It's amazing listening to geeks, first of all. They're people filled with excitement for whatever they are passionate about, which can be anything. Isn't that cool? In this podcast episode it's all about how to allow your kid to find out what his/her passion is, and to enable him/her to do that wholeheartedly. For Adam, it was crafting, making things out of other things. For his kids, it's music. It's all possible, and it's all equally awesome!
One quote towards the end of the broadcast stood out in particular:
'...enabling your kid to be obsessive, and then allowing them to fail.'I find the ideas they pitch here fascinating, and hope I can mirror them some day in the future. It's not easy when, as a kid, you're wanting to learn ballet, only to hear after class that you're not dancing the right way. As mentioned in this podcast, such an attitude makes a kid too self conscious which backfires at a later age. For me it sure did.
I often feel silly and stupid for the things I chose to like as a result of a lot of negative feedback in the early years. I love mushrooms, for instance, and in autumn I like to go out and about collecting them with the mushroom knife, and determine my finds later on. but in the back of my head there's always that voice belittling my hobbies, saying they're dumb, saying I am not doing it right.
Therefore, from now on, I too shall live with the passion of a geek. It's good enough to merely be interested in something, find out about it, make it your own. There is no right or wrong. Working in a fashion-y field made me interesting in sewing, and a week ago I made three pillow cases, and I felt amazing.
Let's hear it for the Geeks!
