It didn’t matter to my mom, bless her heart, if I wanted to be a writer, I should be a policeman. If I wanted to be a policeman, I should be a dentist. If I wanted to be a doctor, I should be a congressman. That’s one way of doing it.
My dad on other hand had a simple, consistent message, “Its not work if you don’t get your hands dirty.” Those were the two sorts of messages I heard in my family. My wife and I tried to do it differently with our kids:
We’ve tried to be encouraging of our kids no matter what their interest. When they wanted musical instruments, they not only got instruments, but lessons. When they were into hockey, we devoted Saturday mornings and sometimes afternoons to that sport. When snakes were in vogue, we had snakes in the house and went to “herp” shows. For that matter, various types of pets were constantly coming in and out of the house.
My wife and I send a similar message when it comes to the children’s careers. First of all, we take the pressure off telling our kids that they are probably not going to finish in their first college major let alone find a career in whatever they graduate in. Neither of us ever worked in the field of our college majors.
To date we have only one graduated college child and she happens to have moved directly into her chosen field. Maybe precisely because we told her not to worry about it? Who knows? Our second child, our oldest son, started out a psychology major, graduated with an English degree and then immediately went back to school for music business.
One other thing we tell them is to follow their passions instead of chasing after the ever present dollar. Up till now doing so has us with one child earning a great living although her work is contract to contract. Unlike many children who pause for awhile after getting out of school, she was already was working jobs in her field before graduating.
She calculates that waiting tables will be an inevitability every now and then in her field. We try to tell our children that its OK to be an artist or whatever. Just don’t on living luxuriously in that case. We tell them they can do anything they want to do. But we also tell them there might be consequences.
Is it a better way to do it than my parents did? I guess time will tell. But so far, it seems like it. Our children seem totally happy when it comes to career choices.
