Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Now that Anya is in K2 (read: Kindergarten 2, the year before she goes to Primary One here in Singapore), I get to see more of her love for writing and words.

Which to me is interesting, especially since she’s (only) SIX years old.

[I know I was totally NOT like her when I was her age! I was more interested in climbing poles, gates and roofs, haha]

She likes to play the game ‘Scramble’ (pictured right) whenever we let her play with Daddy’s iphone.

She would take note of words on the streets or on the bus and say to me, ‘Mommy, I now know how to spell EMERGENCY! Can I spell it for you now?’

She would ask me how to spell certain words even when she’s in the toilet!

And she told me last night how she likes writing better than drawing (though she actually draws a lot).

…

Just last week, I introduced to her how fun creating rhymes – using Indonesian words – can be, hehe.

And now she’d create rhymes in Indonesian, like:

Ada anak namanya Apit.
Kalau makan pakenya sumpit.
Tangannya pernah kejepit.
Terus dia teriak, ‘Sakit! Sakit!’

[Errr … sorry, can’t quite translate it to English and STILL make it rhyme, hehe]

…

Yesterday she had her first ‘spelling test’ at school, … and she did well.

And I’m not surprised, … looking at her fascination with words all this while, I mean.

…

In our family, we try to always encourage our kids to continually explore and develop their potentials. But the thing is, we of course do not wish to see them going to the other ‘extreme’.

We don’t want them to use their talents (or whatever that they’re good at) solely for their own benefits.

We don’t want them to be selfish people who place their confidence solely on themselves and their own merits.

And so we make it a point to explain to them (and insert these values in our day to day conversation), the points below:

– IF we have been blessed with a talent to write (or with ANY kind of talent for that matter), then we MUST continually explore and develop it, BECAUSE we need to learn to be responsible and accountable for everything that we do and have

– IF we can excel in anything, it’s only because of God’s grace

– God may bless us with a talent (or two, or more), BUT it’s also our responsibility to develop and nurture THAT talent. And this means we ourselves need to put in the effort, time and persistence in developing what we’ve been given

– We need to always remember to be thankful to God for what we’ve been given

– God wants us to use those talents to glorify Him, and to be a blessing to others (like, for Anya’s case, if she has the talent to write, then she needs to use her writing to encourage others, etc)

…

Sure is a whole lot of life principles that the kids need to learn to apply.

In fact, each and every point applies to us all too, doesn’t it?

And we all know it won’t be easy.

Which is why we need to depend on HIS grace even more.

Every day.