The Child as a Sense Organ An Anthroposophic Understanding of Imitation Processes by Peter Selg

The initial period of childhood is essentially about adapting to and  incarnating on Earth and establishing a provisional balance between the  “spiritual” and the “physical,” between the prenatal cosmic and the  earthly factors. During this time, according to Rudolf Steiner, “all the  forces of a child’s organization emanate from the neurosensory  system. . . . By bringing respiration into harmony with neurosensory  activity, we draw the spirit–soul element into the child’s physical  life.” 
Peter Selg investigates how children’s early  experience of the world begins as an undifferentiated sensory  relationship to their phenomenological environment. This aspect of a  child’s incarnation leads to learning through imitation and to the  process of recognizing “the Other” as a separate entity with which to  interact. 
In this cogent work, Peter Selg describes the early  stages of childhood from the perspectives of conventional scientific and  spiritual-scientific— anthropological and anthroposophic—research with  the purpose of encouraging a new educational attitude in working with  young children. In his numerous references to early childhood  development, this was Rudolf Steiner’s most important and urgent  purpose. 
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“Steiner directed attention to the special  character of the senses in childhood, particularly in the first few  years of life. Through their senses, children are fully exposed to (and  to some extent at the mercy of) objects and people around them.... In  many of his lectures, especially those dealing with education and  developmental physiology, Rudolf Steiner emphasized that the  anthropology of early childhood must not only recognize the child as a  ‘comprehensive’ or ‘universal’ sense organ, but must also give that  recognition top priority in any consideration of what is involved in the  child’s life and experiences. ‘Children are completely like sense  organs in how they take in the contents of their surroundings’” (from  chapter 2). SBN:       9781621481836