Wordy Wednesday on a Thursday...

It's been that kind of week, where I am a day behind everything! How is your week going? How was your Hanukkah/Solstice/Christmas/Kwanzzaa this year?

I've been sitting here in front of my laptop since Tuesday feeling all sorts of pressure to come up with something witty and inspiring for our last Wordy Wednesday of the year. It's Wordy Wednesday and I am at a loss for words.

Ironic really, isn't it?

I can't say that this post will necessarily be inspiring or witty but I'll open up and share with you one of my struggles this past fall if you are willing to listen, and I'll also share with you the one special word I am reminding myself of on daily basis. :o)

One of the things I have grappled with the last few months is our homeschooling journey. Since September our life has been a gong show and 'school' has been put on the back burner. It's not to say that learning isn't happening (because as far as I am concerned humans, especially children, are learning and growing all the time) but for this first year we have aligned with a few subjects so we are responsible to have something to show to our school board by next week. Think workbooks and the like.

We made it through Christmas, the first Chrismtas without my brother and my mom and I feel that I have turned a corner in my grieving process, which is good (that corner sooooo needed to be turned but I also was aware enough that I couldn't force it, I just had to go with it...). We are settled into our new house and I finally am getting a grip on my 'new normal' and coming out of that fog that can have one so entrenched after major life changes such as we have been through.

All of a sudden the fogginess lifted this week from my aura and psyche and I 'woke up' to look around at my life and saw that my house is chaos, my kids are chaos, which means that me and my hubby feel like we are in chaos and I especially feel like I am running to catch a fast moving train so I can get all caught up on everthing in my life, as of like, yesterday. I'm an Aries, when I decide things need to be done, I decide they need to be done, as of like...well... yesterday. :Þ

The one thing I need to get a grip on is how I am helping my children learn. I don't want to use the word 'teach' because I don't want to teach them per se, I want to help them grow and learn. I want to be a facilitator in their learning process. As a mother I am naturally a teacher yes and that comes with the job description of parenthood.

However, I realize that I never 'taught' my children to walk. I walk, my husband walks, all the people around them that are bigger and older etc walk, so naturally they learn to walk. No one has to teach them. They just learn. On their own. When they show interest yes we help them, but no one is sitting their child down and introducing official lessons on how to walk. The same goes for talking. We don't teach our children to talk, we help them with sounds and words as that part of them is developing, but the learning is their own process and of their own volition.

It is an inate natural human desire that is rooted deep within us to learn. To grow. To explore. To create. To discover.

This week when I saw the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and then actually got through that foggy tunnel that grief can envelope you in, I remembered one of my homeschooling mantra's that I told myself as I started this journey:

Trust your children.

And I mean really truly trust them when it comes to what and especially how they learn.

Trust that they want to explore. Trust that they want to grow. Trust that they want to create. Trust that they want to discover.

And just as importantly:

Trust that you can trust yourself to trust your children and help them grow in any direction they want to go in.

The key word is TRUST.

It seems so simple really, but it is so much easier said than done.

There is a secret I have found to helping them do that, but for now I am going to let you all chew on that for a bit. I'll post my little secret to the trusting process this weekend for our Friday Finds, which following the trend for the past few days will be a day or so late, because well it's just been that kind of a week. :D We'll get back to our regular schedule next week. ;o)

Have a wonderful New Year's Eve!

With love and light, ♥