Identifying passion in your children is hard – even when they are standing still. It’s even more difficult when you realize that their passionate interests and pursuits will ebb and flow over time. Like driftwood floating in the tide, sometimes it appears to be coming to shore, and other times it seems to be going out to sea! Our children don’t ever seem to stand still, and even their interests are a moving target.
Now that my children are 19 and 21, I can look at their chosen fields (economics and engineering) and remember all the clues they exhibited when they were younger. I can see that they were born and destined for this work their whole lives. On the other hand, there were also clues that have completely been lost over the years. Alex used to draw diagrams all the time. Architectural drawings and design work that he did for many years. The interest ebbed and flowed. One day it was gone. We still see the twinkle in his eye now and then, when we move around the furniture, or take a tour of a house or business, but mostly it’s just gone. When Alex was 11, though, I don’t know that I could have told you whether he would be an economist or an architect (or anything else.) I just knew that he had passionate interests in some very unique things.
I have written often about how important it is to feed your children’s passionate interests. I think it’s also worth mentioning that those interests may change over time. It doesn’t mean that you have failed them, or that they have failed somehow to maintain their own interests. It may just mean they are “done” with that topic, and are ready to move on. You can certainly drop it, and let them pursue the next thing.
I have a friend with a very musical daughter. She was very disappointed when her talented daughter quit taking piano. A year later her daughter was excelling at another instrument (guitar) and leading the worship band with a guitar. He passionate interest in piano ended – and she went on the do the “next thing” . It wasn’t a failure, it was more like a completion!
Matt wrote a series of articles on finding passion in your homeschoolers. You can read the first one here.
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Christianbook.com Curriculum Page
J W says:
The one label I hate the most is, “Quitter.” I’m glad my parents never stuck it on me. They just said I had to have at least one after school activity.
I myself as a young person came to college with a broad and varied background, and I hadn’t stuck with anything. I went from passion to passion like a ping-pong ball, even after I’d settled on my future major at 16.
Turns out that if you’re going to go into the media, it helps to know a little something about everything, so you know where to start researching and what questions to ask.
And those courses I took in high school that must have had my parents scratching their heads over why I would choose them? Every single one of those oddball classes came in handy in college. One of those oddball classes eventually led to free overseas travel the summer between high school and college. That led to increased proficiency in the language I’d been immersed in. That meant when I got back, I tested out of and received credit for an entire semester just on foreign language credit. I graduated early! Who’d have thought?
January 30th, 2009 at 6:21 am