Help kids follow their passion

BY Hagar Saeed

Ever since he was a child, Amr Shabaan has always had a keen interest in finding out how everything from telephones to aircraft work. 
Amr, now 26, recalls how like all young children, he often asked ‘What’s that?’ However, unlike other children, whose curiosity if often satisfied early on, he would then ask, ‘How does it work?’   
“I used to take my battery-operated toys apart to see how they worked,” he said. 
“My mother, who always noticed that, never scolded me for breaking my toys. She was happy for me for trying to discover things. She used to say to my dad, ‘Look, we have a little engineer at home’.”  
Now Amr is a mechanical engineering. Neddless to say, he is happy and satisfied in his job because it allows him to apply his interests to the real world.
Recently I came across on YouTube Amazon founder Jeff Bezos giving tips on how to build a successful future. 
“When you have a gift and then you work hard, you’re really going to leverage that gift,” said Bezos. He advised parents to let their children pursue their passions when they discover them, because that will make it easier for them to succeed. 
Bezos then related that he grew up in Miami where there were a lot of fruit trees. As a child, he would go around picking up the fruit that fell into public property. Then he’d put it in a little wagon and sell it.
Bezos has always had a passion for trading, which sowed in his mind the idea of establishing the e-commerce website Amazon. He is now in the top list of the world’s richest men.
If our children have a passion, they have a gift. We, as parents, should be supportive of our children’ gifts to develop them. We are programmed to want our kids become engineers, doctors, professors and other jobs which we think will confer a prestigious and honorable position in society. But our children’s talents could shape a bright future for them if they were nurtured. So, our role should be to encourage our children follow their dreams not ours as the value attained from supporting them in what they love is immeasurable.