The Creative Child and Mother’s Day….

On Mother’s day; I would rather have a creative child with glitter and glue to clear up than a tidy house and a child glued to a screen!

Happy Mother’s Day – and it’s a day where traditionally we mums get to put our feet up and not do any housework!

I was blessed to be woken up with not only a delicious pancake cooked by my 8-year-old but a plethora of artwork which has been painstakingly created over the last week, largely involving glitter, cutting and glue!

It’s all about the glitter!

As you can imagine this has resulted in a large amount of tidying up and clearing of glitter. And we all know said glitter is likely to adorn various surfaces in her bedroom for weeks to come! This could result in me as a mum being cross that I have to do these jobs on a day that apparently (according to the greetings cards!) I should not be partaking in domestic chores! But conversely, I get great pleasure from this tidying – not because I am a clean-up freak – far from it I am nowhere near being a domestic goddess and tidying and cleaning is about as far from my idea of fun as sitting in an ice-cold bath!

HOWEVER I am ecstatic to do this particular tidying job because it means my children have spent hours upon hours in the last week using their imagination, being artistic, creative, problem solving (when they didn’t have any skewers for the sticks to hold up the bunting on the Mother’s day pop up card they improvised with toothpicks stuck together!). They have been busy with their hands, minds and imaginations. And most of all enjoyed doing it.

My amazing-looking mantelpiece

So the upshot is that I do have a mess to clear up and jobs to do on Mother’s day. But I also have this amazing looking mantelpiece, full of my children’s creative juices. I would rather have this than a minimalist mantelpiece. Or a clean and tidy house, and a child who is glued to the computer screen. Maybe I am old fashioned in that view. But I truly believe they will be at a greater advantage in their life as a result. They will have learnt many more valuable skills with these physical projects. Much more than they would have by playing on endless computer games and apps in a virtual world! And yes I might have more work to do as a result. But I’d rather they live in a real world that is full of colour, creations, imagination and art!

So I am celebrating the glitter and the mess today and celebrating my children for which I am truly grateful for! And here’s to all the amazing Mummy’s clearing up their children’s mess today……….let’s rejoice in it!!!