Learning and Growing

I have this little pouch of parenting quotes. I use it as my breath when I'm at the end of my rope. As I count to ten, I reach in and pull out a little tidbit of wisdom that will hopefully keep me together as I, like many of you, struggle to be both human and adult in my child's world.

Today, Erin was finishing up her volcano unit. Understand that Erin has already made a model of Hawaii by tracing an elevation map and cutting that out in layers of cardboard and gluing it together then painting it, made paintings of different plate boundaries (convergent, divergent, transform), a volcano model to put vinegar and baking soda in, done coloring pages, and read tons of books on this subject. It is amazing what she has done, truly. But today she had to finish one thing to give to someone to complete the project and she just wasn't into it. Didn't want to do it. But she had to if she wanted to give it to this particular person. I did not want to nag her about it and I didn't want to force it, but I also didn't want her to go back on her word. I wasn't sure how to help. Finally we decided that we could print out some things and she could use some ready-made stuff and it would be finished faster. I was feeling disappointed because it wasn't really her best effort, but I reached into the bag and pulled out, "Be patient...your child is still learning and growing."

Erin is not yet 7. She has done some amazing stuff this year and worked really hard on many projects. She built a model of Hawaii, for crying out loud! I took a deep breath and let it out. So what if this one thing isn't exactly the way we had envisioned it. She is still learning and growing...and I'm being patient.

(Oh, and next week?? She wants to build a model of DNA. I'm not kidding!)