The First Three Years of the Child

The First Three Years of the Child: How Children Learn to Walk, Speak, and Think

In this classic work on early childhood development, Karl König explores the first three years of a child’s life by examining the three major achievements that occur during this stage—learning to walk, learning to speak, and learning to think.

These are three core human faculties and their acquisition, König asserts, is “an act of grace” in early childhood. He continues with a detailed analysis of this extraordinarily complex process.

This “Karl König Archive” edition includes extensive notes and a new introduction by Dr. Jan Göschel, founding President of the Camphill Academy in North America, which puts this well-known text in the context of current research.

The First Three Years of the Child provides fascinating, practical insights into early-years child development and will prove indispensable to parents, educators, medical professionals, and care takers.

About the Author

Karl König (1902–1966) was born in Vienna, in Austria-Hungary, the only son of a Jewish shoemaker. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1927, with a special interest in embryology. After graduating, he was invited by Ita Wegman to work in her Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut, a clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland for people with special needs. He married Mathilde Maasberg in 1929. Dr. König was appointed paediatrician at the Rudolf Steiner-inspired Schloß Pilgrimshain institute in Strzegom, where he worked until 1936, when he returned to Vienna and established a successful medical practice. Owing to Hitler’s invasion of Austria, he was forced to flee Vienna to Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1938. Dr. König was interned briefly at the beginning of World War II, but on his release in 1940 he set up the first Camphill Community for Children in Need of Special Care at Camphill on the outskirts of Aberdeen. From the mid-1950s, König began more communities, including one in North Yorkshire, the first to care for those beyond school age with special needs. In 1964, König moved to Brachenreuthe near Überlingen on Lake Constance, Germany, where he set up another community, where he died in 1966.