Feeling the pain of procrastinating or turning in shabby work is part of the etching of character onto one’s heart. It is far from comfortable, and as a parent, I’m gratified knowing my children are learning this truth deeply: missing deadlines hurts.

Wonder is not a traditional drop-off school where education is “done” to children and parents stay out of it except to volunteer or raise money. Rather, the power is pushed back to families to communicate, encourage, and solve problems together.

One of the primary joys for Wonder parents is claiming the central, healthy, active role in our children’s education rather than relinquishing it to a bureaucratic machine. By making this choice, we get to re-educate ourselves along the way.

When you take a road less traveled, there are times of bewilderment and even a sense of loss. But we have a secret treasure at the end of our path that urges us forward: it is that our children will find their callings and will be equipped to create meaningful lives with rich relationships for themselves and those around them.

Our anxiety as a parent rises if our children aren’t progressing in lockstep with others their age and so we work to fix things for them. In the meantime, we lose our sense of waiting for the seeds of potential slowly and surely growing within.