Snow Days

Yes, we do have winter in Texas. This is one of those days. More often we have ice than snow and that is the case today. It started raining yesterday afternoon and still is drizzling this morning. The temperature are droping and they expect the rain to turn to ice by noon. Some schools have already cancelled. I recall such days when our kids were growing up. We tried to make them fun. There was a sense of adventure on those days and we huddled up inside.

I remember one such day in particular. Our oldest son Peter decided to use the day to work on his science fair project. He wanted to test various drink products to discover the percentage of actual fruit juice they contained. He had containers of everything from orange juice to Orange Crush all over the kitchen table. We all had fun sampling and listening to his comments as he discovered that some of the products he thought were healthy were nothing but sugar, artificial flavoring and food coloring. It was definitely his project and other than tasting and waiting to see if he would clean up his mess, Barb and I stayed out of his way.

That's the way we wanted it. At various times I had been called on to judge science fair projects at our parish school. Come to think of it that's pretty funny since I failed high school biology the first time around. When viewing the project bearing the names of students, it never ceased to amaze me the level of complexity. In some cases we automatically eliminated projects with the comment, "No way a kid did this."

One mistake parents make is to live their lives vicariously through their kids. We normally associate this with athletics and the arts but it can touch other areas, like science, as well. As parents we need to put our dreams and needs to see our kids successful aside and let them be kids. That means learning and discovering things on their own.