Are you a person who has a need to follow step by step instructions? Do you read the manual from cover to cover and then maybe even one more time? All the while having a nagging feeling you just want things to be simple! Or do you ever feel like the walls are closing in on you and no matter how hard you try, they just keep getting tighter and closer? It can be a very similar feeling to claustrophobia and it isn’t a very nice place to be.
If you have any of these aforementioned characteristics, then this post is for you!
Guidelines can be a good thing when you use and interpret them as such G U I D E lines. They are not tall iron clad barriers to keep you running in a maze, concrete tunnels taking you from point A to point B, nor are they boxes that are meant to close you in.
I like to think of guidelines as soft, flexible and even permeable! They are there to help you, to perhaps lend you an idea or two and even give you a general scope of things. Guidelines are very useful for most of us, and if used as intended can propel us forward in our personal growth. But what if you take guidelines and start to close yourself into a box, will that help personal growth?
Guidelines can easily become our barriers in our life, career and homeschooling. Don’t stifle yourself or your family, crawl out of that tunnel and break open that box you let yourself be closed into. Break free and stretch your guidelines out of shape a little, then take a good look around. I bet you see smiles on your children’s faces and even your own.
Education of our children does have definite foundational work to it, but it also requires us to let go of that and just facilitate a passion of learning for them. Let them feel secure in their environment, let them have free time with books and toys, let their education guidelines flex a little; and please be there to celebrate it with them. They are going to feel such an excitement for what they learn on their own that they will share it with you one way or another be on alert for it. Whatever you do, do not box them in when they come to you to share their new discoveries just in the name of education. Enjoy their new found passion for whatever it may be and for what it is.
You may be wondering…What will they learn with this “free time”?
Well, they will learn many things and among them are self taught researching skills which will forever be retained knowledge. By allowing yourself to let go of strict guidelines and facilitate a time for your child(ren) to gather their own information to be proud of, you have created a positive independent learning experience.
Challenge yourself to break free a little and share with me the outcome in my Comment box below!
Most of all get out of that box, take a deep breathe and have fun!
What is 1 thing you do which is “outside the box”?
