A fungi on my flowers that I spent two hours helping to identify. Not my idea of a good time, but the minis were oh-so interested!
My open style of parenting can often come back to bite me in the ass.
No topic is off limits for my children. They LOVE to learn, understand, and know all the things. They have soooo many questions about anything and everything. It's how I wound up explaining sex to my four year old, why we watched the insurrection at the Capital and spoke openly about our feelings, and it's how my children know about (and respect) every religion and not just one. If they have a question, I do my best to answer it. If I don't know it, I admit it and look it up. I try my hardest not to give my own opinion unless I'm asked for it. All of this takes discipline, but it's really more of a lifestyle that anything. If they want to learn about something, we make the time for it. Lately, I've been encouraging them to look up their own questions and do their own research on topics. For the most part it works out great.
Of course, this has also led to some interesting conversations. Take, for example, a few weeks ago. The two youngest were watching the news and there was a report on former President Trump's second impeachment.
MM (Middle Mini): Have any other presidents ever been impeached?
Me: Yes.
MM: Which ones? Why? Did they do what Trump did?
Me: You should look this up. Start with looking for a list of which presidents were impeached and then look up why.
I obviously did not think this through because 20 minutes later the youngest mini comes downstairs from the upstairs homeschool room: "Mom, what's a blow job?" That was a fun conversation that led into an in-depth puberty discussion (yet again. We've had so many of those I've lost count).
Last week, we studied WW1 - WW2. My middle child has been greatly concerned by Hitler, how WW2 happened, and the overall events of WW2. As I was kissing them goodnight, he shot up out of bed and asked, "mom, do we still need to be worried about Germany?" We then stayed up an extra hour speaking about current world affairs and where the U.S. stands with other countries.
Then, there was the fungi we discovered growing on flowers I received for my birthday. I spent nearly two hours helping to identify which category our fungi would fit into and looking at it through the miscroscope. We finally wrapped up our lesson an hour past bedtime.
They may love learning or be excellent bedtime stallers. No matter what, I'll have some great stories to remind them of someday!