Along with joy and happiness, a yellow flower is thought to signify success and pride, which is all very symbolic of the kind of day my children had. The four of them might have been metaphorically throwing yellow flowers at me by lunchtime.
We accomplished absolutely nothing that I wanted to do. It was one of those days where my kids just weren’t interested in a word I had to say. Although I could have gotten offended, it wasn’t really in a rude way. They just had their own ideas about how they wanted to spend their time.
My daughter woke up before I did (and I wake up pretty early), showered, ate breakfast, then began working on a project for the next four hours. She could not be pulled away. This was a project that involved hours of research, planning, and her own money spent to even begin to execute. She cried tears of both frustration and happiness all within those four hours, and ran through a gamut of feelings like confidence and intimidation of the huge task she had undertaken. The boys were similar in that they spent their time being productive in their own pursuits.
We can never assume that standards need to be imposed upon children’s work because they are incapable of having their own. When children work on things that are meaningful to them, they develop their own set of values and standards, often ones that are higher than our own. Because the work is their work, we don’t have to “twist their arm” to do it. In general, they want the work to be the best that it can be.
Sometimes, this is at odds with what we want – maybe we don’t think their subject matter is interesting or “academic” enough, or maybe we think that they should have gone in a different direction – but that is not because the children do not have their own quality measures, or a vision for what they are trying to achieve.
