Your son wants to learn to snowboard – this week! Your daughter can’t wait for photography class – once she buys that $400 camera. How do you know when their interest is just a passing fad or when they have found a passion?

by Tamra B. Orr

I still remember the moment when my then-20-year-old daughter Nicole turned to me and said, “I think that I would like to work on a train and explore the world.” I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all, she had been fascinated by trains since the entire family had traveled on Amtrak cross-country when she was only 11 years old. The interest had manifested itself over the years with quick school trips on Amtrak from Portland to Seattle and back again. Now, here she was, investigating careers on Amtrak and other train systems. This interest was here to stay.

So, we began researching. Nicole read websites and poured over the books we checked out from the library. We made a few calls to friends and found a direct connection to someone who had worked on the trains in Alaska, who, in turn, made a few calls. Interviews followed. Less than 30 days after she had first spoken up, her father, brothers and I waved goodbye to Nicole as she boarded a giant ferry that carried her from the marina at Bellingham, Washington, to one in Juneau, Alaska. Once there, she hopped on a plane to Anchorage, settled in and started her job as an assistant prep cook on the Alaska Railroad. In just a matter of weeks, her interest had turned into reality.

Children are often consumed with a variety of interests. With small children, that interest might change with each passing minute. As they grow, however, they begin to focus more—linger a little longer on an idea.

Some children are fascinated by sports; others are intrigued by science, math or the written word. Some discover an idea—like trains—and stay interested for years. Others, like my youngest son, dart from interest to interest like a silver ball bearing in a busy pinball machine. At 15, he shifts from wanting to head up to the mountain to try snowboarding, to researching zoom lens and cameras for his curiosity about photography, to plucking at out-of-tune guitar strings as he thinks about taking guitar lessons.

Exploring and facilitating

Besides frantically trying to keep up, what can parents do to support their children’s passions, rather than either dismissing them as implausible or zeroing in on them and taking over?

1.  Start by truly listening to your child’s interest. Although this sounds simple, it can exhaust any parent’s patience to keep listening if your child becomes absolutely obsessed with everything there is to know about dinosaurs or ballet or any other topic. However, taking that interest seriously and giving it your attention is a wonderful way to validate your child. Just as you would listen to your spouse or friend regale you with the latest news on their passions, give your child the same time and attention when he shares his with you.

2.  Ask questions to show you’re listening and you care—plus you can ferret out details. Depending on the age of your child, ask questions about their interests. This shows that you are listening and that you care. It also gives you the opportunity to pinpoint what their interests truly are. They might say it is enrolling in a weekend class—but it is really so they can spend more time with a friend. A request to take a tracking class might just be a cover for wanting to camp outside in a tent. A wood carving workshop might be a way to get permission to handle a pocket knife.

3.  Put on the Facilitator Hat, not the Captain’s Hat. When your child expresses any kind of interest, it is easy to latch onto it and run! Wanting to be helpful, we parents can end up taking over and doing way too much. Oh, you like to sing? Great! I will sign you up for choir...arrange singing lessons...have you audition for the next school musical. Before we know it, our passion for their passion can overwhelm and overbook our children’s time and interest.

Instead, act as a facilitator. Make suggestions of where they could go to get more information about an interest:

• “We could get a book from the library about horses.”
• “I have a friend who plays tennis professionally.”
• “My boss collects miniature trains.”
• “Our neighbor used to work in a science lab.”
• “I found a great website about calligraphy today.”

Your child may leap at the chance to find out more, or just mull over the idea and get back to you—or not. If possible, let her take the lead. It’s her interest, and not your agenda.

4.  Allow children to explore—pursue—and drop interests. Just because your child is fascinated by a new idea, craft, sport or hobby doesn’t mean he will stick with it. As adults, we don’t! How many of us have piles of fabric or stacks of car parts or shelves of travel books that we once were fascinated by but now have little time for (or interest in!)? Children, who tend to have much quicker attention spans, need the same space to explore and then, either pursue, or drop an idea.

5.  Explore fully but purchase cautiously. Give your child the room and time to explore a new interest fully, but be much slower to start pulling out your wallet. Before buying expensive sports equipment, try renting some. Before purchasing a musical instrument, borrow one. Before paying for a series of classes, ask to stop in and try one. This will help save your family budget while still giving your children the chance to find out more.

Helping our children discover the world and pursue their passions is part of being a good parent. If you listen instead of lead, who knows where the road might take your children? It just might be across the Alaskan train tracks.

Additional resources:

• “Planes, Trains, Automobiles—and Tea Sets: Extremely Intense Interests in Very Young Children,” by Judy DeLoache, Gabrielle Simcock, and Suzanne Macari, in Developmental Psychology; April 11, 2007
• “The Overbooked Child,” by David Elkins, in Psychology Today; January 1, 2003
• “Building on Children’s Interests,” by Anne Stonehouse

 

Tamra Orr is a full-time author of more than 300 nonfiction books for young people. She and her family live in the Pacific Northwest. She is the very proud mother of four children, ages 27 to 15, whose interests and passions seem to change with the hour.

© Photo by Yuri Arcurs | Dreamstime.com