I love encouraging Lily to dream big. But sometimes I find myself dashing her hopes with my own limited thinking. My discouragement can be overt or subtle, but I make it a practice to check myself and make a conscious choice to be open to the wide expanse of whatever she\u2019s brewing up.
\nWhen Lily was just 18 months old, I told her we were going to a fair. She had only been to a country fair, so she assumed the city street fair would be packed with the kinds of animals we\u2019d seen at the country fair.
\n\u201cI\u2019m so excited. I get to see animals at the street fair!\u201d she beamed.
\n\u201cActually honey,\u201d I cautioned, \u201cthere aren\u2019t animals at the city fair. It\u2019s more like there are booths with fun things to buy or eat.\u201d
\nThen I caught myself. I really heard what I was saying. I realized I was being dismissive about her dream to see animals, so I adjusted my attitude.
\n\u201cLily, if there were animals at this fair, what would you most want to see?\u201d
\n\u201cI really want to see a rabbit!\u201d
\n\u201cWell I don\u2019t think it\u2019s likely we\u2019ll find a rabbit, but let\u2019s go to the city fair and see if we do.\u201d
\nAfter going one block into the city street fair we passed hordes of twenty-somethings with beers, pop music stations with free frisbees, and many give-aways, but no rabbit. But then on the next block guess what we saw? Right there in the middle of the city mayhem, stood a street magician with his trusty assistant, a live rabbit!
\nI swear, my jaw dropped. \u201cLily!!! You wanted a rabbit, and you manifested a rabbit! I never saw a rabbit at a city fair before. You are amazing.\u201d
\nLily cocked her head and smirked. \u201cYes, Mom. I just really wanted to see one, and so we did.\u201d
\nI am learning from Lily to be open-minded, especially when it comes to what we really want. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love encouraging Lily to dream big. But sometimes I find myself dashing her hopes with my own limited thinking. My discouragement can be overt or subtle, but I make it a practice to check myself and make a conscious choice to be open to the wide expanse of whatever she\u2019s brewing up. When Lily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}