Instilling Culture and Experience

One thing I really enjoy in life is travel and experiencing other cultures, this is a common interest my wife and I both share and ironically we both come from backgrounds where our families rarely traveled outside our birth states or within a few neighboring states.   Neither of us had been out of the country until after we were married and took our first vacation to Mexico and we both have yet to visit Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia or some of the many other places we want to experience in our lifetime.

I think expanding your knowledge with other cultures is key to tolerance and growth and helps also to develop a person’s own spirit and personality.  We want our own children to experience cultures of other countries and places and this is one reason why we already have passports for our kids who are ages 6 and 3.  They have already been to Jamaica via the Disney Cruise and we plan on taking them to Europe when they are teenagers and including them with us in world travels when they are older.

Our oldest who is 6 and a half years old is very worldly and is into music, arts and a completely creative mind, though he spends too much time playing Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft right now and should spend more time practicing his drum lessons he loves to read and one of his favorite books is a kids version called “John, Paul, George and Ben” which is about the fathers of the United States (told in a very kid friendly way).  He also likes to read fantasy novels and loves all things with feudal or medieval times.  (like father, like son).

My youngest is a builder and engineer I think, at three and a half years old he is always building new robots, creations, armor and suits from TREO blocks, MEGA Blocks or other toys and his hero is Iron Man because of his suit and the technology.  Not a super hero with “mutant powers” but he idolizes robots and building things at his age.  As a  child I rarely lacked for anything and was given my own computer when I was very young (Commodore 64) and that is basically my passion now.

Though neither of my kids knows what they will be, how can anybody at that age, my goal is to give them as many experiences as possible as children and open as many doors for them as possible.  Only by trying and experiencing will they be able to find what they truly want to do and what they are passionate about.  You hear stories about how a master musician could learn music at age 4 and play piano as a master by age seven, many artists have a “calling” that is present in very early ages.  But for those who don’t have an obvious talent or path that you can easily see, it is best to immerse them in culture and experience and let them find their own path on who they want to be and what they want to do.

So I want my readers to share with me some of the cultural experiences or life experiences you have had as a kid that helped shape who you are or what you do.

-Justin Germino