It’s birthday month around here – 4 out of 5 birthdays fall within 30 days in our house.
So, I get a lot of practice making cakes this time of year. I get pretty good at it by the end of June!
But then again, for 11 months out of the year, I don’t make many cakes. They’re pretty time intensive, and we don’t have a compelling reason to make them. So my skills atrophy a bit.
But then they come back – pretty quickly usually, if not immediately. Even with long breaks in between, I’ve been building skills that are resilient.
So often you hear concern about summer learning gaps and slippage. It’s often made into a pretty scary picture of future failure for our kids. But the truth is, if they are engaged in learning and growing, the gap of summer isn’t going to impede kids for very long. They are building resilient skills and they bounce back quickly.
I don’t worry about learning gaps for the same reason I don’t worry about baking a cake after an 11 month break. I know it’ll come back. I’m resilient and so are people everywhere.