Julia loves dinosaurs. Like, love-love. Almost daily, she tells us that she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up. She can tell you all about what dinosaurs eat, why certain ones have pointy scales, or why flying dinosaurs aren’t really dinosaurs. And don’t ever, ever, ever mispronounce herbivore. She’ll never let you live it down. {Also, five year olds that are too smart for their own good are indeed too smart for my own good too.}
Before ever having children, I vowed to myself that I would encourage them in whatever interest they had. So when Julia started getting into dinosaurs, we started reading dinosaur books and watching dinosaur shows. As her interest has grown, my effort to encourage her has grown. Yesterday we went to a Dinosaur Park, just outside of Austin.
To say Julia was thrilled may be an understatement. She was ecstatic. She was elated. She was… you get the point. She identified most of the dinosaurs before I even told her what they were. And when I told her I never knew stegosauruses were herbivores {pronounced correctly this time}, she looked at me like I had lost all my marbles. Who doesn’t know that stegosauruses are herbivores? I mean, really, I’m slacking in my paleontological studies.
Julia and I spent part of yesterday afternoon researching paleontological societies here in Austin. We found a couple that do fossil digs once or twice a year for kids. But, the jackpot was coming across the Texas Nature Science Center at UT. It’s free and open to the public, which means – we have this week’s field trip planned out!
Julia is only five and I don’t actually expect her to maintain an interest in dinosaurs, but I’m sticking to my vow and walking down this path of interest with her for however long she wants. And come tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, when dinosaurs are no longer her thing, I’ll go with her down the next path. And it will be just as fun.
In the mean time, here’s to raising a paleontologist!
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