I don’t understand it…

My chil­dren are cur­rent­ly tak­ing a semes­ter long poet­ry course. In this course they are explor­ing the dif­fer­ent types of poems, the his­to­ry of these types, and prac­tic­ing the types. I remem­ber in high school hav­ing a lit­er­a­ture course which spent a few weeks explor­ing poet­ry. I hat­ed it. I did­n’t under­stand how to write metaphor­i­cal­ly, but I remem­ber the class. While I have learned to appre­ci­ate poet­ry as an art form and even enjoy some, like Shake­speare’s plays, I still don’t under­stand poet­ry. In fact, for all of my love of Shake­speare, I’d rather read almost any­thing besides his son­nets. Thank­ful­ly, I don’t have to com­plete­ly under­stand some­thing in order to enjoy or appre­ci­ate it. 

Appre­ci­at­ing an art form that we don’t ful­ly under­stand is a skill unto itself. Every par­ent knows that our chil­dren will have inter­ests that we prob­a­bly won’t under­stand. I have a son who loves aquar­i­ums and ter­rar­i­ums. I don’t under­stand it, but noth­ing makes me hap­pi­er than lis­ten­ing to him share his love of fish. God made this world full. There is so much to appre­ci­ate, learn, and explore. Build­ing the skill of appre­ci­a­tion is an impor­tant skill for the future par­ents in our homes. Maybe that’s hav­ing your child take a spe­cial­ized math or sci­ence class, or maybe it’s poetry.