Lessons Learned

What is that saying about how all life's lessons can be learned when we're in Kindergarten? Watching my kids scrapbook helps me realize and remember some of those lessons.

First of all, they don't sit and look at pictures for 1/2 hour trying to decide how to layout the page. They also don't necessarily put pictures in chronological order... they just pick a cute photo and work with it. They don't stress-out if something is crooked, off-center or if the colors don't match. If they don't have something, they quickly compromise... an example being that they will draw a star if they don't have a star sticker or if they are spelling "birthday" with ABC stickers and don't have a "Y", they'll just draw the "Y" in to match the other letters.

Now there are some legitimate reasons that I do some of the things I do... I actually want to put my scrapbooks in chronological order, for example. But I can learn that if, for whatever reason, I need to put something that happened in May before something that happened in January, it's okay. That's what my pens are for.... to label! And honestly, there are sometimes when I'm too much of a perfectionist to use different colors and fonts of ABC letters to complete just one word.

But I love scrapbooking with my daughters, and watching the pure delight of what they're doing and the pride in which they show off every page. They're like that with all their art projects, so why should this be any different, right? It's a good reminder of how much we love ourselves and are proud of our every accomplishments when we're that age. No judging or fear of failure. No perfectionism or stress. Isn't that how we should approach everything we do?

There IS a lot we can learn from our kids.