As kids, my big brother and I were always building camps or climbing the plant racks in our parents agricultural company. Children love to mimic whatever their parents are doing from a young age. So my brother and I expressed that in being active and discovering the world our parents worked in daily from early morning till dark.
Often I felt growing up in a company was a bit odd. My parents didn't have a lot of time to play with us or to take us to different extracurricular activities outside school. I sometimes still think about how much I wanted to learn horseback riding as a young girl. Now, being an adult, I better see the benefits that this upbringing gave us. Starting from a very young age, our parents gave us the trust to go out in the world and discover ourselves, our strengths and our weaknesses. We were allowed to climb, discover and test our own boundaries, with our parents available in the background, to reach out when needed.
These days, being recently married myself, I start dreaming of my own family. My husband and I were reading about parenting and the psychology of raising emotionally healthy and stable children. One day, I came to the sudden realization that I want to give our future children similar high-activity and play filled childhoods like I got as a child myself. Like being able to play outside and observe the wonders of nature from close by, climb and crawl over and on all things their heart desires discovering, ... It is always a challenge and an adventure to start your own family and there will always be countless uncertainties in life. What I do want to be a certainty, is access to play based learning and promoting curiosity for the world.