Dante* taught himself to do backflips watching YouTube. Then he taught himself a side-flip… a standing backflip… a handspring. He’s a natural no-doubt, very suited to gymnastics. His siblings are all athletic , but tumbling is his thing, his passion, what sets him apart. When Amarillo College offered summer scholarships for our kids to take classes, we jumped at the chance to get Dante into gymnastics. He excelled, and AC extended his scholarship. These classes have played a huge role – spurring Dante to grow in areas far beyond athletic skill and to gain confidence in who he is.

Thank you Amarillo College for granting Dante his place in the sun.

One of our passions at The Children’s Home is to seek out what are kids are good at and excited about and then to help them explore those things. When our kids come to us, they have a limited world-view. We want to expose them to a larger world – to all the possibilities available to them – and we don’t want to restrict them to what we can do on campus.

Our mindset is one of risk. It takes risk to learn new things and develop new skills. It takes risk to discover what you have to offer the world, what is important to you and what it takes to succeed. It’s easy to want to surround our kids with victories and protect them from the sting of failure, but we believe kids learn things in failure that are vital to their future success. They learn deeper characteristics when they risk in a safe situation – one where they are surrounded by unconditional love and people who are willing to help them grow. Through risk we can teach skills they’ll need at 40 but are so much easier to learn at 14 when we’re there to pick them up, dust them off and work through it with them.

We want our kids involved in things they can work towards and are excited about – activities that are uniquely theirs. Currently, 26 out of our 40 kids are involved off-campus extracurricularly – every single one of our upper and middle school students. Fifteen of our kids have jobs, nine are in sports, four are taking special interest classes and one has an internship.

Opportunities off-campus allow our kids to discover what they’re capable of, help them prove themselves and earn trust while learning to be trustworthy. We are thankful for these vital opportunities that have been provided and continue be offered to our talented and promising kids.

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