I was telling my eldest daughter Caity (nearly 11) that we constantly learn from children. On further reflection and continuing our learning process on working and developing our strengths , I realised a very valuable lesson from my youngest daughter, Kerryn (aged 9). 

Kerryn is a petite, girly girl who loves all things pretty, pink, sparkly, fluffy and delicate. For a while now, though, she has been telling  me that she is going to be a drummer when she “gets big”. I haven’t really been taking it all that seriously, (but did use it to persuade her to save her pocket-money ” for drums” instead of simply spending it).

My mom, the very clever lady, decided that she was going to give Kerryn 2 drum lessons for her birthday. So the day of the lesson arrives. Bryan the tutor is initially confused, expecting Caity (cargo pants, big scruffy T-shirt and hair scraped back into a messy ponytail) to be his pupil, not Kerryn. He warns us that the lessons are quite exhausting so perhaps we should arrive early to fetch her.

As it happens we arrived on time, expecting her to have stopped playing a while ago. Not Kerryn!!! She is banging away, going full tilt. Bryan comes out of the sound room barely containing his excitment. Kerryn is a natural. She mastered in the first 20 minutes of her lesson what it normally takes a kid of 12, 3 to 4 lessons to learn. She, it seems, carries a metronome in her head. But the defing moment for me was when Kerryn showed us what she had learned. For the first time in her life, I saw the real Kerryn. She was not somebody’s, daughter, somebody’s sister, a struggling learner, an indifferent sportsman. She was simply yet WHOLEY her own person, being completely who she is, easily and with sheer joy and wonderment.

She knew!!! I didn’t listen.

What have I learned? My children know themselves VERY well. If I want to know who I am I must examine the inner child (in me), and believe that she knows. If I can’t find her I must look backwards to when I was a child and remember when I was in that same blissful state I saw in Kerryn.

PS. Kerryn has drum lesson every Saturday!