Give Your Kids the Gift of Awe

five tips for raising beholders

Apr 12, 2023

Since this month we’re focusing on peacefulness and awe, here are some tips for stoking a sense of wonder and amazement in your kids (and yourself.) Most of the time, the first step is actually boredom 😏

1. Let them be bored…then fascinated.

It’s actually pretty hard these days to truly give your kids the chance to be bored. It takes intentionally to put down screens. It takes patience to deal with your kids’ complaining when they don’t feel like going outside. It takes restraint to create margin in your schedule. Show yourself grace as you balance all these things…we’re all trying to figure it out.

But don’t forget: boredom is a gift, and it often leads to creativity and awe. J.K. Rowling got the idea for the Harry Potter books when she was looking out a window on a delayed train. Kate DiCamillo got the idea for The Magician’s Elephant while she was waiting for a friend in a hotel lobby. I wonder how many scientific discoveries have been made because a curious person had the chance to be bored.

I have a childhood memory of being bored and picking at a leaf in our yard. All of a sudden, seeing the tiny network of veins in the leaf just floored me. The effortless complexity of their design blew me away. I felt comforted by it. It was a lasting kind of awe, and I’m still amazed when I look at leaves and petals up-close.

2. Be a beholder with them.

Show your kids that you’re amazed. You don’t need to know all the scientific facts and explanations for things. But your kids will remember if they hear you say “Wow!” and “Cool!” and “I can’t believe it!” What could beat being surprised by beauty together?

You might’ve heard the William Blake quote “We become what we behold.” If we are constantly putting ourselves in front of content that’s been curated by algorithms and created to manipulate those algorithms, we’re not going to be very interesting (or happy) people.

What are the people in your family putting in front of themselves? Who are you becoming?

3. Plan family trips around awe.

I shared some tips a few weeks ago for planning a spring trip, and I plan to share more later about summer road trips. If your family gets to do a vacation this year—or even just a day trip—I encourage you to choose destinations that will put you in awe. It doesn’t have to be the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls—those can be overly touristy anyway—but is there a beautiful creek somewhere that you could sit next to? Is there a great hike you can do?

We are so blessed to live in a time with tools such as Google Maps. As a teen, you might’ve bemoaned that your family always went to the same mediocre place for vacation. That’s because our parents had to be really brave when they took us on trips to new places! Imagine not knowing how to get somewhere and only having a vague idea of what to expect.

We don’t have the same limitations they did! You can search “gorgeous places to visit in Wisconsin” (or wherever you live) and find some inspiration pretty quickly, and the reviews and photos from other users help you get a good idea of whether that spot will be a good fit for your family. I don’t want to take that for granted!

4. Let your kids borrow your phone’s camera, or play The Points Game.

Invite them to take the coolest pictures they can. Keep an album in your phone of pictures your child has taken and consider getting the best ones printed. If your kids are motivated to get a cool shot, they’ll pay a lot more attention to what’s around them, and they might find something amazing.

A simple activity I’ve been doing on hikes for years is to give out points when a kid spots something in nature that we haven’t seen before. I don’t keep track of the points and they don’t mean anything or earn rewards 😅 Somehow this is still enough for my kids to frequently say, “Mommy, look at that! …Do I get a point?” They always spot amazing mushrooms, cool wildflowers, creepy bugs, and funny-looking trees this way.

5. A pass to botanical gardens is worth it.

It typically costs about $125 (or less) for a family pass at most botanical gardens, and even though it sounds like a retired-old-people activity, you might be surprised by how much your kids like it. A lot of botanical gardens have some kind of nature-inspired playground, too. Botanical gardens change with the seasons and often have rotating outdoor exhibits, so you could visit again and again throughout the year and it might be different every time.

Also, as I’ve mentioned before, reciprocal benefits are awesome. If your botanical garden is in the American Horticultural Society reciprocal network, you can go to 345 other gardens just by showing the front desk your pass.1 I've taken my kids to several botanical gardens in the past year for free by using my pass to the Huntsville Botanical Garden; otherwise, tickets would have cost $20-25 each and we couldn’t have visited!

Stickwork at Huntsville Botanical Garden, Alabama

Remember to let your kids be bored. Let yourself be bored. You never know what might come from it.

I hope you see lots of fascinating things in the next few months, even if it’s just a leaf in your neighborhood in the suburbs ❤️

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts

P.S. Feel free to share this post! Thanks!

Sometimes there’s an exclusion where you can’t go to a garden that’s within 90 miles of where you have your membership.