showcase – Page 4

She Got a Degree Instead of a Talent

Christine was a very studious homeschooled girl who went to a prestigious college where she studied the classics of literature and got amazing grades. Her parents generously and sacrificially spent $120,000 of their hard earned money for that 4 year university degree. But where is she now? Now she’s stuck working in a small low-paying cafeteria job with no marketable skill. Consider how much happier she would be had her parents bucked conformity and spent instead the $120,000 developing her writing skill and her love of California history to such an extent that she made a generous living writing wildly popular and historically accurate Gold Rush themed scripts for downloadable Murder Mystery Dinner parties.

Being Short-Changed by a Hobby?

Jonathan

Is your child’s future being short-changed by a hobby?

Are you not expecting that your son’s future will be supported by his current soccer-meets?

Then your child is developing a soccer hobby, not a talent.

Are you not expecting that your son will make a living by swimming for endorsements?

Then your child is developing a swim hobby, not a talent.

Are you not expecting that your daughter’s future will be spent doing gymnastics on bars?

Then your child is developing a gymnastics hobby, not a talent.

Start Your Child’s Blog with Posterous

Jonathan

https://posterous.com/

To start your child’s first blog today that takes just minutes to set up, I recommend using Posterous. Five of my children currently use Posterous because they can update it from phones, web browsers, and even by email. You can load just pictures too, which is very convenient for younger children when they want to show more than explain or discuss what they are doing. The blog will also allow you to have it titled with the right descriptive you want without having to yet buy a domain name. I recommend your child creates multiple blogs, one for each big skill he is developing as part of his talent.

How to Pitch Yourself to Next Level of Expertise

Jonathan

Use Physical Item to Help Walk Through Presentation

Is your child trying to pitch himself to the next level of expertise in a club or asking a group for an opportunity to exercise for them an aspect of his talent? I asked for advice from my friend Carl Miller, an expert on staging yourself in theater and an accomplished public speaker. Here are some tips I came away with:

Have child create a portfolio of his accomplishments, whether of the physical items themselves, or of the photos of the work, or the paperwork.
Give a presentation that sounds natural by simply talking and walking through the order of your portfolio.
Pass around in the audience a physical item that represents your abilities and helps the audience follow the details you want to emphasize in your presentation.
Finish the presentation with a direct appeal to what your child wants and with an attitude that, because of the portfolio of accomplishments, the request is a reasonable one to make of the audience.

Turn Hobby Into Talent By Creating Value for Others

Jonathan

English: Photograph of a guitar taken in a loc... — Even a guitar loving boy can morph his hobby into a talent by bringing value to others. (Photo credit: Wikipedia; author: Dane Austin Carney; Permission: Creative Commons License)

Your child is moving from hobby (value to self only) to talent (value to others) if you can report something like this fictional Mother-of-an-Artist:

My 14 year old guitar playing son started making custom guitar decals over the past year for his friends, discovered that some styles are more popular than others, and is even selling a few of those on Etsy and eBay. As a result, he is interacting with a lot of other guitar players and is starting to buy and sell and fix up used guitars. Just last week, he got his first request to do the web art for a small online music store because a music composer saw his art on a student’s guitar. He still loves his music, but he seems a lot more energetic and upbeat about the future.

Hobby brings smiles – Talent brings cash

Jonathan

Boy with cool glasses — Is your child developing a hobby or a talent? Find out before his time runs out and you have to let him loose on the world.

What is the difference between a hobby and a talent?

A hobby is a skill that is designed primarily to please yourself.

A talent is a skill set that is designed to please others.

You know that a developed talent pleases others because they are willing to pay cold, hard cash for your output. For your hobby they will only pay you with a smile.

The Case of “Bull’s Eye Jane”

Jonathan

Problem: your daughter has spent a good portion of her teenage years enjoying sports in general and archery specifically, but there is no possibility this could help support her in motherhood or pay the bills for college. She is known in her small archery club as “Bull’s Eye Jane.”

Solution: your daughter combines her beautiful-to-watch archery skills with market valued skills that others will gladly pay for.

Daughter takes physics textbooks and creates free YouTube videos of herself shooting arrows from her pink power bow with close-ups, slow-motions, and sub-texts that demonstrate specific principles found in the textbooks. She sells accompanying science guides containing clever Mnemonics that use archery and sports moves to lock in the memory in preparation of science exams. Homeschool mothers everywhere love her and she becomes known as “The Flying Arrow Girl of Science.”

The Case of “The Piano Player in Placerville”

Jonathan

Cell Phone Ring Tone — Creating unique piano ring tones is useful for this generation and requires a new combination of piano playing and other skills to make it happen

Problem: your child has developed a skill that allows him to play the piano very well in small local gatherings, events, and weddings, but he has little chance of making a living because technology has replaced him in most events by pre-recorded, low-cost musical alternatives. He is starting to be known as “The Piano Player in Placerville.”

Solution: your child combines his piano playing ability with other skills so he transforms the old talent into a new and very valued talent to the current generation.

Child plays piano well and edits his recordings to turn them into unique ring tones that current generation purchases and downloads to help manage their mobile devices. Child also creates free YouTube videos and sells guides to other piano players so they can do the same. He is now known on the Internet as “The Ring Tone Piano Guy.”

Need Talent – Signed Mother of an Artist

Jonathan

Your child needs a talent, if you find yourself saying:

“My 14 year old son is deeply immersed in playing his guitar faithfully every day for hours on end. I admire his dedication, but I’m worried he will graduate from High-School with no job prospects and the harsh reality of making a living will disillusion him. I see potential, but I’m not sure what the future holds for him in this area.”

Signed, “Mother of an Artist.”

Need Talent – Signed Love My Alma Mater But Not That Much

Jonathan

Your child needs a talent, if you find yourself saying:

“Both my wife and I have bachelor and master degrees and my children’s grandparents keep checking to see if we are making active college plans for our own children. My concern is that with so much emphasis on college, my children will wind up with nice sounding degrees, but still have no marketable skills. I want their degrees to have a plan attached to it.”

Signed, “Love-My-Alma-Mater-But-Not-That-Much-Dad”

Need Talent – Signed Not Afraid to Get My Hands Dirty

Jonathan

A modern painter and decorator. — Worried that your son is entering a job market over-saturated with painters? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your child needs a talent, if you find yourself saying:

“My 16 year old son is a very dependable and hardworking young man. He accompanies his father on many jobs in our family run painting business and is becoming a very good painter in his own right. But lately, husband and I have concerned that he will be entering a market already over-saturated with excellent painters with no room for newcomers to make a full-time living. Is all this expertise he has built up lost time?”

Signed, “Not-Afraid-to-Get-My-Hands-Dirty-Mom”

Need Talent – Signed Frazzled Mom

Jonathan

Your child needs a talent if you find yourself saying:

“My 13 year old son is exhausting our family because he has so many interests. I’m glad he is enthusiastic, but we never seem to stick long enough with one activity to make a difference to his schooling or to his ability to become really good at something.”

Signed, “Frazzled-Mom”

Need Talent – Signed I-Got-My-Eyes-On-You

Jonathan

You need your child to develop a talent if you find yourself saying:

“Help! My sweet 16 year old daughter is starting to attract the attention of older homeschooling boys who don’t have a plan beyond working part-time at the local YMCA. She needs a focused talent to expand her world and make her more attractive to eligible bachelors with high expectations.”

Signed, “I-got-my-eyes-on-you-Dad”

Need Talent – Signed Practical Dad

Jonathan

Your child needs a talent, if you find yourself saying:

“My wife is using a great Christian homeschooling curriculum and she is very happy about its emphasis on character development. I’m happy with it too, but my concern is, will good character alone pay the bills?”

Signed, “Practical Dad”