What have you learned from children?

What I learned from my very young nephew upon viewing a photo of my sister in her wedding dress comes from this statement: “I didn’t know that my mother was a princess!”

- Rules are not made to be broken.
– The greatest thing in this world is love.
– Forgiveness is better.
– Playing is actually an essential part of learning.
– Help people just for the sake of it.
– Stop worrying so much.
– Smile more.

To look at the world as if everything is new.

Stuff happens for no reason at all.

From my daughter, I have learned that seeing the world in shades of grey is a compromise adults make.

Also, I love and can relate to @Mimishu1995‘s answer.

The green ones taste better, unless they’re supposed to be red. This applies to crayons, vegetables and m&ms.

You never know when a circus is going to pop up in your life, and you better be ready to roll with it.

(Copied and pasted from a fb post of mine): Well, Jaden has a circus going on. We have this kid’s piano that plays beats and back ground music and lots of annoying things, and the batteries will NEVER die.
So suddenly I hear circus music coming from the stupid thing (which, after all these years, I didn’t even know it had) and the next thing I know…we have a wild panther, Jaden is the Lion Tamer of the panther and he’s the ring master, and a clown showed up out of nowhere, and all this circus music is going on. He told me I had to make some popcorn and he’s trying to charge me admission.

You have no idea how hard it is to make a clown face with food coloring on a 9 month old clown and the clown is doing acrobats as I’m trying to paint it. And I’m supposed to PAY for all this?

Well, we decided to settle on English muffins rather than popcorn for the circus because the clown could choke on popcorn.

If you follow the trail of “why?” long enough, it eventually leads you to “that’s just the way it is”.

@thorninmud Conversely, “That’s just the way it is” is what we say when we no longer have an intelligent answer to the question “Why?”

Every answer can spawn another “Why?” What children remind us is that “That’s just the way it is” is a cop-out. The current limit of our knowledge shouldn’t be the limit of our questioning.

That doing the same jigsaw puzzle twenty times can be fun

That if the child can read “the,” “and,” “fair,” “frog” and “lemonade,” you can take turns reading out loud to one another.

That there are never enough frogs and garter snakes around the pond.

That chocolate ice cream needs to be eaten visually, with traces left on nose, chin, cheeks, and forehead. That photos need to be taken of this.

Great answers.

My kids are certainly my teachers. They remind me of things that I already know, but have forgotten.
– The “why” questions, as @thorninmud mentions, are invaluable.
– They remind me that things don’t have to be for anything. What I see when I look at a plate is a platform for my food. My kids seem to be much more open to possibility.
– Make-believe play: pretending to be someone else and running around with flowers in my hair instead of loading the dishwasher is a fast way to destroy the view that we should be doing something – at that we are someone – at a particular moment.
– Their relationship with time forces me to look at my own.
– Telling stories of our past to children is a lesson in just how many stories we tell ourselves. Their innocent questioning can peal away any bullsh*t pretty quickly.
– What they find fascinating or uninteresting is never what I expect. They can find – and articulate – beauty in what seems like the most mundane.

It doesn’t stop. It’s just an endless series of reminders that in many ways, my children have a better grasp of it all.

@gailcalled “Frog and Toad” books are the BEST!! I just love those stories! I taught a 4th grader, who couldn’t read, how to read using those books. The words were simple but the stories were hilarious. I’ll never forget when that sunk in to this particular kid. He read a funny line to me…stopped, read it again, then looked up at me with the biggest grin! I knew I had him at that moment. So exciting.

Super answers @hominid. Everyone!

That a book is just as enjoyable the twentieth time it’s read in a row as the first time.

left foot left foot left foot Right. Feet in the morning, feet at night

Mary Poppins can be watched 20 times a day.

The importance and value of people, things and routines that are familiar.

That I am a fantastic dad, enough said.

That they listen far more to what you do than what you say.

They know a whole lot more about what’s really going on than we usually give them credit for.

To pause during the day. To move without motive, just for the fun of it. To giggle, to go on adventures, and to be brave.