Encountering the Self

The author, a Waldorf teacher of many years' experience, provides a lucid explanation of the events happening in the life of a child between the ninth and tenth years. This is the time when the child's ego incarnates more deeply. As a result, children at that age often experience themselves for the first time as separate individuals, different from their parents and peers, and essentially alone. As Koepke points out, this inner experience is often accompanied by a first encounter with death in the child's environment, a first inkling that life is fragile and does not go on forever.