Something warm was on the bench. Something important was happening in the kitchen

I have learned to appreciate winter this year and honestly, we have come to a very happy understanding.

When it is cold and raining outside there is nothing quite like something warm and nourishing quietly doing its thing on the bench. This week that was pulled pork in the crockpot. Low and slow. The whole house smelling incredible.

And because I was clearly on a roll I also made oaty apple crumble slice. Caramel sauce. A drizzle of cream. A decent wodge of ice cream on the side.

Decadent. Delicious. Extra rebounder sessions have been scheduled accordingly.

But here is what I kept thinking about while I was in the kitchen.

You cannot rush a crockpot. It works at its own pace. Give it the right conditions and the right amount of time and the result is always so much better than anything thrown together in a hurry.

Learning works exactly the same way.

This week my 15 year old client and I also spent a lot of time in the kitchen together. We made toast. We poached an egg. We made a chocolate mug cake. Not because we were hungry, although the mug cake was very well received. But because there is something that happens when you learn through doing that a worksheet simply cannot touch.

She had been struggling with maths for years. And like so many people I work with she had quietly come to her own conclusion about why.

How often do we hear it? "I'm just no good at maths." And more often than not that is simply not true. What is actually going on is that something fundamental has been missed somewhere along the way. And with maths that matters enormously because every layer builds on the one before it. Miss something early on and the whole structure starts to wobble.

That is exactly what had happened here.

"I was thinking that I was a bit dumb because I didn't understand maths before. Now I know I am not dumb. I just need a little bit of extra help."

She said that to me this week. How incredible is that?

The truth is she was missing some fundamental building blocks that nobody had ever thought to teach her. Concepts like cause and effect, sequence, before and after, order and disorder and time. They sound like maths concepts and yes they are. But they are also the building blocks of how life actually works.

Low and slow. Warm and real. Hands on and deeply satisfying.

By the end of the week she was not just understanding maths. She was understanding herself.

That is what happens when learning finally gets the warmth and time it actually needs.