Following the Child Takes Courage
How we are with children matters. They learn of life and love through and with us. They are so vulnerable and open, free of perceptions—their sense of self is possible and also dependent on our capacity to let them live as they already are.
It's not about getting it right all the time—it's about how we show up in each moment, bringing the fullness of who we are to every encounter.
Following the child takes courage because it asks us to trust their innate wisdom and to create space for their authentic selves to unfold. It requires us to be fully present, to listen deeply, and to honor the unique path each child is walking.
My journey as mother, teacher, and artist has taught me that growth and development are creative processes, deeply influenced by what we engage and how we respond to our experiences. When we approach children with reverence and trust, we create conditions for genuine connection and learning—not just for them, but for ourselves as well.
Megan Buchanan Schopf
About
Megan is the founder of Creative Seed Community — a coaching and education practice rooted in Montessori philosophy, nature-based learning, and the belief that how we show up with children shapes everything.
She has spent over three decades as a mother, Montessori-trained educator, and practicing artist, and has worked with children and families across a range of learning environments — from traditional classrooms to intimate home-based communities she created herself.
Her work begins with a simple premise: children arrive whole. Her coaching and programs help parents and educators return to that understanding — learning to observe more deeply, trust the process unfolding in front of them, and tend the conditions in which real growth becomes possible.
She writes the newsletter Tending and creates seasonal inspiration guides for families and educators navigating the rhythms of childhood with intention and care.
Be present. Trust the process. Lead with love.
There is a question that has guided my life for many years now:
What arises when we simply be?
It came to me slowly, through experience rather than study — through the work of raising a child whose life asked me to listen more carefully than I ever had before. To set aside what I thought I knew about how things were supposed to go, and to be present to what was actually unfolding in front of me.
That practice of presence — of deep attention, of following rather than directing — became the thread that runs through everything I do.
Three Roles.
I am a mother, teacher, and artist.
One Practice.
These are not separate identities; they are the interwoven threads of a single way of being in the world.
As a mother, I learned that presence is not passive. Being fully with another person — meeting them where they are rather than where you expect them to be — is one of the most demanding and most generous things we can offer. I learned to trust my gut over prescribed paths, to tend to my own needs so I could truly show up, and to find in creative practice — painting, writing, making — a way to digest what I was living.
As an artist, I came to understand something essential about growth: it needs space to breathe. The creative process cannot be rushed. Neither can a child. Neither can a person. Walking away from a painting, letting it sit, allowing something to become without forcing it — this is not inactivity. It is the work.
As a teacher trained in Montessori philosophy, I found language and structure for what I had already come to know in my bones: follow the child. Observation is not passivity — it is an act of deep attention and preparation. Relationship is not peripheral to learning — it is learning. And growth, like all living things, follows the rhythms of nature rather than the clock.
Children arrive whole.
They are already themselves — curious, alive, deeply knowing — before we have had a chance to tell them who to be. Our work, as parents and as educators, is not to shape them into something but to tend the conditions in which they can become who they already are.
This is not about getting it right all the time. It is about how we show up in each moment — with awareness, with care, with trust in the process that is unfolding.
How we are with children matters. They learn of life and love through their experience with us. And when we can bring the fullness of who we are — rather than a performance of who we think we should be — we create something rare: genuine connection, genuine learning.
Creative Seed Community grew from this understanding.
What I've come to believe.
My work is for parents and educators who sense that something is missing in the dominant model — who feel the pull toward something more relational, more present, more alive — but who aren't sure how to find their footing there.
I offer what I had to learn myself: how to slow down and observe. How to trust the process unfolding in the child in front of you. How to tend your own inner life so you have something real to bring. How to move from reaction to response — with awareness, with care, with love.
This is not a curriculum. It is a practice. And like all practices, it asks for patience, for presence, and for trust that what wants to emerge will, if we make space for it.