Parenting Joyful Children
Life-Enhancing Reasons to Celebrate Spring with Your Kids
Joining children in identifying and celebrating the signs of spring can help kids develop life skills and protect them emotionally in difficult times.
When parents notice their children's natural joy over things like spring, and nurture it year after year, this helps turn that joy into something concrete, something that will be remembered. Then, as the years go by and life gets tough, spring will always be a reminder of hope, providing a way for one's children to experience joy even in the midst of difficulty. Overall, there are countless benefits to observing the signs of spring with children.
Observing Signs of Spring Helps Kids Develop Mastery and Life Skills
Helping children notice and celebrate the signs of spring is a wonderful way to help kids develop observation skills. Honing observation skills teaches focus, presence, and living in the moment. Observation skills make people better writers, scientists, and global citizens. Using these skills can shake children and parents alike out of the rut of day-to-day life.
Utilizing the power of observation can help kids get comfortable with their surroundings and feel as if they have some knowledge and mastery of their world. It can also help them develop and trust their intuition. The more they are aware of their surroundings the more they will be apt to notice if something is awry. Awareness gives kids information that can be useful and empowering.
Finding Signs of Spring Can Foster a Love of Learning
If parents and children together learn the names of the flowers and birds around them, this can give kids a sense of confidence about learning new things, and can nurture in them a love of learning. Connecting with nature and the world around them and knowing the names of things in it, can help them feel like they belong in this world - like they are a part of it.
Celebrating Spring Fosters “Natural Highs”
Affirming kids' natural instincts to get excited about the simple things can go a long way in a world of constant over-stimulation. It gives kids another frame of reference about what makes people happy. Focusing on nature can help kids get outside of themselves, it can teach them to experience “natural highs” so they don’t need to depend on artificial ones later on.
All of this creates concrete experiences children and parents can draw on and use in the future. When kids are feeling hopeless about a problem, parents can remind them, “Remember how excited we always were to see the signs of spring? Remember that no matter how difficult the winter was, there was always light at the end?”
How Like God is Spring?
Spring has always been a time of hope. Its virtues have been extolled by poets and songwriters since time immemorial. The creative have used spring as a metaphor for hope, second chances, certainty, healing and restoration.
The return of spring can be a metaphor for a child’s relationship with God. How like God is spring – it can be counted on, it is reliable as the sunrise, worth waiting for and filled with hope, possibility and second chances. Like spring, their God will never fail them. Spring can be a wonderful time to pray together, to thank the Creator for all that is new and hopeful in the world.
Kids won’t believe any of this if parents are simply preaching it. Parents can’t expect their children to do something they can’t do themselves. Now go forth: listen to the birds singing, see the flowers blooming, find your inner joy. Take the risk. Feel it. Live it. Share it. You and your kids will be glad you did.
