With Valentine’s coming round the bin it keep invisioning myself as a little girl doing “He loves me, he loves me not” and how I had absolutly no idea what I was doing. But I thought how easier my life is getting all because I’ve seen a path before me that works for our family & most importantly all our children. Since we have REALLY incoporated Montessori into our lives vs unschooling things have gotten easier, more simplified.
When I was unschooling I would find stuff that I thought attracted this part of the kids learning or that…or Rhea was reading about Mermaids & Tyler was reading about designing a space station so I bought some books and of course a few activites that mixed in with them. So I have all these different things that were never used because it was momentary or because I wanted to be ready if it grew bigger/more indepth. (I actually have a dinosaur robot I bought at a garage sale of a Robotics Engineer when Tyler was only 3 years old & was really into dinos…after all it was a great deal & he might still be into dinos come college! 😉 I knew we’d use it some day..but…with space, storage, moving, organizing & such that great deal has probally grown into a few hundred dollars just in time dealt with it.) But, I have actual textbooks for science, chemistry, language arts…blah, blah, blah… All for ‘when the time came’ if ‘the kids had an interest’……
And, while I’m an amazing deal finder I’ve kept all this stuff for YEARS & probally would have kept it if we hadn’t found out about the sensory issues. When we jumped in with both feet when we saw how it was so helpful with all the kids I actually thought…more stuff…I know Ben thought…more !#@@#$@#^$^&$#%@#$#@$%@#$ stuff (dude that’s scary cause it made a link…yeah…don’t click on that!) But it’s made for less stuff. It’s opened up a mental door I had blocked by all the books, activities, great ideas, games, etc. It’s enabled me to let go of all these things that aren’t working for our family & me. I’m so less stressed & we’re buying another house & our buyers recently walked out on us…and I’m still more relaxed.
Knowing I’ve a plan that WORKS for us is so freeing. Knowing the kids are growing, learning, self esteem is improving, love is growing, frustration is dissipating, and anger is losing its’ hold. Now, yes, a lot of it is finally finding out why Tyler thinks/does what he does & why but we’ve known for a year & a half & we’ve only been ‘really’ Montessori for about …well late Spring, early Summer. That’s not a lot of time. But there’s been a lot of growth…letting go…& grabing hold of what is really good.
You know…stuff can distract you. It can help you ignore what you can’t fix. It can help protect your mind ’cause you don’t even know there is something wrong yet…but the day when you can finally crash through & see a problem, fix a problem & grow strong…well it’s just amazing. It’s a wonderful life when you can go through life saying…”I love it…I love it not”…and you remove the “love it nots”. Here soon…all I’ll hear as I walk through my life is “I love it…I love it…It loves me”
Simplified living at its’ best is being surrounded by who you love, what you love, & those that love you.
Honey
I couldn’t agree more–especially now with summer upon us, dad working full time, and mom (me!) at home with the 8 kids! I need a workable plan!
I hear you. Sometimes it’s nice to just look over and know you’ve got tomorrow and the next few days handled with a plan.
~Honey