Learning

One of the great benefits of teaching your own children, is the opportunity to learn all over again. Perhaps these bits of information have been hiding dormant in ones' brain for decades, or they were facts that quickly blew in and out during childhood. And perhaps, they were never brought up at all.
Our favorite thing to do at our house is to simply study. Without even opening a book, or seeking outside wisdom, we can discover an abundance of knowledge by quieting our lips and looking and listening to the world around us. The way a spider spins her web, the burrowing of bees in our rock wall, how gravity holds us to the earth, words that sound the same, the changing of the seasons. We don't need someone else to tell us how these occur. We have ample opportunities to discover all of this ourselves. And boy is it so much more interesting when you are that explorer, discovering the world for the first time on your own. A two dimensional picture and flat textbook cannot do justice to the actual thing.
I find this is not only true to school learning, but also with parenting. Often times we rely so heavily on what this book says, or what that wise leader suggests, we often forget to discover, on our own, how to parent our children. As many books as I've read on parenting, all that knowledge is worthless if I cannot put it into practice; if I cannot apply it to my own child in a real situation. Discovering how to make your words mean something to a toddler in a real situation will stick with you far better than a statement written in a book. Instead of studying books on parenting, I find it works better when I study what I'm actually parenting. When I quiet my lips, and look and listen to the world around me, I find that all the knowledge I need for parenting is right there - inside me, right in front of me. It was there all the time, I just couldn't find it for all the books that had been stacked on top.