Learning and Growing, However Old We Are! 4 Lessons We Can All Learn as a Family
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It’s important to remember that everything is a learning experience in life, especially for younger children. But we can take it for granted that we have done our part when it comes to educating our children. When our children are old enough to go to school, some may think that it’s the responsibility of the school to provide everything in terms of setting them up for life. But this is not the case at all. And yes, this can be a bit on the blinkered side, but when we have so much stress in our lives, we rely on the school to arm them with the tools we want our children to have. But the most important lessons that we can all learn in life are the one we learn as a family. And what are some of these lessons that we could all benefit from?
Learning Should Be Fun
If you are the type of parent that was not particularly good at school you may have a very unfair view towards the school system. We’ve all had bad teachers that put us off things for life. But if we are to really learn proper lessons in life and we want our children to learn certain things we have to remember learning shouldn’t always be about sitting down with our eyes in a book. While reading has a part to play, we’ve got to remember the overall concept of learning and finding the right stimuli.
From our perspective, it could be as simple as the fact that we struggled with reading for so long because we had the wrong books in school or we went undiagnosed with something like dyslexia, or very simply, we needed a pair of glasses like these. While there are things that we don’t want to learn, if we want our children to benefit from a wider variety of education outside of the classroom, we have to give them as many different learning opportunities as possible. It’s not just about one avenue like a book, but it’s about giving them the opportunity to learn about things in other ways; such as through educational shows, as well as opening them up to more experiences in life. Just take them anywhere you can get them curious. This is the key to learning anything. If you get your kids eternally curious about how things work, this will be the key to unlocking their learning potential.
The Importance of Play
When we tell our children to “go and play,” they may just go to one of their devices. But if you were a child that spent a lot of time in the woods or running around the park and you want your children to have this benefit as well, you’ve got to get involved! It’s a big lesson for us, as grown-ups, to learn. When we uncover how important playing is for our sense of self but also how we interact with our children, it can open us up to infinite possibilities. For many parents, playing is physically arduous. If you’ve got young children and you encourage your children to go and play, why don’t you go with them for five minutes?
Playing is all about getting creative. As we get older, we lose that creative spark. And our children gradually have it taken out of them through having to go to school and needing to be “more mature.” But you can very easily encourage your children to have common sense and be mature, but also have fun. If we don’t have fun in life, what is the point? The importance of play is invaluable for our children but also for our relationship with our children.
We Need to Do the Things That Make Us Happy
While there are arguments that you need to follow a certain path so you can be financially or emotionally stable when you are older, if you don’t ever follow your nose and try things that you want, you will only regret it. As we get older we may look back on the moments in our lives as children that we regretted not doing something and then see our children going through exactly the same set of emotions. And maybe we didn’t do these things because we had parents that told us not to, or there was some sort of obstacle that we were scared of, but the benefit of getting older and wiser means we should have taken the chance. But we have to remember that if we have children that are reticent to take these chances, we have to look at our own behaviour.
We need to set the right example for our children, and this means that if we are cautious individuals, our children will most likely be as well. So if you have things that you want to do in life that makes you happy, you need to do them as well, not just encourage your children to do them.
Why Should We Panic?
As grown-ups, we have the stresses of life thrown upon us every day, whether it’s financial problems, work stress, or even the small matter of a pandemic. But when we get overly stressed, it doesn’t achieve anything. As long as we know that in life we need to weigh the risk against the benefit and we are confident we are doing everything in our power to be secure, why should we panic about external things beyond our control? We can stress about little things but what does this achieve? Stress only serves to cause problems. People get ratty with each other, and when we get stressed, we take it out on our children. If they are young enough, they don’t understand why we are speaking to them in a certain way. And we only have ourselves to blame if our children turn into stressy people.
Learning to be calm, take a breath, and realise where panic is truly beneficial will help us. Ultimately, the fight-or-flight sensation is something that was built into us to escape mammals. It’s easy enough to say that we shouldn’t stress about things and we are all going to feel overwhelmed from time to time, but if we can regain the perspective that we can control the symptoms and also have the perspective that we may be panicking over something completely pointless, we will learn to live a better and happier life. When you are worried about paying a bill but your child wants to play, there is no need to blow your top. And ultimately, we all have problems in life, but it’s how we go about solving them will benefit our existence. If our children see us solving problems with a cool head, this will communicate to them that we are able to take things in our stride. We have to remember they have their own problems and we remember fully well what those problems were like for us. So we have to set that example.
Lessons that we learn as children can be just as beneficial as grown-ups. But when we make that transition from child to grown-up, things can get lost upon the way. We have to remember that as our children will learn from us the emotions and attitudes that they will take with them through life, we can learn exactly what we are teaching them just by observing. Taking the opportunities as a family to go through these things in life will give us a new-found perspective, but also going through these things as a family will serve to strengthen our bond. A strong family, mentally and emotionally, can weather any storm.
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