YARN - From the (shorter) Oxford English Dictionary:

Spun fibre of cotton, silk, wool, or flax.... fibre prepared for use in weaving, knitting...a fisherman's net...any of the strands of which a rope is composed...a (usually long or rambling) story or tale, especially an implausible, fanciful, or incredible one.


Monday, January 24, 2011

Walt-dorf - Crossing the Waldorf-Disney Divide

When my sister-in-law opened the conversation with "I know it's not your thing, but..."  I knew I was going to say yes to something that was going to stretch me.  I figured it was going to be about crossing a divide between my life and the world of popular culture.

I walked home for lunch for my first few years of elementary school and the Flintstones were as much a part of my day as grilled cheese. I can place my babysitting years by the shows on TV (Love Boat and Fantasy Island), I have the Partridge Family on my ipod (should I really admit that??). I am a product of my times.

We are not super orthodox Waldorfians, but we don't have a TV (somewhere around the time of my english degree TV left my life and I embraced my inner geek).  Dora has entered our home in book form, we have been to see theatre productions of Franklin and Sesame Street, we have read Winnie the Pooh - the pre-Disney Winnie.  I think of it as 'popular culture light'.

So when the topic of a family trip to Disney came up what was I to do?

I do what I always do - I made it more complicated and flooded my brain with questions and tried to look at it from a 1000 angles!

How to be of both worlds? 
How to take the best of one and not alienate oneself from the other?
To what extent has the school become the keeper of my values?  my moral compass?  the ideal against which I measure myself?
How can we not accept this invitation?
Will a week of Disney undo years of Waldorf?
How can I not give my parents the gift of us all being together?
Will my children come home with expectations that I cannot/don't want to meet?
Did I not go to Disney as a child - and like it?  I wonder if that Mickey Mouse t-shirt is still at my parents...
Will a week of rides and sensory overload ruin my children's ability to embrace the simple pleases of play at school?
What could be more fun that the 5 cousins together for a week?
Wouldn't it be nice to go without a coat for a bit before hunkering down to snowsuit season?
Why would I avoid something that could be beneficial for all of the relationships in the family?
Will we have to buy a TV when we got home?
Would it really be a form of deprivation to not take my children to Disney?
Why do I make everything so complicated?

My sister-in-law is familiar with the ins and outs of planning a trip to the BIG D and all I had to do was say yes and she would find the deals and tell us when to book and where to show up, it could not be easier.

So we went. We went to spend time with the cousins and grandparents, and it happened to be to Disney. Well that is what I told myself.  But as we made the plans I was looking forward to seeing the room stretch at the Haunted Mansion and was pretty sure I did not need to go on Space Mountain as an adult. I looked forward to my daughter going on the Small World world ride with her grandmother.  Even thinking that thought implanted that song in my head.

In my mind I joked about getting kicked out of the school. I told people our plans like it was a minor misdemeanor.  The issues were all mine. It turns out that lots of other people struggle with these issues and ask similar questions.  Questions about where to draw the line, how firm to make the line and when the line actually interferes with other aspects of life and extended family.  It would be nice to not get noisy plastic toys, but sometimes they come despite polite suggestions and you just have to smile and say thank you.

I didn't give the children much warning that we were going, there was no big hype lead up, it was pretty low key, the excitement was about spending a week with the cousins.

It was a fast education in Disney. My daughter did not know the names of the princesses so in true Waldorf fashion she made a song with all of the names (Ariel, Belle, Jasmin, Cinderella.....) and wandered around singing it to herself until she could rattle them off like an old pro!

And maybe the two, Disney and Waldorf,  fit together like two sides of a coin, both seeking to indulge the spirit and childhood and make a kind of magic.

Waldorf has - gnomes
Disney has - dwarfs

Waldorf has - golden silence
Disney has - a soundtrack

Waldorf has - rhythm
Disney has - beat

Waldorf has - a progression of learning
Disney has - serial peak experiences

Waldorf has - coherence
Disney has - cross marketing

Waldorf has - calm
Disney has - hype

Waldorf has - natural materials
Disney has - materials made to look natural

Waldorf has - a lantern walk
Disney has - an electric light parade

Waldorf is - authentic
Disney is - created reality

Waldorf is - grounded
Disney is - ready for lift-off

Waldorf has - knights
Disney has - princesses!

We had character meals, lunch at The Castle with The Princesses, sparkly shoes, late nights, carousel rides, spinning tea cups, soarin', turtle talk with crush, 3-d sensorama movies, a 2 week safari in under 1/2 hour, parades and more parades, magic wands and wishing stars, fireworks, multiple rides in the doom buggies of the haunted mansion, and roller coaster rides.  We came home with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse tucked under our arms and thousands of pictures on the hard drive.


The first day back at school my son and some of his friends took the lid off the sand table in the Morning Garden - they made a slide and played with absolute concentration and abandon for 45 minutes.

It was all fine!

I still kinda want to see the Harry Potter park.....

7 comments:

  1. Omg thank you for writing this post. We are a Waldorf family and about me bark on a magical journey ourselves. My girls hear the Grimms stories everyday and live them through there own imaginations. I was seriously worried of how they will be when we get back. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for reading and commenting! Apart from increased character recognition I would say that the most important memories my children carry are of spending time with family - as it should be.
    Please come back and let me know how your adventure goes!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad I found this. I LOVE Disney...and our kids are Waldorf educated. I over think this as well. We just got back from a few days there. Had a magical time as a family, will probably go back, and kids came home and started playing with bark and sticks and spending the day outside. I guess we haven't ruined them after all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glad I found this. I LOVE Disney...and our kids are Waldorf educated. I over think this as well. We just got back from a few days there. Had a magical time as a family, will probably go back, and kids came home and started playing with bark and sticks and spending the day outside. I guess we haven't ruined them after all.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Glad I found this. I LOVE Disney...and our kids are Waldorf educated. I over think this as well. We just got back from a few days there. Had a magical time as a family, will probably go back, and kids came home and started playing with bark and sticks and spending the day outside. I guess we haven't ruined them after all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I was getting ready to write a similar post for our readers and thought I would research a bit to see if there was anything out there that was positive. THANK YOU for writing this. So many assume that you have to indulge in the entire thing and you can't keep your values and go and I disagree. We live in So Cal and have a pass and my children haven't seen all the movies, they still make up their own stories and don't insist on Disney anything... because I am still ME.

    Blessings,

    Melisa Nielsen
    WaldorfEssentials.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was getting ready to write a similar post for our readers and thought I would research a bit to see if there was anything out there that was positive. THANK YOU for writing this. So many assume that you have to indulge in the entire thing and you can't keep your values and go and I disagree. We live in So Cal and have a pass and my children haven't seen all the movies, they still make up their own stories and don't insist on Disney anything... because I am still ME.

    Blessings,

    Melisa Nielsen
    WaldorfEssentials.com

    ReplyDelete