People often ask me what I love about my job, and I often stumble to answer exactly what it is that I love. The problem is that there are so many things. The people I get to work with, the churches that I get to interact with, and the products that I get to have a hand in creating. There are many things.
One of the most fun projects that I have worked on was the creation of the infographic, KidMin Leadership book, Wholly Kids. This project was time consuming and fun. It reminded me of being in seminary when I did research for my characteristics of kids notebook.
Wholly Kids is also a great book for parents. As a father of four, I’m often wondering if my kids are “normal” when they do certain things.
Take, for instance, my son Reed. My wife, Abbey, and I were talking about how messy his handwriting is. It just drives me nuts. I used to have really neat handwriting when I was in my second-grade class. I remember Mrs. Hathcock telling my mom I had great penmanship. So, I wanted to compare. I wanted to see if it was normal for Reed to just be sloppy and not care about his writing. It didn’t take long for Abbey to find out in a parent-teacher conference that Mrs. Rachel’s one word of caution was that Reed’s handwriting was sloppy. I decided to do a little digging and looked in the Wholly Kids book under the six-year-old characteristics. Here is what I found:
The very first descriptor of a six-year-old’s physical characteristics was “are sloppy, in a hurry; speed is a benchmark.” So, it turns out Reed is normal afterall! What a relief to know that it was actually me that was weird for having good penmanship. Don’t worry about me though, I made up for it. Most of you wouldn’t be able to read a word I write today. At a birthday party this weekend, I was talking about this and one parent said, “My mom always reminds me that you can’t read a doctor’s writing either!”
Some of my favorite pages in the Wholly Kids book are the comprehensive summaries of characteristics. These pages offer a great quick look at the information that is covered in the book. It’s fun to see all of the different ways that kidmin leaders can connect with kids in their churches.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out Wholly Kids, be sure to visit the product page to learn more.
