Thursday, July 19, 2012

Family Tree

I thought I knew my son well.

I mean, I homeschool. I am with him almost constantly. I know where he is and what he is doing, unless one of us is on a  trip or off at camp - about two weeks a year. I have multiple conversations with him most days.

But he still surprised me yesterday.

A few weeks ago he had seen a poster for "Genealogy Nights" at our local library and made the comment, "We should go to that." So yesterday I reminded him that the program was last night and asked if still wanted to go. "Yeah, sure." Not very enthusiastic, but definite.

So we went. He decided to look up a specific thing, the names of his grandmother's parents. I knew we could get that information easily by asking relatives, but I let him do it for practice. It proved to be trickier than expected, but then we hit the jackpot -- finding not only the names we were looking for but a family tree going back to the 1400s.

Jordan grabbed a generations chart and began feverishly copying down names, continuing even after he had been reassured that we could print out the chart next week. He was insistent -- "We might not find this again!"

Here's the thing. I had no idea that Jordan was interested in genealogy. When I asked him today what sparked this interest he just said he wanted to see who were related to and if it included anybody famous.

OK, then. As I said, I thought I knew my kid -- but may I don't know him quite as well as I thought.


How have your kids surprised you?





This is my 18th entry for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. One behind.

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