When my kids were younger, they became accustomed to their dad traveling a lot. A fair amount of travel is expected with college and professional sports. There are teams from all over the country playing every Saturday and Sunday and most likely one of the teams had to travel to the city to reach the stadium. While we watched games on tv we would get a map of the United States and locate the cities where the games took place. I got my husband to add to the excitement by bringing a magnet or some other item from the city he visited so that the kids could learn from his travels. We should have put up a magnetic board in the laundry room or in a kid’s room to keep the refrigerator from looking like a magnetic mess.

The kids would ask, “Where’s daddy going this week?” I would tell them the name of the city and the state. They would find the state, then the city. I would challenge them to also learn the capital cities of each state. This scavenger hunt was also a chance to introduce them
to the surrounding states and the respective capital cities. I was not a geography scholar, so I wanted my kids to be better than me. I wanted them to know a little trivia about each city or state their dad traveled to for work so I bought a user friendly book with facts and nice pictures.

I encourage all families to use sports as a way to teach geography. Our family also extends our learning opportunities by visiting arenas and stadiums when we travel. This teaching method has continued to be an optimal way for us to learn. Just this summer went to Palo Alto, California for a high school football combine. While we were there we visited Stanford’s campus, took pictures, visited shops in the area, and ate in one of the cool restaurants in that community. I wish we had done more international geographical trivia. It certainly would have helped me. So, whether your family loves football, basketball, soccer, race car driving, or rodeos, you can use sports to teach. In addition to learning about the geographical locations, you can teach them about the capitals, the people, the culture of the community, the climate, the state and/or country flags, and the traditions of the locale.

I love it when life brings me situations that become great teaching moments to support some truth I have given my kids. One week my son and I had many conversations about friends and the extended friend circle. The friend topic can be a really hard subject, especially when your kids is the new kid at school and trying hard to build a new friend circle. Sometimes I don’t have specific knowledge about kids or their behaviors so my suggestions that my kid should be careful about spending time with the kid is difficult for my kids to accept because they are rooted solely in my intuition. As a result, I am the recipient of resistance and frustration. I remember having a discussion with my son about my concerns about the danger of hanging out with kids who are disrespectful to adults and who don’t have influences in their lives that give them accountability and boundaries. I told him that there are things in his life that I can’t control, but still give me reason for concern and unrest. He listened and said he would keep my thoughts in mind.

Well, fast forward about a week later on our drive from church to our house. My son had his learner’s permit and he was driving us home. Most of the ride home, I was reminding him of the traffic laws and asking him if he was aware of certain things happening around him. As we made our way from the interstate to the junction for the highway that lead to our little town, he was a little concerned about the cars approaching the same junction as drivers from a service road. As he checked the merging traffic and acknowledged the uncertainty of dealing with drivers he couldn’t control who often made unpredictable maneuvers in their cars, I said, “Sometimes your friends are like merging traffic in your life. You can’t control them and you really don’t know what they will do next. You have to live defensively just like being a defensive driver.” As I am verbalizing this revelation, he picks up speed and I see that we are over the speed limit just like all of the cars around us. So, my next comment is, “And sometimes you just get caught up in what’s happening around you.” We both laughed as he decreased his speed and he said, “I feel you, Ma.” ‘Nough said. Lesson learned!