Talented Kids: Have you ever notice that your child has special qualities? Is more sensitive than most kids to other peoples feeling? Can they recall things easily? Tells tall tales? Makes up stories or repeats the stories they’ve heard or watched? Do they like live theater? Do they like to write their thoughts or a story down? Draw beautifully, or just draws, colors, water paints, a lot? Walks around the house humming or singing? Taps fingers, pencils, toes to a rhyme or beat? Tears things apart and puts it back together again, kinda? Uses different things to make something? Can hit, run and throw a ball with speed and precision? Likes to question everything? Debates everything? Knows the make, model and engine size of every car or motorcycle? Thinks nature is beautiful and loves to be outdoors? Thinks rocks are beautiful and special? And here’s one you don’t see too often in kids, do they like to organize things?
This list can go on and on. Whereas, some of it might even annoy you, all of these attributes can be the first signs of a hidden talent that will progress and come into full bloom when they are older. With the right encouragement and guidance, any of these “annoyances” can be natured into a lifelong skill, dreams or a career. It’s not always easy to nurture this raw talent and encourage these potential gifts. Last summer, I took the boy for guitar lessons. He liked learning, but he did not like going to the lessons, he’d rather play. Even his teacher said he was a natural, but it was such a struggle to get him to practice.
What I’d really like to get at, is the fact that our drug use, drinking and crazy lifestyle may have prevented us from developing our natural talents. It’s possible we had parents that didn’t notice our talents, or care because they did not know how to nurture us or they didn’t have the ways and means to help. When parents are too busy, too stressed, too drunk or loaded or just plain non attentive for whatever reason, the child can be lost.
I teach a class that is all about the typical alcoholic/drug addicted family. We discuss the birth order and the patterns that can be found repeatedly in these families. That’s if they even stay in tact for that long, still the scenario goes something like this, it’s just an example: Dependent: Dad, Co-dependent/Chief enablers: Mom. 1st child: Hero child. 2nd child: scapegoat. 3rd child: Loner child/forgotten child. 4th, Comic relief. Now, these roles can be all switched up, and some of the children can have a double role, this is just a baseline. Of all these roles it can most likely be the Hero or the Loner child that develops some talents of their own, even on their own, while nobody’s watching.
Do you see yourself in any of these roles? I’m not going to expound on them here, the name of the role speaks for itself. Or maybe you were or have a little comic child. They can grow up to be great at so many things, like cheering people up through so many different ways. Anyone of these can be shown how to channel their talents, heal from a life of addiction whether it’s theirs or their parents and learn how to focus on what they really enjoy doing the most. I would like to recommend a book by Julia Cameron called “The Artist Way”. She herself is in recovery and uses what she has gained from her own journey to teach others how to open up and develop their lost, hidden talents and dreams. No matter what it is you think you have a calling, a desire to do. Whether, it’s writing, painting, sculpting, dance, singing, playing an instrument or photography. What ever your heart is telling you to do. Do it, go for it. Seek out people who do that, take a class, spend time working on that talent, get lessons, join a Facebook page that is all about what you love to do, or would love to do. I do highly recommend The Artist Way. They have a Facebook page as well.
Meanwhile, if you are raising kids, take notice of some of the things that they gravitate towards. However, if they are drawing on the walls, so you nurture that talent, buy coloring books, paper, color pencils, paints and whatever you can to help them, and then, it just doesn’t pan out and they are on to the next great thing, they want to be number one on a video game or out playing baseball or sports or just be outside, that’s ok. They learned that they were encouraged and they have someone in their corner. They learned a little more about drawing than most kids and maybe later it will aide them in another endeavor. My mother always used to say, “everything you learn will help you”. I agree with that. Maybe not now or every day, but sometime, someway.
It is not at all easy raising children that are a product of addiction and hurtful lives. But encouraging them to be them and do what they love will certainly help them find themselves and heal. It will let them know that they are valuable and someone cares for them. Most of these kids do not know that just being them is enough, we have to show them that, love them for who they are. Personally, I pray a lot, I need the direction, support and strength of my God to help me help this little boy and guide him on the path that God has intended for him. My deepest prayer is that he grows up to be the kind of man, the kind of person who is respectable, trustworthy, loving, kind and happy and content in his own skin. That is what my 12 steps have given me as they help me develop a close relationship to my Higher Power. I pray the same for him, but without all the wasted years of addiction.
We lose ourselves in our addictions, families lose themselves in other people’s addictions, it’s a great American tragedy. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We do recover and when we do, we can help the healing begin in the whole family as well and hope that the patterns of addiction do not have to be our children’s legacy. The 12 step programs tell us to “get out of ourselves and help others”, whereas that is meant for us to help another addict, it also means with our families and our children and any child that has been entrusted to us. Recovery begins in the home! Who knows, maybe you will find that your hidden talent is working with children who have been damaged from the disease of addiction and need a guiding light such as yourself to find their way to their hidden talents.
Woe, a verse just popped up on my phone and I think it’s appropriate for this moment of conversation, Matthew 5: 3. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. And of course, the infamous Matthew 19:14, “Let the little children come to me.”
Question of the week: What talents do you wish you could have developed as a child? What did you want to be when you grew up?
What might you be doing now to help your child/children to grow into the best them they can be?