The Flowers

Spring is slowly starting to unfold. One warm week spurred a growth of buds on our cherry tree that have been expectantly holding their breath, waiting for the temperature to be just right to commit to opening up. The daffodils have been delighting us with their sunny color for awhile now, and the tulips are still closed tight for the time being. It was just around Easter a few weeks ago when I found the first crocuses and snow drops while taking a walk with my youngest. My roses look as if they are unaware that spring is here and other wildflowers won’t arrive until summer.

The first spring I lived somewhere it snows I began pulling up every green thing that started coming up out of the ground. I didn’t realize how many plants here hibernate for winter, and I was surprised to realize later I had been pulling up daisies that I had assumed were unwanted weeds.

If only we could remember and trust that God patiently allows everything to bloom in its own timing. Children will not all be ready to bloom at the same time across the various subjects. Why would we treat our children as if they were all the same type of flower? One of the beauties of unschooling is allowing them space to grow as God made them.

In the Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner he briefly discusses the idea of multiple intelligences, where people do not fit on a spectrum upon a line of intelligence, but instead there are multiple types of intelligence and people have varying amounts of each different intelligences. We see this as a child might struggle in school, but excel in their ability to build and create, or a child who has a strong preference in math over reading. If you try to treat a cactus like a tomato plant, that cactus will quickly die. Our traditional schools focus on only some of these intelligences, while forgoing the others; valuing them as less desirable. It does not provide an ‘equal education’ for all, rather an education that favors those with specific intelligence that our school system has deemed more important.

What if, instead of treating each child as the same, we could celebrate the unique ways that God has made each of us? What if we allowed time for our children to develop their interests and skills in their own timing? It is good to spend time working on tasks and concepts that are difficult and challenging, but it would be exasperating if those are the areas where we expect them to spend the majority of their time. In reality we need to spend a portion of time working on things that are difficult, but the majority of our time should be spent learning to cultivate that which we love.

By allowing my children to have their interest motivate their learning, they have bloomed differently from each other. Instead of thinking of one as ‘smarter’ than another, they are able to each be good at what they put their effort into. One is becoming a piano player and reader, while another is excelling at soccer and logic games.

How much beauty is added to the world because God decided to make a world with a variety of food, ecosystems, and even flowers. It’s no surprise that He made people so different from each other. What would it look like to celebrate these differences instead of trying to grade our children on a single rubric?

…if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree , it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. -author unknown

Gardner, H. (2011). The Unschooled Mind. Perseus Books Group.