15.6 Is a playgroup right for my child?

Mothers of only children often wonder how to overcome their own isolation and help their toddlers learn to hold their own in a group. Cooperative play groups for infants and toddlers can offer real help by providing the children with playmates and their mothers with opportunities for socializing, mutual support, and free time.

Playgroup meetings create a stimulating, sociable atmosphere for young children if their parents work on group projects such as baking, weaving, singing, or playing musical instruments. It’s less stimulating for the little folks if the adults just talk, knit, or drink coffee as they supervise in the background. Developing social skills, however, requires other circumstances not provided by playgroups. Learning to enter into and cultivate interpersonal relationships requires models that other babies and toddlers cannot supply, since the ability to establish consistent I-you relationships develops only around age three, when children begin to say “I” to themselves. Before this point in their development, daily life with a few consistent, familiar caregivers (or only one) is the best to support children’s ability to make appropriate social connections,In this respect, consistent housemates can accomplish more than a playgroup

An additional problem is that the need for parental guidance and/or child care is snowballing because increasing numbers of couples or single parents face the task of raising a toddler with a sense of helplessness or even estrangement. In view of the rapidly declining birch rates and aging populations of many developed nations and the fact that many children grow up with few relationships, there is great cause for concern about how children will continue to develop the social skills that they need later in life. With this problem in mind, many Waldorf kindergartens now sponsor parent-child programs to provide parents with suggestions and guidance about how to meet their toddlers’ developmental needs. Young children reed an educational approach that allows them to experience loving interest stimulating activities, and dependable interpersonal relationships to the greatest possible extent. Perhaps the task of children who might other wise be marginalized is to break down family barriers by soliciting the attention of other loving adults who can provide the conditions necessary for later mutual understanding and respect.