Marla Olmstead, Professional Child Artist Prodigy
Instead, focus on quality. Phaedrus’ definition of quality. Natural inclinations mixed with care.
Adult art classes focus on emulating styles but ignore natural inclinations of quality. Child art classes enable natural inclinations through negligence of care for love and passion and focus.
The best art teacher encourages natural inclinations while encouraging passionate care and focus in your work, as well as holding high standards to a students commitment in their craft.
Otherwise, you’re better off teaching your kid yourself than paying for an expensive class full of unfocused children and unpassionate and “low standards” teachers.
The life skills training company for children CharismaticKid has just released a new site. Bullying has been a huge problem for children from grade school all the way to college and even beyond into the workplace. People are talking about bullying, looking for help, looking for resources, and putting blame on other parents and the school systems.
OnBullying.com is a website dedicated to providing the most up-to-date news on bullying occurring around the world, advice on bullying from experts, interviews with children who have been bullied, as well as products and services such as “bully video coaching for teens” and “Bullyproof: The Book.”
All of these resources are made to help people learn how to find solutions to the bullying problem going on in the world. And not just to find a place to do more blaming, but to look deep inside and realize that the only way that someone can have bullying leave his life is by changing himself first.
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/02/us-bullying-newyork-idUSTRE7911EI20111002]
Jamey Rodemeyer was a fourteen year old boy bullied for being gay. He looked to making videos on the internet as a way for release. Lada Gaga was a source of confidence for him.
My condolences to Jamey’s family. Bullying should never happen. But here’s the cold, hard, reality. Bullying will ALWAYS happen. To the parents that want to leave town or homeschool their kid, or just change to a different school in the neighborhood, you are teaching your child to RUN AWAY from problems.
Jamey’s guidance counselors simply told him to stop hanging with so many girls. That has nothing to do with it! Nobody was on Jamey’s side. Nobody knew how to teach Jamey the right way to feel about himself, and Jamey Rodemeyer committed suicide because of it.
The real solution is to teach your child how to deal with bullying on his or her own. Either that or you can hire me.
To think that even after Jamey had killed himself from what they had done, they still say, “Better off dead.” It only proves that there are people in the world that will always be bullying others. Parents, don’t teach your kids to hide, or even stick up for themselves. The trick is to teach them how to feel equal around others.
At first read through of her article, which you can find HERE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/betsy-brown-braun/finding-their-passion-rea_b_991621.html
I was only slightly upset to see she is telling parents not to help their children find their passions in life. As if it is laughable for a child to be able to do this. So I commented:
Oh I’m going to have to politely disagree with you on this one. I find that kids LOVE doing stuff that interests them. And that’s all a passion really is. They feel SUPER GOOD when they can take that passion and bring joy towards others with it.
I think you’re mixing up the difference between parents FORCING kids to do stuff they dont want to do… and then parents ALLOWING kids to do stuff they WISH THEY COULD.
Is this a piece on telling parents to stop giving their children passions? Or is this a piece saying that you wish for your child NOT to be passionate about life? I’m confused.
But while I was cooking a vegan lunch for myself, emotions were stirring up in me. I was thinking of the children committing suicide because they felt inadequate in life. And this article started making me committed to letting parents know that it is OKAY for children to want to do something big. It is okay for them to want to do things they love.
Times are a changin’, and becoming successful in life is different than it was fifty years ago. Enter my second response to Betsy Brown Braun’s “Finding Their Passion… Really?”
[This was written all at once in the heat of PASSION (that's right) so please forgive any grammar or spelling mistakes.]
I’m actually not finished. I feel like there are a lot of kids out there that feel like CRAP going to school each day because they feel worthless. They feel like they have no reason for being on this planet, and thats why so many are committing suicide ‘out of nowhere.’
Hearing about that type of stuff sickens me. If they felt like they had a purpose in life, they had something that made them GREAT, they wouldn’t feel so crappy.
I’m coaching a 16 year old right now that hates his life because he feels worthless about EVERYTHING. Nobody cares about him, in fact the only thing that people do to him at school is make fun of him. Because of this, he thinks theres no reason to be living on this planet.
I’m working with him to help him not only gain confidence and social skills, but also to help him FIND PASSIONS… and then DO SOMETHING with those passions. No Betsy, not so he can go to hardvard or show off to people that he’s good at something. No, not to FILL UP HIS SCHEDULE to make it look like hes a busy person, but because he is constantly HOPING that he can do something that can bring joy to others. He wants to connect with something that he loves, and I’m enabling him to do that.
In the ‘olden days’ as you like to say, kids didnt NEED to find things they loved at an early age. WHY? Because everyone had the same job as adults: work at a factory, or work at a company following ORDERS.
Today its totally different. If you want your kid working a normal mediocre job that is FINE. I am okay with that because those types of people are necessary in the world and if that makes them happy, then I understand.
But to the parents that WANT their children to grow up doing something that they love, having their children DO SOMETHING BIG at a young age is CRITICAL. No, the point is not to know what your career will be when you are 9 years old. That’s not the point. The point is getting your child feeling comfortable with taking on the attributes of a confident, passionate person at a young age so when they get to the age where they are able to TACKLE life, they are fearless, and already have a handle on what it means to take risks and lead people.
Just because ballet wasn’t what that girl ended up being, her passion for SOMETHING transferred to a job as an educator. But what about the children that never latched on to ANYTHING in their lives? The ones that just floated on by without growing passionate about doing something big? I know many of them, they are most of the people from my high school class still living in their parents basements. They ask me how they can find something they like.. because they majored in something random in college they didn’t care about. But what if they did something big at a younger age? Not PUSHED, but enabled?
Most kids I think have it understood by adults that they are incapable of doing big things, so they resign to video games and TV. I think you are not only trying to stay with traditional, outdated methods of how life should be, but neglecting the fact that children have more potential to make something great at a young age than you’d think. All we have to do is ALLOW them. In fact, I think most children can connect with their creativity better than adults. Why don’t they utilize this amazing attribute instead of say, “They are too young! They aren’t ready… let them wait 20 years until they CAN do this stuff.”
Betsy, its not that kids are being forced to do things… maybe some parents are forcing their kids. I’m not here to talk about that.
I’m here to tell you and parents reading this that most kids WISH they had the opportunity to do something big, and to be seen as someone with value. Because when you can actually allow your child to do cool stuff they never knew they could, you’ll see their world change. They hit an equilibrium in life where they can no longer feel inadequate, but valuable to this planet. Feeling like they belong.
