[Attached Mama]

My dd doesn't seem to fit into the Waldorf stages of development at all. I have recently finished reading Over the Rainbow Bridge, Heaven on Earth and am currently reading You are Your Child's First Teacher. All of these books talk about how children don't really begin pretend imaginative play until sometime between 2 and 3 years of age when they will begin to "feed their doll" or "talk on the phone" etc. My dd was doing that stuff at 10 months! Now at almost 2 she will spread out her playsilks and farm animals and enact a simple scenario with them (for example the fields (playsilks) suddenly become covers for the animals to go night night).

She has a very vivid imagination in that she makes up stories to tell me "I saw a racoon. RAcoon say "eat eat". Racoon eat rice and beans"

Or she will tell her pig is having a birthday on Tuesday and will be 6 mos old. I don't know where she gets some of this stuff from. It's so cute and imaginative. Sometimes she pipes up with words I didn't even know she knew.

Also, dd can sing her ABC's. She heard it just a few times and started singing it. She will also show me letters if she sees them someplace tho she doesn't know what any of them are called/say. I know Waldorf doesn't endorse early reading but...

Anyway, the stages of development just seem very odd to me....

 

[fluttermama]

Quote:

All of these books talk about how children don't really begin pretend imaginative play until sometime between 2 and 3 years of age when they will begin to "feed their doll" or "talk on the phone" etc. My dd was doing that stuff at 10 months! Now at almost 2 she will spread out her playsilks and farm animals and enact a simple scenario with them (for example the fields (playsilks) suddenly become covers for the animals to go night night).

I am just curious...was she shown any of this and is being imitative? I think imitative play is different than what the books are talking about. I really saw a change in play with my ds between two and three where he would begin to talk in his play, it's hard to explain on the computer, but he started acting like someone else was there and was talking/interacting with someone as if they were really there with no toys/props. He spent a lot of time doing that and I think that is where the imaginative play starting really blooming.

 

[Attached Mama]

she saw others doing a few things and copied it around 10 months. but now she is almost 2 and she comes up with all sorts of things all on her very own. We are always laughing at how funny and imaginative it all is. Some of it is more stories she tells than things she plays out, tho she is pretty imaginative with her play too.