Out of Garden and Into the Desert - A Waldorf Child Development Perspective on the 9 Year Change

Out of the Garden and Into the Desert
by Ms. Shelly Hastert, 2nd & 3rd Grade Lead

Rudolf Steiner identified a particular time in a child’s life as The Nine-Year Change. It is a necessary and very special moment of growth that propels those children away from childhood and toward adulthood.

The following is a summary of the book Out of the Garden and Into the Desert by Neal and Jennifer Kennerk.

What is the Nine-Year Change?

When the Nine-Year Change arrives in our children’s lives, they are nurtured by the literature and archetypes of the Old Testament. The Garden of Eden is unconscious childhood. They have explicit trust in the adults in their lives, they are intimately connected with their environment, and they see goodness in everything. Around the age of 9, this conscious relationship with the world begins to change.

Children begin to question all the truths they have held blindly. They wonder about their purpose in the world and the purpose of the world itself. Children of this age wonder whether adults really know everything. The child’s ego is awakening.

Children at this stage of development need to feel loved, to feel safe and to know that there is still beauty and truth in our world. They need stability and consistency to build their developing egos. Really listening to your child is imperative. Your reaction will be consistent and loving, but not over sympathetic.

How the Waldorf Curriculum Meets the Nine-Year Change

Through the literature of the Old Testament, archetypes are explored that resonate with these children. Death, sorrow, duality, purification, arrogance, faith, sacrifice, struggle, vision, individuation, self-knowledge, and forgiveness. The plot of each story explores the struggles represented in the human experience that children of this age are aware. These archetypes forge the ego giving it a foundation and presence in the world and in the child.

Stiener gave the image of a stream that is bubbling along in a beautiful area (childhood) when suddenly it disappears into the ground. The stream continues its course down, deep inside the earth. It is dark and cold. Eventually the stream begins to rise up toward a light, above the ground. It emerges out of the ground in a new location (adulthood). This journey is necessary for a child’s development into adulthood.

The children participate in building, farming, and cooking to learn that they, like the people in the Old Testament, can learn to survive.