Encouraging Passions in Kids

First off, I want to congratulate our 2nd homeschool graduate, Anthony, who just finished his 4 year undergraduate degree with a Bachelors in Business Management, this past week, at the age of 18!   I had initially presented the idea to him of finishing Bachelors by 12th grade even before he started high school, and planned out the initial few years for him. But over the past 2 years, he took complete ownership, and ran with it!  Congratulations Anthony! We are so proud of you! Though our oldest, Anita, had finished 2 years of college and graduated 12th grade with an Associates degree 1 year ago, he doesn’t hold back on opportunities to remind everyone that he was the first to finish college among all his siblings! 

Regarding the past few months, it was purely God’s grace we survived, and even thrived, when we were pretty much running at 150mph! If I even write a sentence each of all the things we juggled through, it will take up a huge chunk of this blogpost, so I’m keeping it very short. Since March, we had several  out-of-state family trips, including  vacation trips,  pilgrimage trips and educational trips. All these trips were on top of all the preparation and work in relation to our in-house foundation repair, kitchen renovation and whole floor replacement which took a good 2 months. We also had a HUGE ride commitment for practices for the different competitions our boys enrolled in for our inter-parish sports festival. We also had Holy Communion prep and was able to do Solemn Holy Communion for 2 of our kids during this time. Plus not to mention all the things on the ‘side’, like homeschooling, doctors appointments, home management and some local trips and ministry related events. 🙃

Of course as I mentioned, it is purely God’s grace we were able to thrive this past few months. And ironically, even though it was a crazy busy time of our life,  I felt I had enough time to do most things I needed to do.

 

This blogpost I was hoping to touch upon some tips I feel are useful to identify and encourage passions in our kids.

We are all created unique. God gives specific talents to each of us and instills us with specific interests, that will lead us to the exact mission he has set apart for us. It is very important to be able to identify our God-given passions and nurture them in the right way. Through identifying kids passions, we can help them develop their talents and build self-esteem as well as aid in self-discovery, not to mention self-discipline and goal setting. 

Just within our own family, we can see how different each kid is, and hence I would like to share specific examples. 

1) I think one main thing we need to do is to create an environment in which they can explore their interests. I feel it is important to have a good library at home with different resources, that can spark their interest in a topic. We have a large collection of all kinds of books from curriculum, literature, lifeskill books, hobbies, field guides, nature books etc, which a lot we bought from homeschool book sales, and library book sales. Once they have an exposure to different things, they start finding something that interests them and ultimately something they are passionate about.  Once they find the spark, provide extra resources that can help them learn more. Going deeper in a field doesn’t always have to mean taking them for outside classes or sports. While some passions can only be nurtured by outside activities, there are lots of interests that can be encouraged by providing extra materials in a home environment. We can also look for online courses that teach about something, sometimes paid, sometimes free. If possible and wherever applicable, try to find local resources or opportunities that we can utilize. We can sign them up for live classes as well. 

As I mentioned, our second oldest, Anthony, just graduated with a Business degree while still 18. He got interested in Real Estate since he was in 5th grade, as my dad was also into Real Estate. Once he realized he had a passion, he started reading books way beyond his age level, that he had expertise in the field by time he was in 8th grade. We enrolled him in the community college for dual enrollment at age 13, and the Dean was impressed with his reading list. He started his own Real Estate company at age 15, and had an offer for apprenticeship by a business in California, that we had to decline, as we didn’t want him to stay in another state by himself at that age. He also has an extensive business networking that he built, all because of his passion that drove him.  I think in his case, the only main thing we did was to encourage that passion, and to try to provide the resources he needed to get information. We did some online subscriptions,  where he got a good foundation in some basics, from which he branched off. With being homeschooled, he had an added advantage that he had a lot of extra time after lessons, to pursue his passion.

Our 3rd, Albert,  is into coding, which he found an interest in only because we had a random coding book in our home library. He decided to give it a try and now he is going strong with it.  Since we have no background whatsoever in that field, we do live classes online.

Our 4rth, Aaron, is into chess at the moment. This interest probably came about from his older brother, as well as the opportunity to involve in our inter-parish competition, as well as some chess books we had.  He was able to excel, and was runner up for championship this year.  He mainly self teaches from some textbooks, and we got an online membership that he can do extra practice. 

2) Provide opportunities to test out their interests- I had a passion for baking that started in the initial years of motherhood.  I mostly always allow my kids to help with baking or cooking when they show interest. Most of our older kids up to our 6th so far, have been independently making cakes and cookies from scratch since 8-9 years old. Our oldest, Anita, took her baking skills to the next level, as she had a great passion.  She did several online courses and tutorials that taught basics of baking and decorating. Again, being homeschooled, she had a lot of time to pursue her passion, and also to make and experiment what she learned very consistently. From our end, we provided materials and tools she needed for taking her baking levels to the next level, and gave her opportunities. I delegated all the baking I did for gatherings and guests, to her. Over the years, she perfected her skills to a professional level. She had been making customized themed cakes for all her siblings’ birthdays. She also had the opportunity to make 4 wedding cakes by the age of 19!

3) One way to identify kid’s interests is to observe what they are naturally drawn to in their free time. Is it reading books, doing experiments, drawing, painting, playing some instrument, playing a sport, etc. Once we see them interested in something, maybe gently encourage that interest and see if there are any resources we can find for them from that end. 

We used to take all the kids for birding trips starting  several years ago. Now, few of our younger kids are deep into birding, and know most of the birds that come their way, and can even know what bird it is through their callings. Our 5th, 6th and 7th kids are the serious birders in our family. Our 5th, Abel, has been telling us he wants to become an ornithologist. Nowadays whenever able, his main hobby is to sit outside and take pictures of birds that come our way. Plus he also set up a hummingbird feeder, made bird feeders with craft sticks, use apps and field guides to identify any bird he comes across, and keep a bird log of how many times a day he sees certain birds. He also asks to find local birding areas that we can visit. Of course we can’t take take them everywhere, but recently I’ve been on top of trying to take them to  bird hikes even  45 minutes to 1 hour away, as early as 7:30-8 am!  From our end, we mainly provide materials in terms of book resources, equipment, and take them on bird hikes and birding locations as possible, to encourage the passion. 

4) Sometimes we need to push them, sometimes we need to hold them back, sometimes we need to let them try and fail as well.  All the older kids, except our 4th have been consistently doing archery over the years and been to state level all the years for the homeschool archery team. With our 4th, we encouraged him to try, but he didn’t make it to the team. He didn’t seem to have the passion the following year, and so we allowed him to not even tryout; even though there was the opportunity, and I anyway had to take the rest of them. But with our 6th, it was almost the opposite. I pushed him a lot to at least give it a try, and told him that if he fails tryouts, that it’s ok. But he did really well on the tryouts; and now, he’s the most enthusiastic of the bunch. 

5) Even if they pursue something for few years and later lose interest, that’s ok.   They don’t need to continue that activity lifelong, just because they did it few years.  But maybe try to understand what their reasoning is.

Our second, Anthony, was also passionate in soccer during early years of high school and was invited to attend a training with Real Madrid,  in Spain for a week. Seeing his passion, we put in extra effort to have him attend the local Juventus academy, though it was more than a half time job in itself, between practices and games. He did win championship at our inter-parish competition for soccer and was a lead player. He decided to quit soccer after a period of intense passion,  because he wanted to channelize all his energy into finishing his degree earlier, and hence had to make a compromise. Similarly, even though he had won championship in chess previously and placed at state level for Mathematical Number Sense, he did not pursue those after a few years. But the years he did, that is what motivated him, and that’s where he found a sense of purpose. Similarly our oldest placed at state level for Art Memory for several consecutive years, and that drove her during those years, even though she didn’t pursue it afterwards. 

It is also possible that some passions or exposures they had previously that they didn’t show much interest for a while, they pick up again after a while. Our oldest, Anita, was strong in piano skills early on. But she decided to take a break to focus on her other commitments and early college, and afterwards came back strong.

We enroll all the kids in piano classes and do some formal art classes while they are young. Sometimes after a period of no-interest, they show interest again after few years, in which case we usually continue with online resources, and in more serious cases, formal instruction. This has mostly been the case with piano, art classes, vocal classes, and guitar lessons. 

6) It is also very important to strike a balance in number of interests pursuing, so that they can go deeper without being too overwhelmed. Plus it is very important to strike an overall balance when choosing to do activities outside the house.  I have a blogpost here, on how to choose extracurricular activities outside the house, in a way that preserves some family balance.

All our boys, even the younger 4,  are into soccer. However, it will be more than a full time job to send all of them to soccer academies. So we mostly  encourage backyard play (at the expense of most of our lawn becoming grass-less and statues knocked down from the grotto 😌). We also allow them to watch soccer lesson videos, and soccer games of interest. Plus we try to avail of opportunities that don’t require as much commitment as a soccer academy. They practiced and competed in our inter-parish competition. We also try to send for other local and inter-regional competitions that come up once in a while, and they just came back winning championship at a regional tournament, last week.

In a nutshell, try to expose them to a variety of interests and fields, see what they are drawn to, and provide materials for going deeper. It is  not possible to have them involved in everything that comes their way, and we shouldn’t, but it is fair to expose them to a variety of interests, to see what actually clicks. Most of the time, it is these interests that light them up and give a sense of purpose. Even though we have been able to tap into some major passions for some of our kids, we still have a very long way to go;  and we are keeping our eyes and ears open to discovering and learning more.