04/20/2022
I have taught my children a love of nature. To simply just be within nature. To enjoy all that is a part of nature. The peace within the quietness, the calm you feel while there, the safety they can feel within the world that’s been created for them. The beauty that surrounds them. The freedom and also the wild and free spirit they all have within them.
With guidance and love my children have learned to enjoy stillness. To just sit and listen to the birds or the winds rustle the leaves, as they lay in the grass eyes closed, sun on their faces. To enjoy looking to the clouds, as we determine what the clouds appear to be to us. They have learned to lay at night to stargaze in the grass, as we listen to peepers, toads, and at times coyotes. This is where they’d prefer to enjoy a good book.
I have taught my children to explore. They’ve grown up playing in a creek, having adventures and picnics in the woods, and building forts. During the summer there weren’t too many days where we weren’t traveling through the creek to explore, building a rock wall for swimming and the waterfall it’d create, swimming amongst dragonflies and butterflies, and they were taught at a young age how to skip a rock. Lunches were always packed for a picnic, and if we didn’t have them at the creek, we were having one while exploring the woods.
I have taught my children that it is okay to be dirty. It’s okay to make a mess and have fun while making it. They also learned, that yes through all the laughing and joy of mud pies, jumping through mud and splashing in puddles, we always cleaned up after. To play and dance in the rain is a must. Jumping in a pond with family or friends. Teach them that bugs or some critters can be quite cute. To find salamanders, frogs, or lightening bugs can be an adventure in itself. To feel everything. Not everything is enjoyable, but it can’t always be. To know how truly amazing it is, you have to know how sometimes it can be pretty rough. Feel the wind and the rain, while waiting for the sunshine and rainbows that follow. Listen to the birds and the water winding through the creek. Smell the flowers, as you run through a field.
Show them how to live a little free spirited or a lot. That it’s okay to be them or to just be. Go for walks, or let them run. Take it all in. Watch the wildlife. Their spirit, the beauty. Their is so much beauty in nature, in everything living, in our children, and within ourselves. Allow them to see yours and to see theirs as well.
You see, you are not just teaching them a love for nature, for life, but you are continually learning from them as they grow. To see them, to see beauty and love through their eyes. To see the world as they do. That’s life. Their our whole world that, we’ll forever carry within us.
Our children learn so much from us. Show them love, enjoy every moment with them, explore nature, be care free and a little wild and live life with them.