Reading this next to a substack post by ParentData that shared research on sleep for children. One point was that sometimes activities and too many activities prevent good sleep practices in children. It is hard to let your child drop an activity. I have found it is especially hard it it is something you love seeing them do or something that you did (or wish you did as a child). As parents we need to support our children's choices and allow them to try our lots of activities as they are figuring out who THEY are.
I love this! I have noticed that my kids' creativity blossoms when they have down-time. I often wonder whether I should direct their efforts a bit toward practical life skills and productivity, but they get so happy and engaged in their own activities that I don't. With these well thought out and articulated, research based recommendations, I feel more justified in giving my kids the freedom to explore the activities that excite them, even when those activities are eccentric or unpractical. Case in point, my oldest child just taught herself to spin wool into yarn using a drop spindle she made from a YouTube tutorial. The yarn she makes is bumpy and difficult to crochet with, but she loves it and is exploring plying different color combinations. When will she EVER use this skill to make a living or contribute to world peace? Never. But she is so motivated that she reached out to one of my friends who raises goats to see about processing wool fiber and she rode her bike to the nearest hardware store to buy PVC pipe to make her own Knitty Knotty. Her interest delights me and I am even more delighted to realize that she is growing into herself as she explores this interest, laying the foundation for a happy life.
The things you get out of activity are also not always obvious while doing the activity or may even veer off from obvious goals.
I started Japanese my senior year in HS out of interest and stopped after a semester in college because the instruction in college was poor. Many thought it was a waste to take Japanese because I’d never reach full proficiency.
When I later worked in an archive, I deciphered indecipherable signatures on letters. Learning Japanese, I learned how the stroke order makes all the difference in making characters legible, not the picture of the characters. I was able to follow the strokes with my finger to figure out what letters the squiggles might originally have been. A weird skill!
20 years later, I took up Japanese again, because I missed doing things without a goal.
Reading this next to a substack post by ParentData that shared research on sleep for children. One point was that sometimes activities and too many activities prevent good sleep practices in children. It is hard to let your child drop an activity. I have found it is especially hard it it is something you love seeing them do or something that you did (or wish you did as a child). As parents we need to support our children's choices and allow them to try our lots of activities as they are figuring out who THEY are.
I love this! I have noticed that my kids' creativity blossoms when they have down-time. I often wonder whether I should direct their efforts a bit toward practical life skills and productivity, but they get so happy and engaged in their own activities that I don't. With these well thought out and articulated, research based recommendations, I feel more justified in giving my kids the freedom to explore the activities that excite them, even when those activities are eccentric or unpractical. Case in point, my oldest child just taught herself to spin wool into yarn using a drop spindle she made from a YouTube tutorial. The yarn she makes is bumpy and difficult to crochet with, but she loves it and is exploring plying different color combinations. When will she EVER use this skill to make a living or contribute to world peace? Never. But she is so motivated that she reached out to one of my friends who raises goats to see about processing wool fiber and she rode her bike to the nearest hardware store to buy PVC pipe to make her own Knitty Knotty. Her interest delights me and I am even more delighted to realize that she is growing into herself as she explores this interest, laying the foundation for a happy life.
The things you get out of activity are also not always obvious while doing the activity or may even veer off from obvious goals.
I started Japanese my senior year in HS out of interest and stopped after a semester in college because the instruction in college was poor. Many thought it was a waste to take Japanese because I’d never reach full proficiency.
When I later worked in an archive, I deciphered indecipherable signatures on letters. Learning Japanese, I learned how the stroke order makes all the difference in making characters legible, not the picture of the characters. I was able to follow the strokes with my finger to figure out what letters the squiggles might originally have been. A weird skill!
20 years later, I took up Japanese again, because I missed doing things without a goal.