Nurturing Our Child’s Spirit
I’ve been sitting for awhile now with where I want to go with this blog. I have a definite sense that I have more I want to explore and share, even though I am not fully clear on exactly where I want those explorations to take me. I’ve been discovering a lot about myself over the past year and one thing I am realizing is that I’m actually pretty good at living my way into the answers I need. In fact, the more I try to “make” my life happen, the more overwhelmed I get.
I’ve been realizing I want to give myself more time and space for my thoughts recently so I decided I would do a bit of freewriting yesterday morning and see where that took me. We are discussing nurturing your child’s spirit this week in the Homeschool Alliance which felt like a good place to start. It’s one of the superpowers in The Brave Learner and if I’m honest, it’s one of my favorites (though I do have to admit, I have several favorites.)
So this is where I will start, with no idea of where it will take me or how I will get there. But it feels right for now. Which is all I can ask for, right?
Originally posted on Instagram.
Nurturing our child’s spirit.
Starts with us.
Why do we think we can “make” people grateful? Why are we scared of giving “too much” to our children — scared of”making” them ungrateful?
What if we could trust our children to be good people? What if we could trust ourselves?
What messages did we receive? That we were ungrateful? Maybe they were even true? Children (especially young ones) don’t have the context to be grateful. The life experience.
What if instead of guilt or shame we had been given trust? Can we give this trust to our children when we don’t (maybe even now) trust ourselves?
Maybe it’s ok to be ungrateful sometimes? To realize we have personal desires that aren’t being met? What if that is completely understandable? What if it is by wrestling with these very human feelings that we work through them? That we learn to make friends with them (and ourselves for having them)? That we learn to understand others through them?
I want my kids to take their lives for granted. That means their needs are being met.
Does that mean I give my kids everything they want? No. But maybe it means I don’t make them feel wrong for having these wants. And maybe by understanding them and giving them grace, they, in turn will come to understand and give grace to themselves and others for their humanness.
