Iveyrock

I have written a lot about our art projects, and I think it would be easy to get the impression that we only do art all day. While it is true that we do a good bit – at least something every day, some days much more – it isn’t the only thing we do around here. As school is starting up again, and I have been thinking about preschool, I have come back again to my main goals for my family.

I have several priorities for our time, access to art supplies being one of them. But even above the specific goals that I have, my over arching desire is that my kids have free time.

I want my kids to have time to just be kids. I feel like above almost anything else, this is a gift that they can never have again. Although there is a lot of pressure to teach kids very early, I am not worried that a lack of direct “teaching” at three or four will be an obstacle for my children later in life. When they are thirty, they will have learned to read, do basic math, tie their shoes. What I want for them right now is what they can never have at thirty – time to just be four. Time to just be two.

I want my kids to play in the backyard every day. I want them to get dirty. I want them to find out what happens when they fill that hole up with water. (A toad pops out! Who knew? We’ve been wondering what that hole was all year.) I want to be able to do art projects that get messy. I want time to say, “sure, we can read that book. And that one too.” I want them to use their muscles, and their senses, and their brains. I want them to invent and investigate. I want them to get bored, and find ways to fill up the boredom. I want them to learn that life is hard, but it is good, and it is worth living.

And writing it all down, it seems so straightforward. But the truth is, it’s hard. There are so many ways that our days get filled up with stuff. There are so many things that are good to do, that can very quickly add up, until there is no down time. It is sometimes hard to trust that my children won’t loose out because I am not sitting them down to teach them their letters or numbers. I know that my kids spend their time differently than some others their age, and it’s sometimes hard to believe that I am not holding them back.

But then I watch our days together, and I am again struck by the magic of just being a kid. I see how much they sink into their play, and how much they learn from it. As an adult, I fight for every minute that I am truly just living. I treasure their ability to be in the moment, and I want to protect it.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.