Post written by Zen Family Habits contributor Mandi from Life…Your Way.
One of my hopes for my children is that they’ll live a passionate life, not settling for less just because they’re told they should or because the alternative seems too hard. But living passionately isn’t easy because it involves taking risks, putting yourself out there and being confident, even when you fail. I don’t think it’s something that can be taught or learned. Our best hope is to model and encourage it.
Although I’m not an expert in this area (and because my kids are young, I don’t have any proof that any of these methods work, just being honest), but here are the methods we’re using to inspire our girls to live passionate lives:
1. Let Them See Your Passion
A lot of “experts” talk about balance, which I think leaves many people discouraged and unhappy, to be honest. It’s okay for parents to have passions outside of our kids, and beyond being okay, I think it’s important that our kids see us excited and passionate about something other than them, even if it means sometimes they have to wait for our attention or help out around the house more.
2. Invite Them to Be Part of What Your Passionate About
In no way am I suggesting that you should force your children to share your interests, hobbies or passions, but let’s face it, kids like to be with their parents and would probably jump at the chance to participate with you in the things you’re excited about. Even if they don’t adopt those interests as their own, it’s still a good opportunity for them to see and participate in the things that get you excited.
For example, my husband loves to build and fly model airplanes, and even though our girls are too young to really participate, he invites them to watch, lets them “toss” his planes for him and answers all of their questions along the way.
3. Help Them Pursue Their Own Passions
Although I don’t have a ton of memories from my childhood, I distinctly remember being in elementary school and learning about animal classification. I decided then and there that I was going to be a zoologist, and I had a notebook filled with information about various animals. My parents indulged this love of animals and allowed me to hav e a variety of pets, including birds, an iguana, rabbits, a hamster who eventually had babies and so on.
Having a small pet store in your home isn’t the only way to engage your child’s love of animals, of course, and the important part is that you support their interests and help them find and outlet. You never know if one of your children might actually grow up to be a zoologist because of the foundation you laid during their childhood!
4. Give Them Lots of Opportunities to Try New Things
An important part of discovering what you’re passionate about is trying lots of new things. There could be a hobby, career or field of study out there that you don’t even know about that would capture your attention if you gave it a chance.
While lessons and hobbies can be expensive, trying new things doesn’t have to be. If you don’t have the money for your children to try a different hobby or sport every season, look for free opportunities. Visit the library and pick up all of the books they have on a single subject. Spend time video-hopping on YouTube for related videos. Scout thrift stores, Freecycle, Craigslist and yard sales for gently used equipment or supplies. And if you’re lucky enough to live near a metropolitan area like we do, take advantage of free museums and events.
How do you encourage your children to live passionately?
Read more about productivity, organizing and home management from Mandi at Life…Your Way, or follow her on Twitter.
Life is all lesson. Nobody was born as expert of something, experience has teach them what they need to learn. My children are small and frankly I have no idea of how to encourage them when the time comes. Still, I am grateful that there are people like you who are generous to share their wisdom. And for that I thank you. :-)
I´m tottaly into letting my daughter see my peassions. Sometimes has has to be patient if I´m studying the guitar or be left with someone so I can go for a surf.
Like you, I beliebe she will learn to make time for passions in her life is she sees her mama doing it.
I pretty much encorage my 3 year old the very same that you do, and my child is also too young for me to claim any results, but more than helping them, we can find ourselves in a special attitude of really pursuing what matters.
“A lot of “experts” talk about balance, which I think leaves many people discouraged and unhappy, to be honest.
I don’t think I understand what you mean by this bit… I consider the appropriate pursuit of my passions to be a significant part of a balanced life. Can you elaborate?
I agree with you, Seonaid, that living a balanced life means including time for our passions. However, I think a lot of mothers feel like living a balanced life means they can only pursue their passions if nothing else has to give in the process, which leaves pretty much no time to actually pursue them.
Loved the messages in this post. Helping your kids discover and pursue their own passions is a great way to expand your own life experiences as well – that’s been my experience with our 5, very diverse, kids. Thanks for the wonderful article.
No matter how old you are, passions can be realized from having
1. Opportunity – right venue, time, tools and such
2. Encouragement – lots of it, especially after setbacks
3. Money – that can buy the right things as & when needed
We definitely intend to provide all the above (& much more) for our son, but as far as finding out what the passion is, there is very little we can do or teach other than lots of exploring and experimenting. Even then, one could go through whole life trying to figure out what their passion is. That’s something I’m trying at this stage in my life and hopefully I’ll be wise enough to enlighten my son very soon. :)
I never really thought about this, and I like your points. I tend to be passionate about things but not necessarily bring the kids into it, but I could. I need to let them help more in the kitchen, and maybe show the older ones how to do things online.
I also agree about allowing them to pursue things as they interest them. We’ve definitely tried to do that. We don’t do a lot of different things at once, but each child has something that is his or her thing. For one, baseball, for another, piano. Interesting conversation.
As a believer in early childhood education, I constantly try to promote my child when I see they are passionate in something. Thanks for the great post.
I homeschooled my kids for 8 years, and the youngest is now graduated and in technical school. We learned early on to help them pursue their passions.
My 2nd daughter loved drama and theater. We let her attend a one day a week fine arts program where she was in plays and also learned about the technical side of stuff. She went on to work with our community theater in high school and then took some courses in theater in community college. She now works at a large attraction outside of Atlanta, doing tech work, as well as working all over Atlanta with different theater projects, etc. Does she make a lot of money? Not really, but she takes care of herself and she is doing what she loves.
My son is almost 20. He has always loved to know how things worked. He had Legos and Knex and several other building sets when he was younger. He was always taking stuff apart so he could put it back together. He eventually was helping his dad work on cars and that has been his passion now for 5 years. He is going to tech school to be certified to work on cars.
My youngest had several passions. The first was horses. That is how I got her to read, checked out every book on horses I could find! We eventually bought her a horse at the age of 11. She also was very passionate about dance. She didn’t start dancing until she was 11, but was very good. She dnaced until this past year, and I hope she will pick it up again. She would love to teach to underprivelged children.
Her 3rd passion is fashion and that is where she is focusing her education and time right now. She is wokring toward education creatively without accumulating 100k in student loans which would be very possible if she were to go off to NY!
FYI, my 1st daughter was our guinea pig and she didn’t get the benefit of this encouragement until she had already moved out. Even so, we are encouraging her is her passion of cooking, and eventually opening a catering business!
I strongly believe that we should spend our lives living our passion!
Bernice
http://bernicewood.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/the-perfectly-imbalanced-life/