Cultivating passion in kids

The sacred yes (see my earlier blogs), though essential for adults, should begin to be built into a young person’s spirit early in life. By defining the first part of life as an age of setting limits, I’m not saying you shouldn’t simultaneously encourage a young person to dream. My point is, if the ego isn’t restrained and humility and self-control learned, the false self will run amok. A personal Copernican revolution needs to occur so that the individual does not place themselves at the center of the universe.

Bill Wilkie wrote me the following email on the sacred yes and the sacred no which adds some helpful nuance to the discussion.

“I have a six year old granddaughter who verbalized her passion for horses at age three. She still needs the structure of NO, but she really thrives under the YES associated with her passion: visits to the local barn with 50 horses where she is allowed to go into the corral when she visits grandpa; riding lessons at age five when they normally start lessons at 8; visits this next summer for four weeks to her other grandfather’s ranch in Oklahoma (with a small herd of 15 paint horses) to learn riding and leather work to make a saddle; learning the scientific parts of a horse, etc.

Christmas and birthday gifts are horse-related. We talk about careers.

She has been told and knows that she can change her passion at any time. She and her brother who is five can carry on a conversation with an adult and will often ask them what their passion is. The adult looks askance and often out of embarrassment asks, “Well what is your passion?” The child knows and can talk about it.

My grandson is five and his passion is airplanes. More specifically, Blue Angels. He looks at DVD’s that are not just stories but histories or analyses of airplanes. On the way to school this week, his sister was talking about learning to train horses from her grandfather. Garrett chimed in that he was going to train other people how to fly.

I don’t know where that came from but he will take lessons as soon as his feet can touch the controls, he will be a pilot at 14, and if he sustains this interest, he will be an instructor at 18 and earn his way through college at $30/hour rather than minimum wage. He will leave college with no debt and he will pay for his entire education. We may invest some money in his school for him to develop a skill like flying instructor that will empower him.

Now, to the question of saying NO to adult children. I believe that if you say YES often enough (and we just went through this with my son), you can earn the right to speak into their lives and say NO by indicating that you disagree with reasons with some action they are contemplating.

But you have to be in a relationship driven by saying YES that positions you to have access early in the decision process. You cannot say NO after the fact. It does not work.”