Warmth: Nurturing Children's Health and Wellbeing

By Edmond Schoorel

Warmth is a hand-knitted woolly jumper and a crackling fire in the grate. Warmth is a smile when we need encouragement and a hug when things aren't going our way. This one word has so many powerful, positive associations.
Warmth is one of the basic building blocks of existence; without it, there would be no life or growth. As parents we want our children to be warm - physically and emotionally. We raise them to be warm people full of compassion and hope.
In the first book of its kind, anthroposophical therapist Edmond Schoorel explores the role of warmth across many aspects of child development, including:
-- physical warmth and what children should wear;
-- the role of warmth in bodily processes such as growth, energy and health
-- the importance of emotional warmth;
-- warmth of spirit, or enthusiasm.
This fascinating and practical book gives parents and caregivers valuable insight into how to nurture different aspects warmth in everyday family life, and will also be useful for teachers and anyone who works with children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floris Books
• Release date: Sep 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781782504559

Edmond Schoorel

Edmond Schoorel was born in Indonesia in 1947. He studied medicine and pediatrics in the Netherlands. Since 1996 he has worked as a pediatrician at the Children's Therapy Clinic (Kindertherapeuticum) in Utrecht, Netherlands, which specialises in anthroposophical approaches to children's health and wellbeing.

Book preview

Introduction

Warmth is a unique phenomenon. It permeates everything, it creates us, and it is the reason that the earth exists at all. Warmth is different to heat, the scorching blaze of the fire. If warmth no longer exists, cold remains. Then everything becomes quiet, life stops, there is no fun any more.

When we think of warmth, we might think of gathering round the fire at an inn after a beautiful, cold family walk at Christmas. A pleasant smokiness to the room, and a quiet, contented hush. The warmth of the fire makes us lazy, and hot chocolate with whipped cream makes us content and happy. Attention turns inward, and conversation slows to murmurs of agreement.

Or we might imagine feeling the sun’s rays for the first time after a long winter. We close our eyes and sense its delightful warmth, the light of spring glowing through our eyelids. New life announces itself all around us, and it won’t be long until the trees, plants and shrubs blossom. All thanks to the sun.

We also might think of warmth as a warm bath after a busy day. The smell of lavender intensifies our feeling of contentment, of fullness. We can finally relax, careful not to fall asleep in the bath. Anything planned this evening? I don’t think so. Wonderful.

Or we might picture a walk on the dunes on a rare summer day. The sand reflects the heat of the sun so that it feels as if the warmth is coming from everywhere. The fragrance of pine expands our thoughts, which have been made fuzzy by the sun. As our body works hard to lose its warmth, we perspire and taste salt on our lips. How wonderful when we finally reach the sea and the waves break over our toes. There is a breeze along the water and we notice the difference in temperature between the dry sand and the wet sea, cooling us down.

We all have our own unique ideas about warmth. I recommend that you try visualising your own, incorporating as many senses as you can into the details. In particular, smells can help us open the gates to a favourite memory, and funnily enough, it is warmth that helps to release those scents into the air. As you learn to visualise these different kinds of warmth, you may find they help you understand the explanations of warmth that follow in this book.

Just as these images have different moods, warmth has many different meanings. We may use the word literally (‘a warm bed’) as well as metaphorically (‘a warm glance’). In the next part of this book I will organise the different meanings of warmth into four categories. For this I will use the anthroposophical concept of ‘fourfoldness’. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the idea – you don’t have to know anything about fourfoldness to understand my discussion. Those who would like to know more about fourfoldness can refer to the recommended reading at the end of the book.

I am using fourfoldness as a structure for understanding how warmth affects different levels of children’s development. When children are growing up, they must first connect with their bodies before they can enter the world without fear or hesitation. ‘First enter your body, then the world.’ We must then see warmth develop at every level – the physical, the life forces, the soul and the ‘I’ – before children become adults who can pass their warmth on.

As I said in the Foreword, there is only one bridge that leads children to their path in life, the path on which they fulfil their purpose on earth. That bridge is warmth – and it is so easy!

1. Getting Started

How to approach this book

There is no right or wrong way to read this book. From start to finish, it provides an introduction to warmth and what it means for child development. It will give you the tools and insight to apply this newly acquired knowledge to caring for your children.

The main (unboxed) text provides a continuous background and meaning behind the concept of warmth. The text in boxes gives extra context and interesting facts to accompany the subjects discussed in the text. You are welcome to pick and choose within these areas, or simply to flick to a chapter that interests you at that particular moment.

Fourfoldness

There have been many phases of the earth’s and humanity’s development,¹ but we can best describe them as having four levels.

The four levels of development are easiest to picture in an example from daily life: you have an idea, you make a plan, you decide on the conditions to execute the plan, and you execute it.

The idea is the first level. It stirs your enthusiasm – makes you start thinking about what you need to realise your idea.

The second level is making a plan, during which you may encounter resistance.

You make sure that the resistance will not stand in your way. This is the third level.

Finally you land your idea, and act on it. This is the fourth level.

We can also find fourfoldness in the physical world. The earth, animals and human beings around us are not simply solid, liquid and gas like we learn at school. The four elements of earth, water, air and fire are not just coagulations of matter, but unique states which in varied quantities make up and define the characteristics of every living thing.

‘Fire’ has impulsive qualities: beginning, renewing, driving, attracting. This corresponds to the ideas level above.

‘Air’ stands for everything penetrable: providing space, expanse, lightness. This corresponds to the planning level.

‘Water’, in contrast, represents changeable qualities: adjusting, heaviness, creating a taut surface. This corresponds to the level of overcoming resistance.

‘Earth’ stands for definite qualities: it is unchangeable, does not adjust or alter itself suddenly. This corresponds to the fourth level, the actual doing.

The combination of the four elements determines our temperaments. If fire takes greater control we are choleric, if air blows through us we are sanguine, if water is dominant we are phlegmatic, and if earth plays an overriding role we may be melancholic.² Growing children express all of these temperaments at different stages (babyhood is sometimes seen as a phlegmatic stage, for example, toddlerhood as choleric, childhood beyond the toddler years as sanguine), as well as all children gradually developing into their own personal mix of temperaments, which will become more apparent from age fourteen.³

We need all four elements to work together,