Understanding Deeper Developmental Needs

Understanding Deeper Developmental Needs: Holistic Approaches for Challenging Behaviors in Children

How do we best help a child who is struggling?
By learning to look carefully. 

Enlivening our observation skills allows us to see consistent behavioral patterns and dynamics that show up in children’s movement, learning, sensing, and memory. Within those activities we can learn to see archetypal pathways of development. Watching the way a child moves, listens, eats, or sleeps offers us insights into a child’s experience of the world. Those gestures help tell the child’s story. We learn to think in living processes, not checklists.

Constitutional, or fundamental, polarities—as introduced by Rudolf Steiner—allow for individualized, therapeutic approaches to challenges such as aggressive behaviors, attention problems, anxiety, autistic behaviors, and depression.

Teachers, counselors, and medical doctors will find tools here for enriching their work with children. These constitutional pictures are accompanied by diverse therapeutic indications that will encourage children to unfold new growth and maturation, from the inside out.

CONTENTS:

Introduction

Part One: The Polarity of Integration: Between Heaven and Earth
Part Two: The Polarity of Differentiation: Between Blood and Nerve
Part Three: The Polarity of Connection: Between Point and Periphery
Part Four: Bringing the Pieces Together

Appendices
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Adam Blanning, MD, a native of Denver, attended the University of Colorado for both his undergraduate English literature and medical degrees. In 2003 he founded the Denver Center for Anthroposophic Therapies. Dr. Blanning also works as an educational and developmental consultant for area Waldorf schools (Denver and Boulder) and has lectured on anthroposophic medicine and child development throughout the U.S. and Canada. He currently serves as president of the Association for Anthroposophic Medicine and Therapies in America (AAMTA), sits on the board of the Physicians’ Association for Anthroposophic Medicine (PAAM), and teaches in its training courses. Dr. Blanning is a founding member and core faculty for the Nurturing the Roots course in Waldorf early childhood therapeutic education and teaches and directs the two-year PAAM curriculum in school doctoring. He likes to grow things in his backyard and spend time with his family when he is not doctoring.