I Love Childhood
Our house was crawling with grandchildren over the weekend. It was wonderful. I don’t know how many times I have heard a grandparent say, “The nice thing about grandchildren is that you get to send them home.” I disagree. Bring ’em on! Let’s play! And, please, don’t hurry home! Stay, as long as you like.
And when I say, “Let’s play,” I mean it. Playing is good for every person of every age. For children, it’s a necessity, like air and water and food! Childhood is, among other things, a time to play.
One of the blessings of homeschooling is the opportunity for your children to have a childhood. We live in a world that pushes children to become adults way too soon. It’s easy to conform to that pattern. In fact, it’s hard not to conform.
God created childhood and adulthood. He wants us to grow up and be mature adults, but He also wants us always to keep the innocent heart of a child. There is a time to be a child and a time to be grown up. Homeschooling gives children an opportunity to do those things in the right order and for the right length of time.
Summer is a great time to celebrate each child’s childhood. It’s a great time to have unhurried hours to:
- Play catch
- Play tag (I played it with grandchildren on Sunday)
- Build a Lego® castle complex
- Play board games
- Put puzzles together
- Play kickball
- Swing
- Ride bikes
- Make mudpies
- Sing
- Play house
- Put on skits
- Play office
- Play house
- Write a story
- Blow bubbles
- Draw, cut, color, paint, create
- Dance
- Have a picture book marathon
- Pretend all kinds of things
Today my brother and I might feel a bit silly playing army with him as the soldier and me as the nurse. People might think we were weird if we stood in front of our parents’ dresser, doing the Mexican hat dance or the bunny hop.
Childhood is a time for all those things. Homeschooling gives children the best chance I know to enjoy them in abundance. And isn’t it wonderful that you don’t have to take your children anywhere to enjoy them?
In the midst of teaching his own son, Solomon made a brief statement about his childhood in the fourth chapter of Proverbs. I hope your tender children enjoy a summer of childhood. It’s okay to take pressure off of yourself so you can provide them with that opportunity.
When I was a son to my father,
Tender and the only son in the sight of my mother,
Then he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
Keep my commandments and live;
Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding!
Proverbs 4:3-5
When Zechariah described blessings in the city of Jerusalem, one of those blessings was children playing:
Thus says the Lord of hosts,
“Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem,
each man with his staff in his hand because of age.
And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls
playing in its streets.”
Zechariah 8:4-5