The Key to Myself

So, now it's summer, and while my quilt repair biz keeps me busy enough, the costuming biz is pretty well on hiatus until the next season begins.  With the "extra" time, I've begun sorting and organizing closets.  It actually feels marvelous on the inward, emotional level.  It's great to jettison stuff and see how I'm moving on with Life.  It's great to feel a bit (every little bit helps) more in control of Everything.  And the walk down Memory Lane is really fun.

On our games shelf, I came across this little, ancient red box.  It's one of my childhood toys that I've kept for all this time.  I could spend hours upon hours with it.  It was a gift from my wonderful Uncle Ken who lived in England.  Once you take a look at it, you'll know exactly where I'm going with this post.  Go ahead, open the box.

It's kind of obvious, isn't it?  Hee, hee.  And so on..........

Coming from a pre-everything-is-plastic era, the pieces are wood.  They are lovely and smooth and make a delightful sound when they knock against one another.  I remember enjoying them via all these different senses.

There is a handy little slip of paper giving ideas for making pictures with the geometric pieces.

This bit of my Memory Lane superbly illustrates one of my pet topics lately, concerning raising kids.  One of Cindy Gaddis's talks at a homeschool conference focused on her observations of her 7 children. She began to see that their preschool and early elementary interests became academic choices in high school and college, and then lead right into their career decisions.

This has certainly proven true with both my kids, now 18 and 22.  And looking back at my own childhood, it's true for me, too.  I have always gravitated towards the arts, but no one ever helped me connect the dots, or suggested it as a career path.  

So I guess this is a plea to not discount the interests of the kids in your lives.  What they like to do may not look at all like scholastic subjects or career paths or have names of any sort.  But what look like random interests now may somehow, someday come together for them.  There's plenty of educational philosophy out there that supports the concept that self-motivated learning is the deepest and most meaningful learning.  Plus, the happiness and self-confidence that's generated can't be beat, and will apply to anything else they do in their future endeavors.

And yes, I am building my art career now.  But how different my path might have been had I gotten focused and credentialed right from the get-go.