Platt Discovery Cottage

Gateways Conference

April 20th, 2008

I just spent Friday night and all day Saturday at the Gateway Conference at our local Waldorf school.  It was fabulous.  Such an energizing and inspiring weekend.

The keynote speaker was a man by the name of Kim John Payne, an Australian now living in New York.  He’s been working on research with two other people, looking into stress as the leading factor in add, adhd and all the ‘d’ disorders as he calls them.

At the start of his career, he worked with youth in Jakarta as well as street gang kids in Australia and found that they all suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.  Once he became a Waldorf therapist, he found that many of the children brought to him for counselling were coming to him as a last resort.  They were typically severe behaviour problems and had been labelled with one of the ‘d’s.  What Mr. Payne found was that these children were suffering the same symptoms as the children in severely stressful situations. 

What Mr. Payne found was the by simplifying the environment, many of the children improved dramatically.

 I urge anyone who has the opportunity to hear Mr. Payne speak on Simplicity Parenting to do so.  Alternatively, he has his speech on cd available on his website.  Although I found it very inspiring, it’s not anything that those in the Waldorf community don’t already know.  He presents it in first a shocking way, and then inspires parents to action.  He, talks about ’soul fever’ and likens it to a real fever which was an amazing visual for me.

Saturday morning and afternoon had breakout sessions that were of value.  However, I really think that hearing Payne speak was the highlight.  Although we don’t have behavioural issues here, we can make these simple changes (simple only because we are already on the path of which he speaks) and have a better rhythm and flow in the house.  Colin came as well and I think it really solidified for him what I’ve been saying all along.  Particularly about tv being brain poison (Payne’s term).  He’s also really keen to get rid of all the toys and get down to bare bones creative toys. 

So, with Payne’s humour and awesome insight, I am going to make the changes he recommends and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

Enjoying the journey, Amanda

Entry Filed under: daily journal