Encouraging [Adventures]

[Adventure 243]

We have a Pandemic Tree in our living room that's been up since early December 2020. It began as a Christmas Tree and has evolved into other things including a Birthday Tree and a Harry Potter Tree and a Pride Tree.

Our nearly sixteen year old decided on a theme for the tree for their birthday month, September. I searched online for appropriate decorations and decided, as I usually do, that we could make our own. I mentioned it to a couple of my children and they had all sorts of good ideas. I purchased the supplies for ornament making, realizing that the ornaments could also be pendants, earrings, and other sellable things. I had visions of what each could be and looked for ward with tinkering and experimenting and creating. 

Just hours after the supplies landed on our doorstep, two of my children absconded with them. They mixed and poured and experimented and decided on just the right combinations for the different designs. I was two days post-third dose of covid-19 vaccine and laying in bed in misery. I had to let go of my visions of what these things would be and encourage my children to create on their own. 

I was chatting with someone about this and used the word encourage...they asked if I meant "allow" seeing as I had a plan and bought supplies and now was allowing my children to do it instead. I suppose allow would work, if I had actual ownership of the project. My kids had just as many good ideas as I did. They had the ability and motivation to work on the project. Encourage seemed a better fit. 

Sometimes we plan an adventure and then for one reason or another can't go on that adventure when we'd like. Sometimes we need to then encourage the capable adventurers to go ahead and explore new horizons without us. They may not go the same places or do the same things, but then again, it's now their adventure. Their results may be different than what we had envisioned, but that doesn't mean they'll be any less fantastic.