Learning from Collin

I had a moment today, amidst an otherwise lovely afternoon doing an impromptu art project with some homeschooling friends. Collin was beyond nap time (in hind sight, I probably should have rescheduled the project. Sorry, dear friends, for having to cut our date short).

Anyway, back to my moment: Here I am, practically doing Collin's project for him, while he ran around the room singing into a glue stick. All he wanted to do was sing and make music. All I wanted him to do was sit down with the rest of us and glue some pom poms onto his paper, darn it. I was getting frustrated. Why couldn't he just sit down and do this simple, enjoyable task? Why is it so hard for him to sit down and focus on anything, ever?

And then I started going to "The Bad Place," where I began silently criticising myself: why can't I just let him do the project, himself? Maybe he isn't interested in it, because I'm micromanaging the whole process.

And the thing is, I struck a cord with myself. I DO have a tendency to "Show him" instead of stepping back, and "Letting him. "  Collin is his own best teacher. Education is a self-made process. My job as his mother, his educator, is to set the stage for learning to happen naturally.

Could I get that tattooed to my forehead, or something? Because sometimes, it's really hard to remember.

Collin is not the kind of kid who will sit and do a project any longer than it takes him to get distracted by the cat sneezing across the room. And that's OK. Collin is loud and boisterous, and he likes to throw stuff and make things go boom. And that's OK, too. This homeschooling experience is about how to best serve Collin, not myself or my expectations. Maybe, instead of longing for him to sit and glue stuff when he really just wants to sing, I should instead SING with him. Put on a glue stick rock concert. Make every moment count.

Really, I'm just winging it, here. And that's OK.