Childhood

Exactly What Summer Should Be

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Summer is in full swing in the Midwest.  We are entering our 5th day of 90+ degree weather and the kids are quickly learning to keep themselves busy in this heat.  When I think about my house and how much I would love to move to a newer home–one that isn’t a brick oven and wasn’t built during the depression, I think about my kids and our neighbors.  The houses on either side of us are filled with children of the same age groups as my kids.  They play together constantly–ride bikes in the alley, play imaginative games in our connected city front yards, eat treats from the ice cream man, argue and problem solve.  I watch them and I think about how awesome my childhood was–full of summer friends and playing outside all day long.

I watch the kids and think this is exactly what summer should be and that my decisions need to be about what is best for my kids and our little brick city house is just right for now.

Let Kids Be Kids

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

We went to story-time today at one of our local Borders stores.  I am not a big fan of story time, because quite frankly my toddler cannot sit that long and he has the attention span equal to the life span of a gnat–about 33 seconds.  So being in a confined space surrounded by shiny objects that do nothing but distract with a bunch of other highly distracted kids isn’t my idea of family fun.  But to Minnow’s credit, he did a really good job.  He flirted with another little girl in our mom’s group and looked at the book being read. 

After story-time, the kids made a little bear.  They colored, etc.  Minnow was coloring (well not really coloring–he was drawing with a small golf pencil).  He was standing next to a set of sisters and the girls mother was standing behind them commenting on their coloring.  Her one daughter–I’d say she was about 3–was starting to color outside of the lines.  The mother pointed to the color outside of the line and told her to watch what she was doing and then preceded to tell her to look at how good her sister was doing. 

I felt really sorry for the little girl.  The tone the mother used was not one of jest but of pure seriousness.  Really, kids can’t color outside of the lines?  Kids can’t work it out for themselves?  Kids can’t explore and take risks?  Kids can’t be creative?  Do we really start to indoctrinate our kids that there are rules and lines in life that should not be crossed?  I hope to let my son color outside of the lines–at this point I haven’t even really given him lines to draw in. 

Let the child explore and try and color outside of the lines to test the waters.  Let them stretch their wings and see what they hit. 

How do you encourage your child to stretch their wings and color outside of the lines?