According to Rudolf Steiner, the child is not yet able to clearly distinguish between world and I-being until around the age of 9. The child sees the world through the educator, its soul is «transparent». But this is now changing. Here is another extract from Steiner's lecture series «The Roots of Education».
From a developmental standpoint, the transition from the ninth to the tenth year is vitally important for children, though the precise moment varies from child to child, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.
You will notice that around this time, children grow somewhat restless; they come to the teacher with questioning eyes, and these things require that you have a fine feeling. Children will ask things that startle you, very different from anything they had asked before. Children find themselves in a strange situation inwardly. Now it is not a question of giving them all sorts of admonitions in a pedantic and stilted way; it is our task, above all, to feel our way into their own being.
At this stage, something appears in the subconscious being of a child. It is not, of course, anything that the child could express consciously, but we may characterize it in this way: until this time, children unquestioningly accepted as truth, goodness, and beauty whatever the authority, or revered teacher, presented as true, good, and beautiful. They were completely devoted to the one who was their authority. But at this point between the ninth and tenth year something comes over children — in the feelings, not in thinking, since they do not yet intellectualize things.
Something comes over them, and it awakens in the soul as a kind of faint, dreamlike question: How does the teacher know this? Where does it come from? Is my teacher really the world? Until now, my teacher was the world, but now there is a question: Does not the world go beyond the teacher?
Up to this point, the teacher’s soul was transparent, and the child saw through it into the world; but now this adult has become increasingly opaque, and the child asks, out of the feelings, what justifies one thing or another.
Experience of the difference
The teacher’s whole bearing must then very tactfully find what is right for the child. It is not a matter of figuring out ahead of time what to say, but of knowing how to adapt to the situation with inner tact. If right at this moment one can find the appropriate thing for the child through an inner, imperceptible sympathy, it will have an immense significance for that child’s whole life right up to the time of death.
If a child at this stage of inner life can say of the teacher, «This person’s words arise from the secrets and mysteries of the world,» this will be of great value to the child. This is an essential aspect of our teaching method. At this point in life, children experience the difference between the world and the I-being.
(Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Roots of Education, AP, 1996, 5 Lectures, Bern, 1924)