What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
This was the second question adults used to ask me as a child, right after “What grade are you in?” For generations, this is something adults have asked children. Children have eagerly complied with sweet answers. I like the idea behind it because it encourages dreams and goals.
Naturally, I followed this protocol when I became a mommy and asked my five-year-old daughter what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A cheese maker!” came her excited reply. This after she had watched a Mr. Rogers episode featuring cheese making in France.
Nooooo! You’re much more talented than that! my thought bubble worried. “That sounds like fun, what kinds of cheeses will you make?” is what I said, certain by the next week she would be an artist. It actually took five more years for her to change her mind. Over this time, I realized that the dreams were the important things and she had built a very creative narrative around the art of cheese-making.
By the time my second child came around, I was in my third career and was living proof we aren’t really “one thing”. We don’t necessarily lock on to the first job, much less first career in our journeys. I still don’t know why children are asked about the “one thing” they will be when they grow up.
Since my daughter changed her mind about cheese, the question I ask growing children is “what’s the first thing you want to do out of high school?” If “college” is the answer, I follow up with “what’s the first kind of job you want to prepare for?” This is much more realistic. A few years ago I read that most people have even more careers than I’ve had. As a marriage and family therapist, I am currently in my 4th career and loving it every day - much like I did with careers 1-3. The difference is that my frame of reference has broadened with experience so I have more of a framework within which to love what I do.
The other reason I like the way I ask kids about their future plans is because a lot of kids don’t know what they want to do and breathe a sigh of relief when they only have to think about the first thing they want to do. Of course there are kids who know at young ages that they love animals or want to heal people and that’s just what they end up doing. Holding respect for the decided and the undecided affirms each.
And in the techno world we now live in, there are jobs yet to be invented that will be commonplace to future generations. Just think about the rise of special effects and CGI! I don’t think many movie-goers in the early days of Hollywood thought about how big the production side of movies would become. The other side of the camera has far more names than the names we see.
It’s exciting to be curious and think about the possibilities - I hope that’s what you reinforce in your areas of influence!
