My big girls.  Savannah #1 and Sacred #2.  They have been raised in an environment where “being right” is not a goal.  Oh, please, don’t think we are making our choices because we think we are smarter than anyone!  We are as uncertain and worried as every parent.

But, an interesting experiment none-the-less!  Their dad doesn’t fit in, and instead of following the mainstream path, has found guidance and healing in a philosophy from eastern medicine called the five elements.

This different philosophy suggests that your ONLY job is to be the most amazing and UNIQUE YOU ever.  It suggests that you CANNOT fail, because you are the only YOU ever.  So the game is fixed!  You will certainly be the most amazing and unique you EVER, just from the lack of competition.

The five elements, which I call natural law, suggests that we have a powerful drive toward contribution and significance.  That need creates this very intense desire to be of VALUE to others, by offering our own weird-ness.

So far, this is an example of their weirdness.  Can you see the Value!?

They invented a game.  Each player is given a certain number of lines to create a picture.   They start at 10 lines, and the goal is getting a 3rd party to accurately identify what they intended.

The goal is to be the most comprehensible to others.  At each stage, the number of lines available decreases, so at some point, you only have ONE line to get someone to comprehend your message.

Mom and Dad are the contestants. They take us through 10 lines to 2 lines.  They found that at 1 line, there was not enough expression to be unique.  Playing by themselves, they both guessed pencil, so they decided to stop at 2 lines and tally the score.

Mom and Dad’s job was to identify the drawing as intended.  What message was their intention?  Was it a pencil or a dragon?  If we got it right, they got a point for conveying their intentions accurately.

Mom and Dad, having been raised in a structure of “being right,” thought the game was our ability to get it right.

Mom kicks Dads butt!   She is waaaay more “right” than Dad!  Butt they were wrong, not right!

The game is the ability to convey a message, and Sacred wins with simplicity.  Savannah thought about it too much and used too much complexity for Mom and Dad to understand what she meant.  Just a couple points less than Sacred and still better than ME.

As Mom was celebrating, because she did win our game of right-ness, our genius children announced that Sacred won.  She won, with the ability to convey a message with simplicity.

Mom and Dad weren’t even in the game.

And this, perhaps the greatest lesson of life…conveying a message with simplicity so that others can ‘understand it’ is what our (un)schooled children created as a game.  Practicing something Dad has struggled with all of his life.  They created a game to practice, for FUN!

Perhaps, as parents, we should stop talking long enough to hear the genius of children.

We have learned a great deal from our kiddos.  Including having Nature’s Calm for the fury of unfairness.  When our kids are anxious or can’t sleep, we offer them True Calm.  A gentle relaxation from Mother Nature that you can order from our online store.