Today my 7-year-old boy ran with a new playmate, who was shouting gleefully, "Come on, let's go on our adventure!". They clicked on their life vests, splashed through the water, grabbed their colorful kid-size kayaks, and pushed off, heading out to explore.
We have been camping for a few months on this beach, not able to travel due to the pandemic. My son knew the water, but I casually lingered along the shoreline, keeping an eye on their safety. I was cautious to not interfere. The boys were gone for over an hour, venturing out into the bay, and far up the side eddy, all the way to the bridge.
They came back full of stories about big fish, shady trees, scary rocks, and deep waters. They were beaming, all proud smiles and sun-kissed skin, radiant with energy.
I love these special moments when life offers picture-perfect adventures that end well. But the reality is, not all our adventures are picture-perfect, and many do not end well. There are plenty of wet clothes, scraped knees, and hurt feelings when my kids come in from their exploits. But after the tears are dried, and the knees are patched, the valuable lessons learned slowly emerge for both parent and child. These lessons are about taking risks, about earning trust, about finding compromise, about creating friendship, and about learning skills. To me, this is the best way to raise resilient and capable human beings.
For most children today, the activities are tightly scheduled and continuously supervised. Free-play often gets suffocated between the demands of school, music, sports, and playdates. As parents, we have concerns about the safety of our children, they cannot roam the neighborhood as we did at their age.
It took about 3 months for my family to start living freely, once we travel-schooled. Our "suburban life conditioning" was powerful, the children always asked about their schedules and what to do next. As I learned to relax the reigns, they discovered that genuine fun starts immediately beyond the word "bored." During the last two years, I got to watch them at free play. I got a better understanding of the four essential clusters of growth that happen when we let them have their own adventures: intellectual growth, social growth, emotional growth, and physical growth.
And on this sunny beach today, as I invested an hour in observing my boy from a distance, my heart was singing. I witnessed all three indicators that his free play adventure was, in fact, a profound life lesson: choice, wonder, and delight.
About the author:
Born and raised in Europe, Insa is a world-schooling mom of three, a polyglot nomad, and a life coach. After decades of working for global corporations, she now explores the surprising revelations of a life adrift. She blogs on Kids on Walkabout.