There is always a parenting battle between encouraging your children to pursue their passion and directing them towards them to live a life or choose a career that seems more practical and proven successful. However, an increasing number of parents are now becoming open-minded and letting their children follow their dream path.
The big question is how do you help your children discover their true passion? Here are some ways you can do so.
Expose Them to Different Activities
Arts, music, dance, STEM, martial arts, sports, cooking, photography – let your children explore all these activities at their own pace. You can enrol them in hobby classes and see which activity your children find most interesting. Do they feel excited? Do they look forward to the class?
If in doubt, about what will capture their imagination, enrol them for some free demo classes here.
Observe Their Behaviour
When children are enthusiastic about something, they want to spend considerable time doing it. They are eager to learn something new about that activity, work persistently to move to the next level, gather more information about it, etc. This behaviour is an indication that your children’s passion in that field.
Let Them Think Outside the Box
At times, the passion emerges from something unexpected or unimaginable. This is possible only when you give free and experiential play time instead of structured learning or instructions. This will help your children unleash new aspects of their personality and discover their hidden passion.
Avoid Setting Expectations
It is important to remember that your children may be still in the process of discovering their passion. If you start setting performance expectations, then they might lose interest in it soon. When they fall short of your expectations or feel performance pressure, they will feel ashamed or guilty, and quit that activity.
Normalise Failures
Let’s say, your children love to play sports at a competitive level. In such a case, they undoubtedly have to perform well if they want to become professional players. However, make sure that you normalise their failures instead of rebuking them. Encourage them to keep a growth mindset.
Give a Break
It is quite normal for children to lose interest in an activity when the novelty wears down or for some other reason. Don’t push them to do things they don’t want to do. Give them a break for a few days or weeks and ask them if they want to try that activity again.
Passion comes from within; it can’t be forced upon your child. Some children are late bloomers and they discover their passion in teens or even later as adults. As parents, your duty is to give them wings to fly and have their back to bear their falls.
