The Most Important Thing for Young Children to Learn

I let Anya stay home from school today because she slept in her clothes and when I told her to put on clean clothes, she completely lost it. I sent her back to bed and told her I would not send her to school behaving that way. Then as I continued making lunches I had some thoughts about her and how to care for young children in general. I knew that I needed to allow her to stay home from school and to have her help me with the little kids and with the day's chores.

I thought that we, as a society, expect the wrong things from our little children. Instead of expecting them to behave themselves and to be kind and help at home, we expect them to go to school as if it was a full time job and then to come home and do homework and then to go to sports and music lessons and then to practice and then to go to bed, wake up and do it all over again. It's not that they shouldn't work hard and develop their talents, but they have their whole lives for that. Right now the most important thing for them to learn is how to behave. To do that they need less outside pressure and more time to interact, particularly with their family. 

So Anya took what I like to call a "mental health day" off from school. She spent relaxing time playing games with Joseph in the morning and then time tending the younger children while I deep cleaned the house.