Well, today was just one of those days.  I took the kids to music lessons.  I sat down with the two toddlers to play simple activities from their activity bag in an attempt to keep them quiet, and nothing worked.  They were anything but quiet.



Yeah, I know what you are thinking.  Her kids?  She just told us how well the activity bag worked to keep them quiet, and now she is telling us it didn’t work?  Well, what can I say?  It did not work today.

The two year old jumped across the room like a kangaroo.
The three year old argued over the puzzle she wanted even though the two year old or six year old had it first.
The two year old took his lacing activity and used it as a kite.  It consisted of two large buttons with multiple holes and a long shoe lace.  Only instead of it flying up high, it hit every chair and wall and person in its path.  He loved the sound it made as it banged into things.  Did I mention we were supposed to play quietly?
The three year old and six year old decided to color and fought over the 100 crayons in the bag.  Even if there were three or four of each color, they still wouldn’t share. 

And these kinds of problems continued to happen as quick as I could get one problem resolved.

I was exhasperated trying to keep them quiet today.  Nothing was working.  If anything, they got louder and louder as the minutes ticked by.


 
I decided I had to remove them from the false expectation that they could be quiet.  They just couldn’t be quiet today.

So I left the two older boys inside for the remainder of their lesson, let the six year old continue to color, and I brought the toddlers outside.

We turned our failure to be quiet into a success to jump, and play, and explore.



He must have done this fifty times before he tuckered out.  He just had this high level of energy and wanted to jump!  Could it be testosterone?  I don’t know, maybe. 



Stuff like this gets me thinking. 

Could this boundless energy that is not given the opportunity to express itself, be the trouble with our public school system that is plagued by an overwhelming amount of children on medications, because they can’t sit still or be quiet and do their school work?



On days like today, I am so glad I homeschool.  Kids sometimes just can’t sit still no matter how hard they try.  Especially toddlers, but also any early elementary child.  They need the freedom to wiggle, explore, and move about.  Homeschooling offers me the freedom to let them do just that.  If we have a day where we need to be flexible and change how we approach things, then we are free to do so.  I can take a deep breath,  breath out, and go with the flow.



Success or failure is all in how you look at a situation. 


Some questions to ask ourselves when things aren’t going quite the way we want:

    What expectations are we setting for our kids, and how do we help them be successful to meet our 
    expectations?  

    Are we willing to be flexible if our expectations are wrong? 

    Are we able to see an unmet need in a situation, and change our expectation, and 
    provide an opportunity for our children to succeed?