Beech Tree News Network

NOT PERMITTED:  Oh boy, time, there is never enough of it is it? How does it sneak past us, so quickly and easily? At the Kinkade household our eldest has been buying towels, welcome mats, bedroom furniture and the like, in preparation for moving into a place other than the family home she has known all her life and the youngest member of our clan, just reached the milestone of receiving a permit, which lets him legally operate a motor vehicle, with some restrictions.

He received his permit relatively easily with only a modicum of study required, now it will be mainly up to me (his mother is not interested in taking up the task) to give him some actual hands on training, in safely interacting with everyone else on the roadways, before he gets his actual license. I do not know if I am ready for all this, they are still babies in my eyes but ready or not, here comes life.

Like I said, our son received his permit after only a few hours studying in advance. He is not real big on the whole studying thing, he believes learning should come more naturally. Although I agree with him about making learning more natural, I do put a bit more emphasis on the need for study and though he does not do bad in school, I think he could be a top level student with a little hard work.

This week our son is actually away from home, spending the weekdays in a college program which is designed to both prepare and encourage him to pursue education past the high school level. He will only be home with the rest of his family on the weekends, for the next five or six weeks, if everything goes as planned. If his elder sibling moves out while he is away, it will seem awfully quiet and perhaps a little lonely, around our home for a while.

One of the reasons that I personally, kind of encouraged him to participate in the program, is the hope that it will instill a greater appreciation for the need to study, along with the fact that he will have the opportunity to see and experience a lot of things that he otherwise wouldn't be able to, if he was just spending the summer at home.

There are some things that have us just a little concerned though. We are more than a tad worried that too many rules and restrictions and academic pressure, may ruin the whole experience for him. I understand the need for some rules and restrictions, you want to keep the young men and ladies safe. No one needs to be abducted while in the programs care, or come up missing, or pregnant and there needs to be absolutely no instances of violence but you can go overboard in a zeal to keep them safe. Despite them still being babies in our eyes, they are actually approaching adulthood; acknowledge that.

I also know that the main focus of the program is academics but this is a volunteer program, they are not there because they are doing poorly, our son for example, is a solid- B student and they are not in any trouble with the law, they are just there because they are curious about their future and the world and want to explore it.

The other day our eldest child took me to campus in order to drop off a cell phone for her younger sibling and she even made a remark about the closeness to a correctional facility in their rules and guidelines, instead of a place of encouragement. Our daughter has always seen learning from that perspective somewhat, she believes it should be more about encouragement than adherence to strict rules. She even slowly withdrew from a youth program several years ago because they had us sign a pledge about adhering to a list of strict “policies,” in her words, “it should be about learning by having fun and building relationships.” I should have took a stand and refused to sign it, but I did, and regretted that decision for a long while afterwards. In that respect she is a lot like me, even though not nearly as right-brained oriented as me, or even her brother, but we see things a lot alike in that regard.

On that same trip we got to discussing a timber frame home (my favorite kind) I saw in a magazine that day, built right in that county we were in, on a golf course. She asked me if I won the lottery if I would try to buy it and I told her no, I would likely build my own, just the way I wanted it (as long as her mother agreed.) She asked about what happened to buying a “fixer upper.” You see I have always emphasized to her that a fixer upper could get her a lot more home for her buck, because renovation is a lot cheaper than putting it all in brand new. I guess our children listen more than they let on. They both have picked up on learning being about sparking curiosity and having fun, from my personal philosophy and about rules being unnecessary, when respect and love are adhered to.

You see, we have to give fun more authority in our lives and I don't mean just being lazy and doing anything we please. Work and fun are partners, not the adversaries so many believe them to be. Life is not about following rules, or laws, or commandments, just in order to stay out of trouble. Life is about listening to what makes your heart beat a little faster. Life is about aligning yourself with purpose, out of real respect and love for ourselves and those around us. That is how we were designed from the start and what we are meant for.