Each child has unique talents, abilities and interests; it is the parent’s job to help discover and encourage those skills to grow.
This post has been updated and shared on the Heart-focused Podcast and Blog: 5 Ways to Encourage your Child’s Unique Talents and Interests to Grow
This is truly one of my favorite arguments for homeschooling. Instead of sitting in a classroom all day, doing what everyone else is doing, our kids are pursuing their interests. Not that they don’t learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but they have so much more time available than their public-schooled peers. Through the years our children have pursued music (which led to their current singing ministry as well as teaching), creative writing (one daughter has written several novels), woodworking, sewing, computer animation, film making, scrapbooking and card making, home decorating, baking and cooking, gardening, herbs and natural remedies, and a whole slew of various crafts. I’ve learned so much from my children as I enable them to pursue their interests! Thanks for sharing this post at TGI Saturday (where I found you today).
I love this! Such great advice for fostering their talents and interests. Please link up with us at: http://www.ourunschoolingjourney.com/2016/08/wonderful-wednesdays-first-week-of.html
Thanks for the invite – I’ll certainly do that. I hope your readers are encouraged too.
I actually was born with an ability in art, but that talent was squelched early by a grade school teacher who announced to the class since she didn’t like anything about me anyway because I was “different.” (At 55 years of age, I found out I had Aspergers). She told my classmates during art hour that Debbie (me) is only good at art, nothing else. She told them that art is only valuable when the artist has died, and that art is no way to make a living, thus the expression “starving artists.” After that, I was made fun of and bullied by my classmates on the playground, and teachers encouraged that ridicule and bullying of me. To this day, I hate to draw and paint, and refuse to. It doesn’t even sound like very much fun to me to draw and paint. It only brings me psychological pain, and laments to God as to why He could not give me another talent besides stupid art. I have tried a lot of things I am more interested in without only limited success. The more I find I don’t have natural talent in areas I find more interesting and prestigious to be good at, the more I hate the talent God gave me. At age 67, I hate the idea of drawing and painting than ever because other activities have not given me the success my very weak ego (from being told I have no talent in anything). At this point, I have come to the conclusion that unless I do some art, ANY art, God is not going to allow me to succeed at any hobby I find more desirable and socially-prestigious to be good at. I am sorry, but because of the way authority figures have treated me all my life, through school and work, I see God as an angry, vindictive, jealous God, more ready to punish than reward.
I am very sad that you have had that experience Debbie. God is a creative God and he has created us with all sorts of creativity. But humans aren’t God and we stuff it up along the way. I hope you can find someone who can help you see God in a different way, and help you heal from the hurts and restrictions that have been put on who you were created to be – I fully believe you were created to be creative. And as you heal from the past you can flourish in whatever creativity your put your hand to.