Three daughters, ages seven and ¾’s, five and one we still calculate in months and nobody seems to have found “their thing.”
As a mother, as a competitive person, as a former motivated, sports watching enthusiast I am beginning to feel some pressure both internally and externally over my children’s lack of interest and/or honing in on “their sport,” “their instrument,” “their talent.”
I fear they will wind up in the smoker’s circle, at the tattoo parlour or holding hands at the movie theatre (does that date me?) one year too early if I don’t keep them busy and the key to keeping them busy is keeping them engaged, active and doing something they love.
I’ve decided at this point if they want to learn about small engine repair, I’ll sign them up for the first “The Small Engine That Could—Small Engine Repair for Ages twenty-one months to seven and ¾’s” but none of them seem interested.
That being said, I don’t want to be misleading. My five year old would jump at the chance to try small engine repair, in fact, she would take a course on how to clean shingles or how to braid a horse’s tail all with the enthusiasm of a child at a free ice cream sampling, yet none of her activities have had much staying power. Conversely, my almost eight year olds biggest ambition in life is to become a Nielsen family, prepared to watch television from the moment she wakes until the moment she is ready to sleep with the odd snack and mandatory social hour/mother-enforced bike ride.
It doesn’t seem right. The eight year old who has the tall, lean, athletic build, oozing with natural talent who could be lying on the couch for six straight hours and if someone challenged her to a race to the apple tree at the back of the yard she would leave them in her dust, simply has no motivation to run, to skip, to play, to love a sport and yet she was gifted with a body (opposite to mine) that could almost guarantee an athletic scholarship to any University but would be refused unless there were t.v. monitors on the field. And how would she fill out the application if Phineas & Ferb was on?
My five year old is the opposite. She wants to do absolutely everything but can’t seem to focus on any one activity long enough to really enjoy and become great at. She begged for months to take violin lessons and when I finally signed her up she suggested maybe she should change that to guitar. This before the first violin lesson has even taken place. Her build is slightly shorter than her big sister but what she lacks in natural talent, she makes up for in swimming-away-from-a-shark motivation. She just doesn’t have the stick-to-it-iveness those small engines require to start purring.
Me: Ellie, would you like to learn how a bill becomes a law?
Ellie: Yippee!!! Hell yeah!!!! When can I start?
Me: Hanna, would you like to take an art class, learn jazz, go to track and field camp, catch a butterfly?
Hanna: That sounds like a lot of work Mom. Would that interfere with the icarly marathon on Saturdays?
Many have suggested I’m jumping the gun when it comes to trying to find a niche for the girls while they are still so young. While in large part, I agree, however, I do see postings at music class where three year old Mimi won two gold medals at the local music festival for juggling while playing a selection of instruments, blindfolded on a unicycle and I realize we might just be three and ¾ years behind.
The baby has of course mastered how to sleep with a ceramic piggy bank and for now, we’re content with her ability to keep her money close but her pigs closer.
Have your kids found “their thing?”
