"Mommy, Mommy--come here!"
It would have been easy to refuse. Madly punching numbers into the calculator, I had reached midpoint of tracing the convoluted mess of numbers in our checkbook to find the balance. Stopping now meant losing that train of thought. But, the excitement in her voice drew me to her.
"Look at this sunrise! Do you see the purple? Look at that pink! I love how the color goes from red to pink to orange to blue to purple, don't you? And, look over there! Do you see those clouds?"
On and on she went describing the sky, the clouds, and the unfolding landscape. My little six-year-old used words such as "vivid, subtle, and flowing." Where did she get those? Where did she get this eye for detail? This sense of wonder?
As a home schooling mom--when someone mentions something my children need to learn, I so often first focus on "What curriculum would teach that?" or "What book do I need to get?"
Yet again, my children are teaching me the most valuable lessons. This morning's lesson? Pay attention to your children. To cultivate a sense of wonder, of desire for beauty, of appreciating the treasures God lays at our door--we don't need a curriculum or book. I simply need to take interest when my daughter wants to describe something beautiful.
My interests tells her:
It would have been easy to refuse. Madly punching numbers into the calculator, I had reached midpoint of tracing the convoluted mess of numbers in our checkbook to find the balance. Stopping now meant losing that train of thought. But, the excitement in her voice drew me to her.
"Look at this sunrise! Do you see the purple? Look at that pink! I love how the color goes from red to pink to orange to blue to purple, don't you? And, look over there! Do you see those clouds?"
On and on she went describing the sky, the clouds, and the unfolding landscape. My little six-year-old used words such as "vivid, subtle, and flowing." Where did she get those? Where did she get this eye for detail? This sense of wonder?
As a home schooling mom--when someone mentions something my children need to learn, I so often first focus on "What curriculum would teach that?" or "What book do I need to get?"
Yet again, my children are teaching me the most valuable lessons. This morning's lesson? Pay attention to your children. To cultivate a sense of wonder, of desire for beauty, of appreciating the treasures God lays at our door--we don't need a curriculum or book. I simply need to take interest when my daughter wants to describe something beautiful.
My interests tells her:
- beauty matters--if I had kept to the bills when she wanted to describe the sky, lesson would have been that beauty matters far less than bills. My interest says, "It's worth putting away the bills to gaze upon beauty."
- your interests matter--by pulling away to come when she calls, I hope she learned that what matters to her matters to me. I pray that encourages her to follow and explore her interests.
- your expressions matter--her blossoming vocabulary gets its chance to shine when I listen. The longer I listened--the more eloquent and detailed she became. When children get to narrate what they see--they take more in. As they describe the details--the details take hold in their minds. This develops a mind for beauty that no book describing the rudiments of beauty can match.
This month’s topic: What do you think?
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