A lesson in motherhood from Jane Goodall

Until I decide to create my own blog, I'm going to share with Belle & Lilly.

It's funny how life lessons are presented to you in the strangest places. Many of you know that I recently attended a fundraising conference in San Diego, California. Dr. Jane Goodall (yes, the one who studied chimpanzees) was a plenary session speaker. While the conference's focus was on fundraising, Ms. Goodall shared her life story with us. And rather than picking up new ideas for how to ask for money from Jane, I learned a lesson in motherhood.

See, Jane shared stories about where her childhood and how her mother is the reason why she is where she is today. As a young girl, poor and living in the country in England, Jane loved to play outside. One evening, she brought four earthworms with her to bed. Did her mother go balistic when she discovered Slimey and his friends were camping out with Jane for the night? No! She didn't strip the bed, throw the sheets in the wash and all the while fuming about the mess. Jane's mother simply explained to her that if she kept the earthworms with her in bed they would die because they needed the soil to live. So Jane toddled back downstairs, outside to deposit her friends back into the garden.

Jump ahead a couple of decades, Jane's mother encouraged her to save her money to make her first trip to Africa to study the chimpanzees and when the British government said they wouldn't let Jane sit out in the jungle to study chimps without an escort her mother gladly volunteered to join her for four months in the African jungle.

Now I'm not jumping at the chance to sit in the woods and study deer poopies (as Belle likes to refer to them) but I realized one important lesson that day. Rather than squashing my daughter's natural curiosities, I could encourage them. I could not jump off the deep end when she wants to jump into a mud puddle or collect caterpillars in her jacket pocket. I could, instead, jump in that puddle with her and help her identify which type of caterpillar she has found. Who knows? Maybe one day, she will become a Jane Goodall.

(to learn more about Dr. Goodall's work today, visit http://www.rootsandshoots.org/)