We found Blessing Farm and Forest after reading about the structure of schooling for children in Finland (the happiest country on Earth) and realizing that our family culture did not align with "traditional" pre-schooling.
I think it's a universal experience to feel nervous sending your child to spend time away from you, especially when they've only ever been home or with a grandparent, so we all expected some bumps in the road for both parents and children, but both of our girls transitioned fairly seamlessly thanks to the predictable rhythms and warmth of the instructors.
As with any group activity, our daughters encountered conflict and friendship struggles that sometimes got in the way of their desire to go to school, but Sommer's close relationship with our family helped us work through any issues.
We saw massive leaps in our daughters' ability to play independently, speak to adults with confidence, use their voices assertively, enter into new and sometimes intimidating situations without the need for us to guide them, and an explosion of expansion in their imaginative minds. Our eldest is an extremely sensitive being so we worried about her ability to navigate social hardships with peers and we lacked the trust that she could navigate those without her confidence being shattered, but through her time at Blessings we were challenged to let her problem solve and experience discomfort without need for our intervention. This felt like the biggest and most important lesson that we learned as parents during her first schooling experience outside the home and we take this with us as we navigate the next season of life. As I reflect on it, this was actually a total shift in how I viewed parenting and my role to "protect" my children, and has encouraged me to allow them to experience discomfort without parental intervention in order for them to grow into well adapted adults. I now trust them on a level I never thought possible and know that they will be greatly benefitted in their ability to navigate conflict throughout their lives. I whole-heartedly believe that our time at BFF was foundational to who my daughters are today, and who they will be for the rest of their lives.
They are braver, adventurous, curious, resourceful, social, and confident because of the way that Sommer and her staff taught them about the world and their places in it. My favorite part of who they are that was heavily shaped by their time at BFF is that there isn't a day that they don't play outside. No matter the weather or their energy level, they are engaging in imaginative and rough play outside year round while so many of their counterparts seem to engage with the outdoors only when the weather is temperate. I am and forever will be grateful for their first formative experiences of learning in a group setting.
My advice to new families would be 1) invest in good gear 2) trust the process. Believe that your children are more resilient than you could ever imagine, because they absolutely are.
- The Mikolasy Family
