As I'm sitting here in my office, I'm looking at what I believe is my favorite picture of my son. It's a closeup of him playing outside on a small plastic slide. He's been playing in the water and he takes to climbing that slide like he's been doing it for years, although he wasn't very old at the time. I use that same picture on our nonprofit website and the raising positive children group site as well. It has become one of my favorites.
As I think back on those times, it dawned on me that his early influences took on a permanent role in his life. For example, the slide was actually a plastic elephant that stood about 2 feet tall. Three small steps in the back that allowed him to walk up while holding onto the ears of the elephant and then he would slide down what appeared to be his trunk. When you stood back and looked at the slide it was one big elephant head.
Later on, when we wanted to start our son playing tee-ball. We went shopping for a baseball glove. We were looking at all the brown leather gloves and then he came to us with the one he wanted. It was a green glove with ninja turtles all over it.
I played baseball all my life and was considered a jock in high school so you can imagine my surprise. We bought the glove he wanted and you can imagine what the team photo looks like. He's the only one with a cartoon version baseball glove. At an early age he was showing signs of what his true passion was and it wasn't baseball. We never pushed him to play sports again. We saw that it was what we wanted for him, not what he wanted.
Later in life, my old baseball friends couldn't believe that my son wasn't playing baseball. They thought it would a have been a natural fit since all their sons were playing ball. We decided not to force sports on him but to see what he would naturally choose as his passion.
I'm glad we did, because it was just a few years later that he showed us what he wanted to do with his life. He became an artist and he loves to this day, to draw cartoons. He's one of the top cartoonist at his school. He's now in his 5th year in college and he's simply amazing.
While we like going down memory lane with him. We are also reminded of the day we took him to a local photographer to have his high school senior portraits made. After we were just about done, he walked over to his mother and asked if he could have one more picture taken but it was going to be a joke. He told her that he had worn his "Cat in the Hat" boxers and he wanted to take a picture of him standing with his tuxedo top, boxers and sock feet. We were surprised that he would even have the guts to ask the photographer if he could drop his pants.
It turned out to be such a photo that paints his nature that we ended up making that our christmas card for the year and sent it to all our friends. They appreciated it because they knew our son's own personality as well.
So remember, our early influences on our children will make a more lasting impression than you might would think.
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