Element as described by Sir Ken Robinson is the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together. He believes it is essential that each of are children finds his or her “Element”. It is a place that can turn our underachievers, our kids into happy warriors.
So who is Ken Robinson?And what is his mention doing in a parenting blog?
Ken Robinson is a TED Speaker who also writes brilliantly about the different ways in which creativity is undervalued and ignored especially in our educational systems. A problem that we all are facing with our growing children…. schools aren’t encouraging them to find their passion, we parents have no idea what makes them tick ….and they in turn are unable to find their element. And a whole lot of them in senior years seem lost, standing on the crossroads , trying to choose the right subjects and start the conversations with counsellors on where they want to go and what they want to do in their careers, in their lives from here on.
It requires hard work on us parent’s part to open the dialogue much earlier, even when they are babies, about who they are? What are their passions? Their talents? …. and if academics doesn’t excite them….. they don’t have to take the traditional route because the world has changed and the most important ingredient in the recipe of success is putting all our passion into our work and finding our Element.
It is one of the most important job for us parents to provide opportunities, channelize, debate and question our children regularly and encourage them to find out who they are , where they would want to go, what is it that keeps them up in the night, what is it they can’t stop thinking about….(disregarding off course the fact our children can all stay up all night long on the snapchat, social media and the internet fever doesn’t for sure qualify all of them to become software engineers, Ha Ha Ha).
We parents should never underestimate the importance of helping our children find early in their lives -the kind of work that for them will always be or mostly be play. All our children need …is…..to be allowed to be who they really are!
I have tried , tried hard to keep the dialogue open, encouraged my kids to think on their own, sometimes egged them towards things I thought they had passion for, other times let them drop out of activities that they were clearly doing out of compulsion. It’s worked as I feel they seemed to have found their element( for the time being at least. What they’ll do in future is not known, but they seem to have found the way to their heart and they look like happy warriors (with some occasional doubts for sure).And that’s okay because we humans won’t be humans if sometimes we didn’t complain when the going gets tough).
It seems my children are on their chosen path and a mother’s heart can only wish for them to keep following their dreams, their passions and that they are able to find their own special place where the things they love to do and the things they are good at will hopefully come together for them ….Always or Most Often at least!