Explore and appreciate the strengths of your loved ones.
My oldest son’s strength are cerebral. I let him think. After school today, the weather was great, and we all wanted to go to a park and play. Except the oldest son, who wanted to stay indoors and play Minecraft or with lego or read with me. We went out in the end, though, much to his dismay — and when we were outside, he didn’t want to do anything but follow me around and talk about the world. Go play, I said, climb somewhere, find some other kids to play with. But no, he stayed with me, except for the occasional nagging of his little brother, until I walked home with the baby and he stayed with his mother and brother.
At home, he wanted to read with me. Please please please dad! he reads two book at the moment, and he wants to finish them before he moved on to other books: On of them is this one, the other one is this one. Today we read about quarks. About neutrinos and electrons and all that stuff I never bothered to learn much about at school. (I’ve learned more about them with my six-year-old son than ever before.) And he loved it.
Yes, he is annoyingly lazy at times. And yes, his 4 year old brother runs faster than him. But that is not his strength. His strength is thinking about the world.
And that’s what I am trying to let him do.
On Old Age 