To the extent possible under law, the contributors to this project have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States. The project home is https://github.com/fordsfords/astronomy/tree/gh-pages. To contact me, Steve Ford, project owner, you can find my email address at http://geeky-boy.com. Can't see it? Keep looking.

No Time to Help Junior with the Telescope

Well, you thought you were just going to buy a telescope, give it to your kid, and be done with it. Now, I'm trying to talk you into spending a bunch of time learning how to use the darn thing, learning a little about astronomy, learning how to find planets and stars in the sky.

Sure, you'll do that. Just as soon as you get home late because of that very important (read "boring") meeting, help the kids with some homework, run to the store and the cleaners, get some money from the local ATM machine, get some gas, go back home, and return a few calls. No problem. You probably have a whole 15 seconds of free time so far this week!

Look, I'm a parent and I know where your coming from.

Fortunately, I'm not advocating that you spend lots of time working with your child. I'm just suggesting that you spend a little time up front, soon after you give the scope. If you don't, you increase the chances that your child will become frustrated and lose interest and will come back to you in a few weeks saying, "I'm bored. There's nothing to do."

That's the wonderful thing about a hobby. If your child gets truly interested in astronomy, it will provide plenty of entertainment and education. Some kids get interested enough to start making their own telescopes. If that happens at your house, you can forget having to drive your kid to soccer lessons, gymnastics lessons, swimming lessons, golf lessons, and all those other commitments that steal hours from your day. Astronomy is a hobby that can be enjoyed at home.

And it even provides entertainment when the skies are cloudy. The Internet has vast resources available. There are books and magazines to be read, catalogs to be browsed, observations to be planned.

Naturally, it's a gamble. Your child may lose interest anyway. But even if that happens, both of you probably learned a fair amount. And you may have even had a bit of quality time together. It's so crazy, it just might work!

Sfordsez: if you haven't seen my standard disclaimer and copyright at http://www.geeky-boy.com/standard.html then check it out now.