Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Last month, I introduced our 7.5yo Anya to hand-sewing for the first time.

Yes, with real needle and thread.

We used felt, I cut out the shape, she sewed the sides, we filled it with some polyester fibre balls (taken from the inside of a ripped IKEA pillow =). And we used UHU glue to stick on the initial.

She gave it to her class form teacher as a year-end thank you gift (which I thought was nice of her =)

Now.

When Anya was onto her second sewing project, Vai asked if he could give it a go too.

Umm, you see … our 5yo Vai is the silly and active type. I frankly didn’t know if he could even concentrate long enough (or be careful enough) to get some sewing done.

I let him give it a try though. Just to be fair.

And you know what?

I was nicely surprised to see that he could!

He concentrated, he was careful, he got his fingers slightly pricked but he continued on.

I was amazed!

Totally didn’t expect him to be able to do any hand-sewing project at the age of 5yo!

He didn’t complete sewing all sides of the rectangle in the end. And his lines were all crooked. BUT, it was totally fine by me!

To me, the learning process is FAR more important than the result.

Anyway, he can always give it a go again when he feels like it.

And if as an adult he later knows how to do a simple fix and sew his button back onto his shirt, that’s good enough, I thought! =)

(IF he could do more, I’m sure whoever is his future wife will most likely appreciate it =)

…

You know, this incident reminds me how moms too continually discover new aspects in their kids’ lives.

That these little ones CAN surprise us and accomplish something that we initially assume they cannot do (just as long as we help, guide and expose them to a variety of positive things in life)

…

As for the kids themselves, well, at this point, I think through these hand-sewing experiences, they get to discover for themselves:

– the many efforts involved in the making process of something
– and, the joy of making something personalised FOR someone else

Jia You! =)

…

PS: Voting for Nuffnang Asia Pacific Blog Awards is still open till this Sunday, 27 November. It’ll be awesome if you can spare a minute or two to vote for Our Everyday Things, under Best Parenting Blog category =)

Voting is allowed every two hours, everyday. Thanks heaps, all!

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