Teaching

I was looking at some stock quotes online yesterday morning when my Natalie (9) asked me what I was doing. I fielded an identical question from Amanda ten years ago when she was 7  I tried to explain the basics to Natalie but failed miserably. I know it is not important that she understand equity markets, especially at age 9, but my talk with her sister years ago ended up with Amanda buying a few shares of Disney stock. Yesterday’s discussion was brief and ended with Natalie throwing her hands in the air and saying, “I don’t get it.” I used to be able to teach my kids, but now my voice gets so strained I can’t talk. The number one reason I would want my voice back is for communicating with my children. It is very frustrating.

As I thought about this, my mind drifted back to a day maybe five years ago. My son and I used to enjoy working together in the yard, but at about age 10 other interests began to eclipse Father-Son time. I thought about how great it would have been to be a farmer a century or two ago. I’m not talking about having to butcher livestock or have a life span of 50, but just considering how awesome it would be to be able to spend so much time working alongside your boy. Oh, the things you could teach him!

Then it hit me. Although I can’t speak too well now, I can write. Now that school is out I basically have all day every day to teach my kids! I don’t mean to brag, but who gets to do that? Of course I have other things to do like my treatments and my therapy, and trying to figure out a way to make some money despite my limitations, but could I not spend a couple of hours writing each day for them? Keyboarding is not an inexhaustible resource these days, but still, I can write enough. I envision each of them spending 20 or 30 minutes with me every other day or so, having then read aloud the lessons customized specifically for them.

Monday I spent about an hour writing a story to explain capital markets to my nine-year-old. It has 11 very short chapters of about 100 words each. And there are pictures. It was challenging, but fun. Yesterday afternoon she read aloud to me the first four chapters. I’m not certain that it is sinking in, but it can’t be hurting. I also spent some time thinking of topics that I could write about to benefit the older kids. Some are religious, some secular, but all should be useful. My first wave of ideas included topics ranging from The Plan of Salvation to automating spreadsheets to Spanish grammar. Maybe I could teach Erika how to read music or I could share my thoughts on a university “General Ed” with Amanda. I could teach Natalie the rules of tennis and perhaps share a family history story with Ryan. (And I could sneak some love letters in there.)

Now, I am not yet at this parent-child mentoring Utopia. They might really resist it. Also, the list of things that I know well enough to teach is pretty short right now. I’m hopeful that once I get going more things will come to mind. Maybe some of these little lessons will be “blog appropriate” but I imagine that most of them will just be rather child-specific insights. We’ll see.