Making a Mess or Investigating?

You've just put all your child's toys away and your livingroom finally looks clean, you turn around for one minute and your child is pulling everything back out. Great. Well, in a way, yeah it is great. While having every single kleenex pulled out of the box or rubbing mud all over their legs may seem like a huge mess and hassle to you, stop and think about it from the child's perspective. What are they learning? Feeling? Thinking? What sound do the kleenexes makes as they are pulled out? What does the mud feel like squished in between their fingers? Adults take these experiences for granted, we rarely stop to smell the roses. But for a child, it is purely magical, especially if it is their first time experiencing mud.

If you rush a child through an activity, event or a simple walk you could be taking away great in-the-moment learning experiences from them. Yeah, you've seen a grasshopper before, no big deal, just keep walking by. But to a child who has never seen one they are a treasure needing to be explored. How do they walk? How high can they jump? Look at how big his eyes are! There are learning experiences everywhere, we just have to take the time to examine them. Science experiments can happen at any moment. You don't need to set up a whole lab with funny smelling chemicals. Just wandering through a field will do the trick! Flowers, bugs, animals, trees, sounds, etc. are waiting to be discovered if you take the time to explore.

So, yes, although it can be a little frustrating to have the entire contents of a drawer dumped out by your one year old, try to stop yourself from cleaning it up right away. Ask yourself what your child was experiencing as he was taking everything out. What was he interested in? Was it the dumping things out that was fun (cause, come on, admit it, throwing things around can be fun) or was he specifically trying to get something? Perhaps the sound of the drawer contents hitting your nice clean floor was what he was interested in.

Let your child rub mud all over her body, it'll come off with some water, and putting your laundry back into the basket after you already folded everything so nicely won't take more than 5 minutes. Instead of fretting about the mess, join her! See how much fun you can have together and what new things you can introduce to the experience.
Have fun!!!