By Sue Palmer

Sue Palmer presents wide-ranging research on the toxic cocktail of factors affecting children’s lives today. She provides advice on “detoxifying” childhood, including:
- the importance of real food and real play for children’s development
- why sleep is essential to learning, and how to ensure children get enough of it
- childcare and education, and what works for different age groups
- protecting children from aggressive marketing and the excesses of celebrity culture
- the dangers (and benefits) of growing up in a multimedia “electronic village”.

By Clare Cherry

What do you do when a child is disruptive and uncooperative? Please Don’t Sit on the Kids examines the traditional idea that discipline equals punishment. In place of punitive techniques, Clare Cherry offers an approach called “nondiscipline discipline” and alternatives to punishment that she calls “the magic list”. This approach enables adults to:
- be teachers, not dictators or prison guards
- stop antisocial, inappropriate behaviour in the classroom
- model constructive methods of handling anger and resolving conflicts
- help children develop social responsibility and self-respect.

By Marieke Anschutz

From her experience in working with children of all ages, the author provides a guide to children’s different temperaments and their role in child character, health and personality development. She illustrates her ideas with examples from home and school, using the context of the Waldorf/Steiner School classroom, and discusses how to use these insights in managing and relating to groups and individuals. Drawing on an ancient tradition, Rudolf Steiner referred to four fundamental ‘types’ or ‘temperaments’ in the human personality, each of which has different personal needs and ways of relating socially.