How Do You Inspire Your Kids?

Good Question!!! Inspiring my kids to desire an education and want to study is one of my personal goals. I often think about those speakers who inspire me after I listen to them. Yes, Andrew is one of those speaker. When I finish listening to him about a subject, his excitement pours over and I am fired up, ready to go. That's what I want to do with my own kids.

One thing I must always keep in mind is that every day is not one of excitement. There are plenty of days that I go through my routine that God has given me. And, I do it with a thankful and gracious attitude. One thing I think we must remember as we strive to inspire our kids is to also teach them to do the routine things happily. There are times to do the day-in and day-out activities with a great attitude. Training our kids now will produce pleasant adults in the future.

On the other hand, I think there is always room to add inspiration, excitement and enthusiasm to our kids' days. How to do that? I do think our kids can see when we are truly excited about something, be it education, hobbies or a family activity. I am looking for things that interest my kids and trying to tie their learning to those interest. For instance, my daugher and so love sports. My daughter found a book about Derek Jeter when we went on our back-to-school lunch. I told her to put it in the basket. The first day of school Derek Jeter's biography was waiting in my son's stack of new school books and supplies. My daughter also found some books about soccer so we bought those for her to read. She is suppose to read through them and talk to me about what makes a good athlete and a good team player. Eventually, she may write a paper about this topic. Since we are still working out our schedule, she has not had a lot of time to read those books. Hopefully, it will smooth out next week.

Find out what makes your child tick! Use it to inspire them to study. Many kids are interested in sports and it is a great avenue to teach character, study skills, writing skills and so on. If they enjoy what they are reading, they will probably enjoy talking about it, too.

Does this mean your children might not read all the books you have planned? (talking to myself especially) YES! I let my son choose a book and then I choose a book. Then, I can direct some of his readings but he still has some choice. In fact my son asked me this week if he could make more choices about his studies. I am looking at ways to "let go" a bit.

I am not inspired, just perspired! (quote from Jill Pike) That may be how you feel since inspiring others take much time & energy. If you have other ideas, please share.

Kerry