Parenting Skills for the Twenty First Century: Develop Your Child’s Talents: Catch Them Young

PARENTING SKILLS FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY-

Develop Your Child’s Talents: Catch them young! Jamila Shu’ara*

Introduction

Talent is a demonstrable natural ability to excel at a particular activity without instruction or being taught. A talent is a unique, natural, creative, athletic or artistic ability of a person. Talent is not taught, it is inherent but it can be improved upon so as to get the best from the talented person. Everyone has a hidden talent and everyone is gifted in something but most times innate abilities are often overlooked especially at young age – the period when talents are better identified and nurtured. Discover your child's talents. Whatever talents they have, assist them to put it to use, if you don’t it diminishes. Whatever you don’t use; you lose. Whatever you don’t use you forfeit.

Quotes

- Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible with talent is genius Henri Frederic Amiel - Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. Leo Buscaglia There are many examples of talents including: oratory, mathematical, painting, acting, eyehand coordination, singing, charisma, listening, innovation, etc. Many parents spend a great deal of resources developing the child’s intellectual ability while activities (extra curricula and sports) that expose innate talents are kept behind the burner.

Discover Your Child’s Talent

1. Identify the activities that the child does with ease: abilities in athletics, creative skills, artistic work, drama, networking etc. Examine activities the child loves doing with little prompting to determine a pattern of their talents. 2. Explore and experiment on learning new skills and new things. Introduce the child to new challenges in baking, debate, spelling, sports, pottery, writing, computer literacy, etc to assess the quality of their strength if it is worth exploiting. 3. Examine the child’s past achievements. Look at laurels, certificates or badges awarded in

“best” or first place in a subject or an extra curricula activity; innocuous at the time of achievement but sure indicators of innate special abilities. A scrutiny of these recognitions will help to identify strengths and discover talents. 4. Find the child’s passion and what they enjoy doing: The child may have lot of things they are great at but only one thing they are very passionate about, that is their main talent. Discover the passion and assist to explore it. 5. Consider intangible talents: Talents can be intangible, and may not involve a physical ability.

Being the person people turn to when they are in a dilemma, is a talent. It does not have to be a wide circle of friends or family, a few persons your child is frequently in touch with will suffice. 6. Explore what the child does better than the peers: Analyse activities your child performs better than peers. Unique qualities are most often taken for granted. 7. Track the resources invested in an activity. Money and Time are important resources that are tell-tale when discovering talents. 8. Unravel the activity (apart from schooling) that takes a lot of the child’s spare time, and make them feel happiest and fulfilled - use of social media, web or internet connections, etc.

A talent is near to be discovered in whatever absorbs a child’s time, attention and gives pleasure. 9. Examine the child’s collection of books, music, movies, games, etc. It reflects a pattern of what is liked which in turn fires up imagination.

Conclusion

Talents are intrinsic and easy identification in children may be arduous; but many are multi-talented. As a parent, once you identify the child’s talent, take this to the next level. Assist to develop them and watch the child become a different person. Talents bring out hidden strengths that give courage and confidence to deal with life’s challenges.