Serve your kids' interests

What? Serve your kids? Don't they get enough from you already? Well, to be honest, watching kids develop is one of the finest perks of parenthood. A newborn arrives all helpless and cute, but pretty much without personality---except for the degree of anger they show when hungry, tired, uncomfortable, etc. As time passes more individuality emerges and they become a lot more charming. As you know, I think teen-hood is the pinnacle of adolescent adorability, and during these years kids have a well-oiled set of preferences and interests. This makes life more interesting.

I learned about childrens' preferences first through Christian. When he was a toddler, I saw a gymnast in him. His father has the compact gymnast build and I saw our little Christian as a budding "Daddy." At an early age I took Christian to gymnastics lessons, but he seemed bored. Finally we dropped the program.

Later Christian wanted to do soccer. But even that interest waned in a few years. Christian's true passion ended up being skateboarding. And he's good at it. One day he skateboarded for eight solid hours; not worrying about the heat, food or pretty much any other care. It was so wonderful to see him develop his passion.

Beamer's long standing interest was flying. He asked me to paint clouds on his pitched bedroom ceiling. He wanted jet posters for Christmas. He built model airplanes. In ninth grade he joined the Air Force Junior ROTC. He had the opportunity to complete pilot ground school by age 16, but in the end his interest in flying waned.

Enter riflery. Now that has become his sincere interest. Sparing the details, he has hunted bunnies, coyotes, and elk. He enjoys target

practice and even convinced Stina and me to go shooting on a blazingly hot afternoon. Stina and I became converted to riflery after using his souped-up-user-friendly .22 helped us nail our targets. OK, so happiness can be found on a 100-degree-day in a barren dessert.

There are few physical things I would buy my kids to spoil them. But if they develop a legitimate interest in something, I will move the cosmos to support them. It's fun, and it's one of the best things about parenting. It's self-renewing because it's what they want to do. Serve your kids' interests; it may serve yours as well.

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