Learn Where You Can

As a parent, most would agree you have very little time for yourself. Sure you can get a few minutes here and there to work out, read a couple of pages of a book, or catch a movie, but for the most part we are carting kids to activities, working to pay for all these activities, and cleaning our homes. So self improvement, or further education is hard to come by. A couple of years ago, I picked up an autobiography of Frederick Douglass, a much admired African American orator, who single handedly changed the lives of blacks by risking his life to abolish slavery. I picked the book up several times, and couldn't get through it. Recently, Hogan my oldest son, had to choose a black person to write a paper on for Black History Month. After much debate, he chose (or was convinced) to choose Frederick Douglass. As a family, we took advantage of Hogan's project. We camped out by the fire nightly and read the autobiography, watched a movie on this incredible man and answered questions by our kids like "why did white people think they were better than blacks?" "how could such a horrible thing happen?" "why did people stand by and let this happen?" These questions, lead us to many other questions, and answers came from mom and dad and our kids. I guess what made this project more than just a project, was how much we learned as a family, how important it is to look at history and how important it is to talk about these subjects with our kids. I always have good intentions, every New Year, I say am going to take a course at the Mount, last month I took a course at home, it cost no money and our family is better and brighter for it.