becoming educated

I think that every moment as a parent is a teaching moment. That's quite different from what i used to think parenting would be like.....so long ago.

Before I had kids, before i was married, before i was even out of high school i used to worry....i worried that i would be a terrible mother. No this is not a lure for compliments or anything of the sort...it's the honest to goodness truth. I tend to worry about things that are no where near reality in my life and in high school i worried about if i could ever handle being responsible for a child. I had no boyfriend, there was no chance of my having a child for years and years but still the idea of being responsible for the education of another human being from day one....was just, scary. I suppose it was a weird thing for a teenage to worry about, but maybe if more did there would be less babies born to high school moms LOL. But truly the thought of making sure that this little person knew everything they needed to before kindergarten really seemed so scary, how could you fit in everything they needed to know, and how....how would you even go about doing it?

Fast Forward......it's been a good 15 years since then (not that i'm giving away my age or anything haha) and i've discovered the key.....making every moment a teaching moment. Proof is my two year old, and how did she get so smart? I'd love to take the credit truly i would....but it's my 5 and 6 year olds who have been her teachers. Everytime katie doesn't know how to do something her big sisters jump at the chance to teach her. It came instinctively with my first child to want to show and teach her everything because she was my only one and it was somewhat easy....but when you have 5, those teaching moments aren't always so easy to come by.....unless you look a little closer. Katie held up a big pink eraser and asked aloud to anyone who would listen "what's this?" The answer could simply be...."eraser" , but then there is a moment while her brain is open to the answer where you can put more in there than the simplest answer. I told her it was a pink eraser, and that is was a rectangle. She rolled that word around in her mouth several times before it came back out right. That was yesterday.

Today while i was changing a baby diaper katie came up with a stack of blocks and proudly pronounced...."Look mommy, it's a rectangle....and I made it!" Amazing how one little answer to a question sent her on a quest today to find more ways to understand what she had learned.

A mind is an amazing thing, it's like the more you learn the more you can learn....if my strange mind makes sense to anyone else. I mean our brains are a muscle and if you exersize the muscle it becomes stronger and then can be worked even harder. Sometimes as a mom i worry that i'm not exersizing my mind enough (as is apparent by my unapologetic misuse of capitalization and often puncuation) and i don't want it to wither and waste away from the extensive amount of knowledge it once held. So for my mental workouts i'm finding new ways to make learning fun for my kids.....new ways to make every moment a teaching moment. I've also started collecting math and science books, there's something so interesting about relearning something as an adult that as a child i don't think i appreciated enough. I find myself reading math books for fun, and ok so i know that's weird, but it feels so invigorating!

The missionaries commented on my collection of math books the other day when they were here for dinner. I don't quite have an explanation, except to say that learning is such an amazing thing, whether it's learning something new for yourself, or relearning something you once knew or helping someone else learn for the first time simply because you can.....learning is a wonderful thing. An amazing blessing it is to be able to learn anytime we want, i learned how to do braided extension corn rows on my black daughter's hair...from youtube . I taught my 6 year old how to play UNO and the 5 year old caught on just from watching. My 2 year old knows all her shapes and colors and most numbers and sometimes i'm not sure what else until it just pops out of her little mouth. My little Catcher is learning to crawl and is so proud of each inch closer he gets to his goal. Darla is learning to smile. Every age has something to teach us.....what did you learn today?