Recently my son Matthew attended
Astrocamp with some of his GATE classmates. He spent a wonderful weekend learning about the solar system, launching bottle rockets, swimming, and playing with lights and lasers. I couldn't wait for him to arrive home and share all the details of his exciting adventure. However, my enthusiasm
dissipated when I learned that the mother of one of his classmates had died unexpectedly in her sleep while her son had been at
Astrocamp.
Although I was not acquainted with this mother, and in fact had seen her only once, I was deeply affected by her death and how it would be experienced by her young son. To make matters worse, the boy's father is suffering from cancer. As I thought about their family and heartache they must be experiencing, I couldn't help but wonder how my kids would fare if I were to leave them. And I wondered if I had been successful in passing down to my children those things which are of most value to me.
Although I have succeeded in passing down many of my values and interests, I haven't been very
successful at passing down my love of reading. Don't get me wrong, my children are good readers and
diligently complete their required reading. However none of them have a passion for reading, and that makes me very sad. I long for them to gain the education, insight, empathy, and experience they can gain from reading good literature.
One of my goals for the near future is pass down my love of reading. As I've pondered exactly how to do this, I've come to the conclusion that my kids need to spend more time reading, and as they do so they will learn to love it. Currently, I require my sons Matthew and Jonathon to each read for thirty minutes each morning, but I think I'm going to add some afternoon reading to that. I am also going to start giving
Makenna a daily reading requirement. Kevin doesn't read yet, but I'm going to increase the amount of time I read with him. I'm also going to make an effort to read books with my older children as well. Hopefully, as I increase my efforts, I can help my kids to learn to love reading as much as I do.
Recently my son Matthew attended Astrocamp with some of his GATE classmates. He spent a wonderful weekend learning about the solar system, launching bottle rockets, swimming, and playing with lights and lasers. I couldn't wait for him to arrive home and share all the details of his exciting adventure. However, my enthusiasm dissipated when I learned that the mother of one of his classmates had died unexpectedly in her sleep while her son had been at Astrocamp. 
No comments:
Post a Comment