As parents, we always want our kids to do something other than just sit around the house and play video games or watch television. The problem is that our kids are becoming more and more resistant to doing anything that actually requires them to get emotionally invested, unless it is indeed playing video games or watching their favorite television program. As adults, we all remembered being hustled out to a number of extracurricular activities that we weren’t particularly thrilled to be doing the activities ourselves. The best way to get us to like our little hobbies and activities and the best way to get our kids to like their activities is to find the fun.
We can still dictate that they do the activities at all, we can even dictate to some degree what those activities are, but we need to let them put their own particular spin on those activities so they feel as if they have some control, while also having a little bit of fun. The beauty part is they might actually decide they enjoy the activities even if they aren’t based on staring at a screen.
Art Class
There could be a good deal of eye rolling if you tell your kid that you’ve enrolled them in an art class. The key to making sure they actually find a way to enjoy this is class. The key is to find an art program that specializes in letting the kids find the fun.
Maybe you can find a program that is being taught by an actual artists, someone who knows how to put together programs that will actually get the kids into an art show. Maybe the teacher is someone who is well known in the art community and has traveled the world. Maybe you can find someone who simply knows how to identify with the kids in a way where they aren’t simply sitting around a classroom for an hour, after they’ve already been sitting in a school room for 6 or more hours, five days a week.
Music Lessons
It seems like music lessons have long been a rite of passage when it comes to hobbies and past times for kids. Some people enroll their kids in lessons to play instruments like the violin or the cello but other kids have been lucky enough to get to pick the instrument they want to play. When the kids get to pick that instrument, it more often than not tends to be a guitar.
This doesn’t mean that they want to learn to play classical guitar so they can strum a few chords here and there. They want to learn how to play the guitar like the rock gods they hear blasting tunes out. Kids these days want to know how to play the guitar like Slash from Guns and Roses. They want to know how to really rock out.
The good news is that there is a way to teach someone how to play Slash guitar licks and this can make the kids love to learn to play music. Even if it isn’t the kind of music you are all that fond of, you just need to remind yourself that even if you don’t like those guitar licks and worry about them only wanting only playing rock music that at least they aren’t just sitting and playing video games.