Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Discovering My Child

As a parent, I am slowly seeing that I should discover my child, so that I may help her reach her potential.
We were in NYC this weekend with my husband's cousin, showing him a part of America and seeing it ourselves in a new light. We went to the Madam Tassauds wax museum as part of our tour. Not something that I would ever have done on my own, or that I would do again, but it gave me a deeper glimpse into my three year old's abilities, and now I'm trying to discover how to build on that momentum.
In the wax museum, there is an 'American Idol' station where visitors can try there luck in singing. We were sitting at the cafeteria for a short break, and saw two different visitors perform. After the second one finished her performance, Sumy hesitated for about two seconds, and shyly ran up to the lady for the microphone. I was so impressed with her bravery and her jur'ah. She definitely gets that side from her father. It was so cute how she looked kind of shy, but her eagerness to sing overrode her tiny bit of shyness (she's not a very shy kid, usually).
She got up on stage and sang the two lines she knew from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with the prompter helping her along. And she finished the whole song and came off stage.

So now, I need to figure out what that tells me about Sumy's abilities/personality and build on it. Any help would be appreciated. :)

But this is what I'm thinking: I've always wished I had a nice voice to sing in public, for performances, Eid celebrations, weddings, etc. But I have no such talent. So, I might teach Sumy a few songs in Arabic and English so that she can entertain people. "The Blue Sky is Blue Like Blue Bubblegum", etc. I believe that putting happiness into ppl's hearts by singing is a great asset, and maybe she can do that a bit.
What else? Hmmm, need to develop her outgoing personality and not clamp it down. More on that in another post inshaallah.