If you ask a class full of Kindergarten students, “How many of you can draw?”, they will all raise their hands.  If you ask the same question to a 7th grade class, you may get one or two affirmative responses.  If everyone could draw at 5 years old, why are they unable to draw at 12 [...]

If you ask tweens this question, they’re likely to hesitate before they answer.  Most tweens don’t measure their daily experiences in terms of beauty.  If an answer does surface, chances are, it will entail a description of a flower, a rainbow, a cloud, or some other object that encompasses a child’s primitive definition of beauty. [...]

Adults have the ugly habit of casting  predictions on a child’s future.  They playfully ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, without intending to give any merit to the answer.  Why would they?  We all know from our own experience as children that it’s just a rhetorical question. When we’re not asking [...]

Daylillies are my favorite flower.  Not because I like how they look.  It’s their resiliency that I admire most.  You just can’t kill them!  For a brown thumb like me, that’s an important quality in a flower.  The first time I tried to divide a mass of daylillies in my yard, I had to bludgeon the [...]

      I asked this question to my tween son in an attempt to relate to his current interests.  My reward for asking was more valuable than I could have guessed. His reply was, “Hans Solo, Chewbacca, or Yoda.”  The explanation for his choices was that all three characters were “laid back.”  BINGO!  My son was recognizing [...]