I have often wondered how you know what your kids’ talents are and how to help them excel. What if they missed out on a talent because as a parent I didn’t introduce it to them? When your oldest is young you want to introduce them to everything to see what they really grab onto. Now, I see their talents seem to find them and when they do, as parents, we can find the perfect outlet.
Emma has always been very DRAMATIC. When we moved to the NYC area we thought this was a perfect place to find an outlet for her drama. She has taken a couple of classes intermittently through an acting school, but this month she started acting camp. It is 9 – 4 every day and she was a little nervous as it got closer because she would be one of the youngest, but she LOVES it! It is so fun to pick her up in the afternoon, see how happy she is, and hear all the fun things she did during the day. Today they auditioned for parts in the ‘end-of-camp show’ and she received a part with a solo. I guess we’ll be hearing a lot of her song this month as she practices.
Caleb was always doing flips off his bed or anything he could mastermind into a trampoline. We started to worry for his safety and decided to put him in gymnastics so he’d have a safe environment to ‘flip’ in. Surprisingly he did very well and after a few months his coach talked to me about putting him in the boys’ team. Caleb didn’t want to do it – he didn’t want a different coach or group of kids. This kid loves consistency. So, we decided to wait until this summer to address the issue again as the subject was brought up to us by more coaches. Caleb decided to ‘try it out’ – we’re talking 12 hours a week! I actually thought this was going to be too much for a 7 year old but he has proved me wrong. When he was in the 1 hour class once a week he wouldn’t let me leave or he’d start to cry. Now he begs to be dropped off early every day so he can get started on his 200 jump ropes and when I pick him up after 3 hours, it’s like pulling teeth to get him to leave. How did we go from one extreme to the other so quickly?!
Their talents and interests may change as time goes on but it’s fun to see your children doing something they love . . . and doing well in it. It makes me wonder, what talents do I have that I may need to unearth for myself?
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