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Family Friday Newsletter - 2 min read Season: The Holidays (3 of 7)

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Truths From Trees

Sometimes there are great parenting lessons that are hidden inside other family groups. For instance, animal families have their own special names.

Lions: A Pride 🦁
Whales: A Pod 🐋
Beavers: A Colony 🦫
Monkeys: A Troop 🐒
Rhinoceroses: A Crash 🦏

In the world of arboriculture (ok, that's just a fancy word for trees) we call a group either a Grove or Forest 🌲🌲🌲🌲

There are a surprising number of great lessons that power-decade parents can learn from a family of trees.

Slow vs Fast Growth

Most young tree saplings spend the early decades of life under the shade of their mother tree's canopy. Limited sunlight means that they grow slowly. Slow growth, of course, leads to hard, dense, and strong wood.

Something entirely different happens if you plant a tree by itself out in an open field.

Free from the shade of bigger trees, the sapling gorges itself on sunlight and grows too fast. Fast growth leads to soft, airy wood that doesn't have time to become dense. Soft, airy wood is a breeding ground for fungus, disease, and a much shorter life overall.

A tree that grows fast also rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old.

Another invaluable effect of the grove for a young sapling is the root system. An old, dense, and sturdy tree has years of roots that run deep into the ground. A slow-growing tree in a grove has the benefit of intertwined roots that will benefit it for decades as it grows taller.

An isolated tree, planted by itself, not only grows too quickly but lacks any of the supporting underground structures.

7 Parent Take-Aways

So what can we learn from a family of trees that can affect your parenting for the next decade? Here are a few things we learned in our home...

1. Raising kids slowly is a long-term blessing for them, but they will not see it that way till they are much older.
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2. Starving them from personal growth opportunities stunts their life in a tragic different way.
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3. It is a good thing to want our kids to outgrow us someday but it will only happen if we are first alongside them for years.
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4. A parent's mental, emotional, and physical health has a direct effect on the daily health of their kids today and in the future.
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5. Proper sunlight produces upward growth but difficult moments reveal if downward growth has taken place.
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6. Isolation is a sneaky killer, for individuals and for families.
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7. Proximity to parents, both in heart and in time spent together, is how kids develop the strength they need for life outside your home someday.

Do you consider your home to be a "raise them slowly" kind of family? In what ways have you provided shade or kept your kids from growing up too quickly? I'd love to hear if you'd reply back and let me know!

See you next Friday,
Finley

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