By Mallory Mattingly
For many of us, our lifelong passions begin when we’re kids, and home reno star Joanna Gaines is no different.
Her love for home design began as a child when she’d turn her play set into a fort.
“I tucked myself inside the blue-curtained walls and looked all around. Potential brimmed. Ideas felt endless. In the absence of everything, I could see it: the beginnings of anything,” she wrote in a blog post inspired by her son’s new treehouse. “I spent an entire summer dressing up that fort, hanging hand-drawn pictures on the makeshift walls, and (re)planting flowers I’d picked from my mom’s garden beds. It became a shelter for my favorite things. Things found, things saved, things given. Every now and then, I’d haul a basket filled with these treasures from my bedroom out to the fort. ‘For safekeeping, I told myself.’”
Today, Gaines is a mom of five: Drake, Ella, Duke, Emmie and Crew. And the longer she has been parent, the more she has learned “to try to pay attention to the natural bent of my kids’ curiosity.”
Curiosity is a beautiful thing, especially for children as, like Gaines, it can point them in a direction for their future. Paul Harris, a Harvard child psychologist and author, found that between the ages of 2 and 5, a child asks 40,000 questions.
We should have curiosity about our kids and their interests, too.
Related: Chip And Joanna Gaines Reflect on the Success of Magnolia
Pastor and author Drew Worsham points out that “In a world where so much communication is surface-level and transactional, curiosity invites us to truly connect with others. It’s more than just asking questions — it’s about wanting to actually understand someone’s story, what motivates them, and what fears may limit them.”
But curiosity often gets stifled as adult concerns begin to press in on our kids.
“Then I got older, and the world lured me out,” Gaines wrote. “People, with the best of intentions, tell us it’s time to come out of our blue forts and our tree houses, out from beneath our green canopies. They tell us the world is our oyster. Even now, that phrase can still make me feel anxious and overwhelmed, a little like I wasn’t wired to dream big enough.”
Rather than push her kids to grow up and suppress their curiosity, Gaines wants “to create safe havens for my kids — for their imaginations, their creativity. These are precious things, and I don’t believe we ever outgrow our need to nurture them.”
Like Gaines, we should foster our kids’ — and our own — curiosity. You never know where it could take them.
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