Finding the Spark

My grandson, Malakai, credits his preschool teacher “Miss Ann” Pinkas with his early passion for science and current flourishing career as a nature filmmaker. He still remembers his preschool classroom and the excitement of observing baby frogs emerge from embryos and spying birds in their nests with binoculars.

Ann’s budding scientists studied the life cycle of birds, how they built their nests, found food, raised their young, and migrated. Malakai says, “We even dissected owl pellets to figure out what the birds had eaten.” Ann followed the children’s individual interests knowing that the subjects that piqued their curiosity at four were sparks that could light the fire of their life-long learning.

For several years, Malakai talked to anyone who would listen about the lives of birds. He was the bird guy. Then, around the age of seven, he turned his interest to another form of wildlife: fish. Suddenly, his fascination with life in the sky turned to the wonder of the underwater world that continues to this day. This week he sent me a film of himself playing with a baby whale.

All interests don’t turn into careers, nor should they. As a child I was fascinated by rocks and collecting them, but I didn’t become a geologist. However, adults listening to why I found a particular piece of quartz beautiful validated my sense that I had chosen a worthy passion.

Over decades of watching children grow up, I am struck again and again by the importance of encouraging them to immerse themselves in subjects that speak to them. At school we love hearing about children’s knowledge of ancient history, space travel, Legos, making miniatures, cartooning, wild horses, and we often encourage them to go deeper.

An elementary teacher describes how she urged a boy obsessed with making paper airplanes to delve into the characteristics of different planes in order to make his creations more realistic. Concentrating helps us forget about ourselves, but it also helps children to form a self-identity, even if it’s temporary. A child may not be the best runner in class but may be the most avid artist. This belief that their interests have value becomes more important as children get older.

As they move into adolescence, the ability to believe in the worthwhileness of their own interests can help inure young to peer group pressure and values and help them rely on their own sense of what’s important in life. Sometimes young people need encouragement to find that spark. One of the most important questions we can a child at any age is “What excites you?”