by Betsy McMillin

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to figure out how many hours in our lifetime we, as parents, spend teaching our kids. Of the time we spend each day with our kids, especially the early years, the majority of it has got to be in instruction, through modeling, play or conversation.

How often do we consider taking a back seat and letting them drive the teaching car for a bit?

Maybe a bad analogy. My oldest began Drivers Education this summer, and I not so sure I’m ready.

I have found it fun and totally exhilarating to learn something new, taught to me by my kids. There are many bonuses to this, the biggest being that it is a huge self-esteem booster for the kid to show us how to do something or how something works, and in a respectful way.

Many parents put their kids into a sport, hobby or interest that they themselves enjoyed as a child or even still as an adult. This can be a great way for parents to share experiences with their children. I witnessed this for the first time this summer.  My son played baseball, a sport my husband played growing up. I saw them practice together every night, my husband coaching him and giving insightful tips and techniques. I heard him tell stories about when he played.  A great bonding experience, no doubt.

Just be sure it is your child that wants to be included in the activity and not just you (parent’s ego gets in the way yet again).

How about letting the kids decide what to try out and then teach you?   I don’t mean buy into the “this week my child wants to do drama, next week try out modern dance, then the next week karate” syndrome.

After a given amount of time that a child shows interest in a new sport/activity/interest, try to look past the fact that it may not appeal to you at all and give it a try.

When a your child expresses new interest in an activity that is pricey, time consuming or compromises your schedule, it is smart to wait for six months to a year before signing them up. That may sound like a long time, but it will discourage flaky, just-for-the-minute decisions and wasting money. Also, you will be sure it something they really want to do.

My daughter wanted to try horseback riding lessons. It was expensive and a long commute. More importantly, I was terrified of horses. Their big rolling eyes, huge bodies and my inability to read their body language made me anxious, petrified.  Aren’t horses supposed to know if a person is afraid of them?

After a year of her reading every horse book, drawing horse pictures on very scrap of paper, pleading for lessons and playing pretend horseback riding, we decided to give it a try. At her first lesson (and second, and third…) my stomach churned and I had to take deep, calming Lamaze breaths as we walked through the barns. Big old horse heads were sticking out of every stall—horses with cute names on them like “Trixy,” “Peanut” and “Buttercup.” Every one was about to nip me, I was certain. If  I had to walk by a horse being groomed in the middle of the walkway? “No thanks, I’ll just wait here,” I would say weakly.

My daughter? In absolute heaven.

So, fast forward to today (5 years later)… thanks to my daughter and her lessons, I am able to not only touch a horse, I can brush one, snuggle their giant head. I can walk through a barn (without Lamaze) and decide which ones to give a sweet pat to. I know all about ferriers, grooming items, bridles, halters, saddles and different riding styles and gaits.

Same with hockey. My husband and I didn’t know a thing about the sport, and now we live and breathe hockey, thanks to our son and two daughters (with two more being groomed to play by older siblings). My husband is on the board of AAAHA and makes a backyard rink every winter, I can dress a kid into full gear in under 3 minutes and our basement looks like Play It Again Sports for hockey.

If we gently nudge (or roughly shove) our kids into only things we have done as kids, we lose out on a great deal of learning. The fact that our kids are acting as our teachers makes it all the sweeter.

One of the largest subjects in which we can let our older kids lead us is in the area of the technology that is a such a big part of their lives. In an 2010 article in U.S. News, Larry D. Rosen (author of the book  Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and The Way They Learn, and professor of psychology at California Sate University) gives us seven things parents can learn from their tech savvy kids. He includes such suggestions as learning if your child prefers texting as opposed to phone calls and why (and why this may work for you too),  learning the best language for texts, or how to Facebook and tweet (if you don’t already know how).

Communicating with a teen can be touchy at times, so letting them have the upper hand (for a minute anyway)  might help.

Or not. They’re teens.

Music, new dances, card games, a new foreign language they are learning as well as video games are all fun ways to peek into the tween-teen world and let them show us how it is done (when they are in the right mood, no doubt). Try out the many games for XBox Kinext or the Wii game “Just Dance” with your kids. I assure you, you will have fun, work up a sweat and laugh.

And the little ones? Playing a game they know well and let them “remind” you how to play. Let them make up a new game and teach it to you. Don’t expect any sensible rules or guidelines!  Total imagination and silliness here. A favorite of my seven year old is to play “school” with me as her student. Yesterday I spent a good hour trying to clean as I also played “puppies” with my two-year-old, she leading me through her imaginary play of she as the puppy, me the owner. She called all the shots, her favorite thing to do right now.

All great ways for them to “teach” us.

The kitchen can be a great place to learn as well. Let your son/daughter pick out a simple recipe and you be the “helper” instead of the lead chef.

Common Threads (www.commonthreads.org) is an organization that educates children of low income families the importance of nutrition, physical well-being and cultural diversity through cooking. The organization included parent meetings and getting parent feedback. They discovered that the children were taking what they learned in the classes and sharing and teaching it to their parents. This included various kitchen skills, as well as expressing disappointment when their parents went to McDonalds (oh, if only all kids would do that!). The information that these kids were teaching ended up influencing food choices while shopping as well as eating out. Now that’s good teaching!

Our kids spend so much time being told what to do, how to do it, when to do it. It is refreshing and fun to mix it up a bit, and it can give them a new appreciation for how things work when they have the upper hand and are in charge of teaching us for a change.

And who knows?  You may (most likely will) learn something!