Treasures

Maddie likes to collect things. Not the normal types of bric-a-brac that little girls usually collect like unicorns, stuffed animals, or stickers. Nope. Here is a picture of one of her collections:

 

When we're walking outside something on the ground always catches her eye and she has to stop, inspect it, pick it up, and bring it home. Rocks, acorns, leaves, sticks, and random things like a plastic clasp that has fallen off of some baby product or a broken pen. Maddie calls these collections her "treasures."

Of course, my first instinct is to have her drop it and put it back on the ground. Yuck!! But Maddie finds this command insulting. She sees something valuable in these things that I would call trash. Why would she not collect the very interesting object she has just found?

There are times when it really is nasty trash and I insist for her physical health (and my mental health) that she leave it on the ground. But I'm learning to be open to the non-health threatening items and embrace these interesting collections.

The items in the above picture seemed like a random hodge-podge of things when I was holding them in my hand... But laid out on the paper, the collection is actually pretty interesting.

See, I'm trying to see the value of these items because it's treasure to my Treasure ;)