Raising a Modern Day Knight - Pondering #6

Your son's desires are written on his heart. When was the last time you listened to his dreams for the future? Have you helped him set the goals he'd like to make for himself? Have you encouraged him to pursue his interests? What specific things have you done to focus him in the areas which he's naturally gifted?

I know that Rick has always been musically inclined. However, I think he is alot like me - once it's "conquered" he's ready to move on.  None-the-less, we've helped him with his instruments - violin, drums and guitar, practices and exposed him to musical venues and opportunities.

Rick also likes planes. He wants' to be a pilot. So, we've introduced him to pilots we know, the EAA, the Young Eagles Program, Dodge Co. Airport had a seminar and Matt took him. We have helped him with some initial planning to save up for flight lessons and a basic timeline of how things should/could turn out for him with regards to money and schooling.

Baking is another thing that Rick enjoys - I taught him all I know, get him what he needs and let him have at it.  He's pretty dang good with the breads.

Benjamin has always had a vivid imagination and at first we thought it was more artistic, but it turned out to be creative writing. So he's writing his novel.  To encourage this we bought him a netbook for his birthday, helped him earn money towards a full sized laptop, focused his education on English and writing and found all sorts of different authors to read for exposure to different writing styles.  The biggest thing I found for Ben was NaNoWriMo This site of forums and young authors has helped to expand his horizons tenfold!

Ben is more introverted than his extroverted older brother, so finding things for Ben was a challenge. However, we found, early on, that Ben is also very musically talented.  Once this was realized we showed him different instruments, got a few lessons in him, introduced him to all of my musically inclined family & friends. His biggest achievement was being a part of a Worship team at an area church we briefly attended. That led to playing (very seldom, but playing none-the-less) at a local Christian coffee shop, in front of STRANGERS!!  He does extremely well.  He was even able to get his bass guitar autographed by a Christian band, The Afters.  This autumn I will be organizing a youth band with practices out of our basement on Saturday mornings. The goal being to play at the Vineyard (above mentioned coffee shop).

One of my final goals for the boys is to play several songs at their joint graduation party next year! I'm so excited!