year-olds sleep peacefully outside in the fresh air, wrapped snugly in wool. Two-year-olds walk confidently through forests in all weather, their hands gripping a shared rope like mountain climbers ascending together. Three-year-olds sit at wooden tables, eating simple porridge from the same bowl, at the same seat, at exactly the same time—every single day.
To the modern parent rushing between daycare drop-off and Zoom meetings, this might sound impossibly quaint. Or perhaps... impossibly appealing.
This is Waldorf early childhood education, and it's having a moment. Not because it's trendy (it's been around for over a century), but because it offers something increasingly rare: a childhood that looks like childhood.
What Is Waldorf Education, Really?
Waldorf education was founded in 1919 by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who was asked to create a school for the children of factory workers in Stuttgart, Germany. Instead of creating "little workers," Steiner envisioned education that honored the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit.
At its heart, Waldorf philosophy rests on a radical premise: childhood has intrinsic value. Children aren't incomplete adults to be programmed with information. They're beings unfolding according to natural developmental stages, each with its own wisdom.
For children under three, the Waldorf approach is particularly distinctive:
The Core Principles
1. Imitation Over Instruction
Young children don't learn by being taught—they learn by absorbing everything around them like sponges. A two-year-old watching you knead bread is learning more than any flashcard could teach: patience, rhythm, cause and effect, the transformation of ingredients, the smell of yeast, the warmth of your hands, the song you hum while working.
As Heckmann writes: "The child is totally abandoned to the world around it in deep and utter confidence that this world is good, beautiful and true and thus worth copying."
2. Rhythm as Medicine
In Waldorf settings, the day flows like breathing—expansion and contraction, activity and rest. There's morning circle, outdoor play, snack time, story time, and nap time, happening at the same time every day with the same gentle transitions.
Why? Because predictability creates safety, and safety creates freedom. When a child knows exactly what comes next, they can relax into the present moment rather than scanning anxiously for what's coming.
3. Natural Materials and Simple Beauty
Walk into a Waldorf early childhood classroom and you'll find wooden toys, cotton and silk fabrics, beeswax crayons, and fresh flowers. You won't find plastic, screens, or bright primary colors screaming for attention.
This isn't precious aestheticism—it's sensory respect. Young children experience the world through their senses with an intensity we've forgotten. The coolness of wood, the weight of a stone, the give of wool—these textures are information, feeding the developing nervous system.
4. The Adult as Artist
Perhaps most distinctively, Waldorf education places enormous emphasis on the inner development of the caregiver. Heckmann's book opens not with curriculum but with spiritual exercises for adults—practices in clear thinking, conscious action, emotional balance, and openness.
Why? Because children don't learn from what we say. They learn from who we are.
Why Parents Are Drawn to This Approach
It Honors Slowness in a Speed-Obsessed World
We live in an age of optimization. There are apps to track your baby's sleep patterns, programs to teach your toddler Mandarin, and pressure to get your two-year-old "ready" for an increasingly competitive world.
Waldorf education says: Stop. Your child is already exactly where they need to be.
The eighteen-month-old who spends an hour transferring stones from one bucket to another isn't wasting time—she's building the neural pathways for concentration, cause-and-effect reasoning, and satisfaction in meaningful work. The three-year-old who insists on the same breakfast every day isn't being difficult—he's seeking the security that allows him to venture bravely into new territory.
It Treats Childhood as Sacred, Not Preparatory
Modern early education often feels like an arms race. If other toddlers are learning letters, shouldn't yours? If preschools are teaching coding, are you falling behind?
Waldorf asks a different question: What does this particular stage of childhood need to flourish?
For children under three, the answer isn't academics. It's:
Physical mastery (crawling, walking, climbing)
Sensory integration (touching, tasting, smelling the real world)
Language development through song, story, and conversation
Secure attachment to loving caregivers
Time to play, unstructured and free
As Heckmann notes, "The child does not learn by our know-all admonitions and our intellectual explanations, but on the contrary by everything we are capable of doing to serve as models for the growing human being."
It Makes Space for Parents
Here's where Waldorf early childhood education gets truly countercultural: it says children under three primarily belong at home.
Heckmann is unflinching on this point. While she acknowledges the necessity of childcare for many families and offers detailed guidance for making it excellent, she writes:
"In my experience, far too little energy is used in creating an understanding that taking better care of the family and the small child will serve society far better in the long run."
The book recommends:
Four-day weeks (not five) for children in care
Six-hour days maximum (8am-2pm ideal)
One full month off in summer
Three children per adult caregiver (not twelve)
The same caregiver every day, for months or years
This isn't about making parents feel guilty. It's about giving them permission to resist a culture that treats children as inconveniences to be efficiently managed, and instead to see them as humans worthy of our time and presence.
It Integrates Traditional Wisdom with Developmental Science
Waldorf education can seem mystical (Steiner did talk about "angels" and "spiritual worlds"), but its practices align remarkably with modern research on child development:
Outdoor time in all weather: Builds immune systems, regulates circadian rhythms, and provides the sensory variety young brains crave.
Consistent routines: Create secure attachment and reduce cortisol (stress hormone) in young children.
Natural materials: Offer more complex sensory input than plastic, supporting neural development.
Delayed academics: Honors research showing that early academic pressure doesn't create lasting advantages and may undermine motivation.
Emphasis on movement: Acknowledges that cross-lateral movement (crawling, climbing, walking) literally builds the brain connections needed for later reading and math.
Singing over speaking: Uses melody and rhythm to support language acquisition—toddlers often sing words before they can speak them.
The genius of Waldorf is that it knew these things before we had fMRI machines to prove them.
The Daily Rhythm: What It Actually Looks Like
Let me take you through a day at a Waldorf-inspired care setting for the under-threes:
Morning (8:00-9:00am) Children arrive and are greeted individually, making eye contact with the same caregiver each day. Early arrivers might have breakfast—simple grain porridge with fruit. The caregiver sits with them, eating too, modeling how we nourish ourselves. There's quiet conversation, maybe a morning song.
Outdoor Time (9:00-11:00am) Everyone dresses for the weather (wool layers, rain gear, hats) and goes outside. Not to a playground with plastic equipment, but to a garden or forest.
The walk follows the same route every day. This isn't boring—it's revelatory. When you walk the same path daily, you notice: the bird nest has eggs now, the puddle is bigger after rain, the leaves are changing color. Constancy allows perception of change.
Children might climb trees, dig in sand, collect stones, splash in streams. Caregivers are present but not directing. They're preparing snacks, mending clothes, or simply watching—their calm attention creating a circle of safety within which children explore freely.
Lunch (11:15-11:45am) Everyone comes inside for a simple meal—perhaps more porridge with vegetables. The table is beautiful: cloth napkins, wooden bowls, a candle, flowers. Before eating, they join hands and sing thanks.
Lunch is sacred quiet time. The door stays closed. No interruptions. Children are learning: eating together is important. Food deserves our attention. We sit until we're done.
Sleep (12:00-2:30pm) This is perhaps the most distinctive practice: children sleep outside, year-round, bundled in wool sleeping bags inside small tent-like cribs with roofs.
The routine is ritualized: diaper change, sleeping clothes, being tucked in by the same caregiver who sings the same song and speaks the same verse every day. The child knows: now comes rest.
Afternoon (2:30-3:00pm) Children wake naturally and are greeted with the same gentle attention they received in the morning. There's a small snack, perhaps time in the sandbox, and then parents arrive for pickup.
The day is short. By design. Because children under three need to be home.
The Philosophy Behind the Practice
"All Education Is Self-Education"
This Waldorf maxim appears repeatedly in Heckmann's book, and it's worth unpacking.
If children learn primarily through imitation, then the adult's main task isn't to teach but to be worthy of imitation. This is why the book opens with spiritual exercises for caregivers—practices in developing:
Clarity of thought (so children absorb clear thinking)
Freedom of will (so children see conscious choice, not reactive habit)
Emotional balance (so children learn feelings can be felt without being overwhelming)
Conscious positivity (so children encounter someone who looks for the good)
Openness (so children see curiosity toward life)
As one contributor writes: "The only thing we have to offer the child at any given moment—is ourselves!"
This is demanding. It means you can't just implement Waldorf techniques while remaining the same stressed, distracted, reactionary adult. You have to do your own inner work.
But here's what's likable about this: it gives meaning to the grind of caregiving.
When you're changing the fifth diaper of the morning, singing the same song for the hundredth time, or walking the same forest path again—you're not just getting through tasks. You're practicing being fully present. You're offering a model of patience, attention, and care that will shape a human being.
The Attachment Village
Modern parenting is often lonely—two exhausted parents, isolated with their children, no extended family nearby, expected to meet all their child's needs while also working full-time.
Waldorf early childhood acknowledges what traditional cultures knew: raising young children takes a village.
But it's not any village. Heckmann draws on Gordon Neufeld's attachment research to describe what children need: a small, stable, deeply connected group of caregivers who genuinely love them.
This means:
The same caregivers, day after day, month after month
Caregivers who form real relationships with parents
Small groups (6-8 children maximum)
Long settling-in periods where parents stay until the child truly feels safe
As Heckmann writes: "To a small child, all relationships are 'forever' relationships. They need the adults who take on the challenge of looking after them to be authentic in their care, to give from an open heart, and to be truly interested in the child's health and wellbeing."
This is the opposite of institutional childcare where staff rotate, groups are large, and children are expected to "adapt."
Reverence for the Mystery
Finally, there's something deeply appealing about Waldorf's fundamental stance toward childhood: reverence.
Steiner spoke of young children as still connected to spiritual worlds, slowly "incarnating" into physical bodies. You don't have to believe this literally to feel its poetry.
When you observe a two-year-old with this lens, you see differently. That intense concentration while pouring water from cup to cup—that's not just "play," it's a soul exploring the laws of physics. Those wide eyes watching rain fall—that's not just "looking," it's consciousness meeting matter for perhaps the first time.
Heckmann writes: "If we are all born with the potential to become whole human beings, then care is the nourishment, the growing medium that more than anything else helps realize the potential."
The Challenges (Let's Be Honest)
Waldorf early childhood education isn't for everyone, and it's worth naming the challenges:
It Requires Going Against the Grain
Keeping your child home until age three, or choosing part-time care when everyone else does full-time, means swimming upstream against cultural norms and possibly financial necessity.
It Demands Adult Discipline
Those daily rhythms, the same songs, the careful preparation of meals, the getting outside in all weather—it's rigorous. You can't phone it in.
It Can Feel Precious
The emphasis on natural materials, the specific songs, the avoidance of plastic and screens—it can seem like performative purity to outsiders.
The Mystical Elements
Steiner's anthroposophy includes beliefs about reincarnation, karma, and spiritual beings that many find hard to swallow. You have to decide how much of the philosophy you need to embrace to use the practices.
It's Often Expensive or Inaccessible
Quality Waldorf programs tend to be private and pricey. The vision of small ratios, highly trained teachers, beautiful materials, and short hours doesn't fit the economic model of most childcare.
Why It Endures
Despite these challenges, Waldorf early childhood education is thriving globally. Why?
Because it offers something irreplaceable: a vision of childhood as it should be.
In a world that increasingly treats children as data points to be optimized, Waldorf says: slow down. Be present. Honor the sacredness of these early years.
In a culture that measures success by how early children read, Waldorf asks: what does a human being actually need to flourish?
In an economy that demands both parents work long hours from infancy onward, Waldorf whispers: there might be another way.
Bringing Waldorf Principles Home
You don't need to enroll in a Waldorf program (or have access to one) to incorporate these principles. Here's what you can do:
Create rhythm: Same wake-up time, same meals at same times, same bedtime routine. This regularity is medicine for young nervous systems.
Prioritize outdoor time: Daily, in all weather, dressed appropriately. Let your child explore freely while you simply watch or do simple tasks nearby.
Simplify toys: Natural materials, open-ended items. A basket of stones, wooden blocks, silk scarves, shells. Less is genuinely more.
Sing more, talk less: Songs for transitions ("this is the way we put on shoes"), for comfort, for joy. Your voice is your child's first music.
Do real work together: Let your toddler help cook, clean, garden. Slow down enough to include them. They're not in the way—they're learning everything.
Protect sleep: Whatever it takes. Dark room, early bedtime, consistent routine. Sleep is when young brains process and consolidate all they've learned.
Limit screens: For under-threes, ideally none. Young children need to interact with the three-dimensional, responsive, real world.
Work on yourself: Notice when you're reactive, scattered, or harsh. Apologize. Try again. Children are forming their inner worlds based on your outer presence.
A Final Word: The Gift of Time
Perhaps the most countercultural—and most beautiful—message in Heckmann's work is simply this: children need time.
Time to develop physically at their own pace. Time to form secure attachments. Time to play without purpose or goal. Time to experience the same day, the same walk, the same song dozens, hundreds of times—because in that repetition lies not boredom but mastery, security, and deepening perception.
Time with their parents, whose love is irreplaceable and whose presence during these years creates the foundation for everything that follows.
In a world that worships speed, efficiency, and early achievement, Waldorf education for the very young offers permission to pause. To let childhood unfold as it's meant to. To trust that your two-year-old doesn't need to be "ahead"—she needs to be fully, presently, joyfully two.
As Heckmann writes: "The tenderness and the huge love that so obviously exists between a child and its parents is something I would love to experience. I see that unconditional love as one of life's greatest gifts."
That love, offered through our presence, our rhythm, our careful attention to these fleeting early years—that's what Waldorf education is really about.
And that's why it's so deeply, enduringly likable.
