Introducing new things without attachment

I struggled to come up with a title that really reflects what I am blogging about here and I think the entire post is just random thoughts - they link in my mind, but not sure they are conveyed the way that I intend!

This post was prompted by a question my mother asked me last week. My elderly grandmother gave Nathan a gift for his birthday and she was asking my mum whether he has been playing with it. In actual fact he hadn't been, but it made me realise that while we can choose what we deem to be the ideal gift for others, that we can't get hung up on whether they do actually use it. And in so many ways this is true too for our unschooling philosophy - I may introduce books, ideas, and occasionally activities - but it's totally up to the kids on what they do and what they don't and I don't concern myself about their desire to run with any of them.

I know I gave up years ago wondering why the kids didn't play with a gift I'd (or someone else) gotten them when I'd spent ages deciding it would be what they really wanted and would be really useful.

I still try and purchase mindfully, but don't think further than that, I just pop it where the rest of their things are and leave it be. I know at some stage the item *will* actually be played with (well everything has so far).

I also find it interesting when we've received something which is ahead of the kids developmental level or their interest just doesn't lie in that area at the time and then noticing the moment that their interest is peaked. I've been noticing this with Danielle recently and her getting out games that Nathan received when he was younger. It's been such a natural progression for her without prompting to see what suddenly grabs her attention.

Today she very puposefully got out the Junior Scrabble which hasn't been out for many months and sat down with it wanting to match the letters up. So I sat with her and read out the letter as she picked it up and she found a spot for it. She hadn't yet shown any interest in wanting to know what letters are (aside from knowing O and writes A repeatedly), so will be interesting to see whether this goes anywhere.

Later on the kids started a game where they got dressed up to go out and were going shopping. They had money and were wanting to puchase things. I'd asked my mum to get Danielle a cash register and NZ play money for her birthday (I'm sure we could have used the real deal but I don't really use cash a lot) - so that was over 2mths ago, and has only occasionally been played with, but this was the first time they were interested in it in a money/purchasing sense.