I do think what you are describing is life in general. Most people do not think of doing things on their own; they are exposed to it, even if glancingly, by someone else.
One of my companies came out of a random conversation I had with a random stranger at some bar. The person said a couple things about a problem he was having, and bang, the idea hit me, and I never looked back. In short, I would never had thought developing that solution myself, as I never had that particular problem to solve or ever noticed it was problem for other people - until that conversation over beer. He made me a lot of money.
Basically, what I told my DSs is this: you can be whatever you want to be PROVIDED you have the skills (physical or intellectual) to accomplish. I made sure they were under no illusion that everything and anything was in the cards because everyone has inherent limitations, genetically and/or mentally, that limit what they can do and it is important for people to learn their limitations. In converse, it was important for them to learn and to understand their strengths and capabilities and not to fall for the drivel of “you can be anything.”
Timing is everything, and it ain’t over 'til it’s over. I have a child with special needs who was very, very delayed when she was young. She was the kind of “slow” kid you’d assume would be a part-time bagger in the supermarket one day. Even I thought that that was the future she was most likely to have. However, I didn’t give up and I didn’t limit her to what all the signs (eg. IQ and other educational testing) were telling me. People thought I was delusional and in denial. Sometimes I agreed with them.
Fast forward, today she’s an AP and honors student and the best distance runner on her team. Last summer she landed 2 fantastic internships in the field she wants to pursue for a career–one of which was designed for college students. That said, now that she’s older we do have to consider her limitations, because the ones she still has are probably pretty permanent. So a couple of years ago when she told me she wanted to be a physicist, the short version is that I told her that she’d better start getting better grades in math then. I didn’t tell her no, but I did suggest that she needed to conquer some serious weaknesses first. But now if she proposes an idea that I think is impractical, I will be more negative about it because she’s older, stronger, and will have to make important college and major choices very soon. Some dreams have a time limit on them.
It’s not a first world problem, believe me. Quite the contrary. When I was living in my quasi-third-world country of Elbonia (Europe) I wanted to study aerospace engineering. Never mind my math was not very good, and the country was just beginning its aero industry (no ‘space’, just planes). I built competition class model airplanes and nearly made the national team once. So I understood aero a bit.
But I also understood that in the last decade of the Cold War that something would ‘give’ and aero jobs would disappear. Indeed, the Cold War ended, and the defense industry took a pretty good hit - along with consolidation and many other reasons. So aero would have been a phenomenally bad idea for me. My college roommate did study aero in the USA, returned to Elbonia, tried the fledgling aero industry there, and now runs a paint factory. I somehow got into Civil Engineering, something I knew little about, and did pretty well, only to change direction again to Computer Science post graduation.
Many kids in the third world, esp those good academically, choose what they choose because of parental pressure and job prospects. Not because of what they ‘like’.
Obviously, every kid can’t grow up to be anything he/she chooses. Anyone who watches the audition stages of American Idol knows that there are way more people who think they will be the next Carrie Underwood than actually have her talent.
BUT, there are also incredible stories of people who overcame adversity to achieve greatness.
As parents, we need to manage our kids expectations and be honest with them about what it takes to achieve their dreams. While natural talent is an advantage or even a requirement, will and determination can make up for it in some cases. That’s what we should be teaching our children.
Post 36–That’s what community and peers are for. To expand your horizons. One reason people hang out on this site for advice and information.
Post 37–“Don’t get above your raisin.” I’ve never heard that phrase but heard an interesting interview with a national talk show radio host awhile back that I think illustrates the point.
He said as a kid he hung around a friend whose family was far above his both financially and socially. People take vacations? To ski? How do you do that? It was a new world to him.
They gave him dinner on a regular basis, important, but more importantly the realization (plus encouragement and some guidance) that there were actual careers available that fit his abilities (he liked to talk!). He scrabbled his way up building a career with very hard work.
And yet --after succeeding far beyond most people’s dreams and becoming very wealthy–his mother didn’t even know what show he hosted nor had listened to it. Or cared to. Nor had others in his family except for one sibling.
@gouf78 your story comes close but more than the family not knowing, the phrase means " don’t start thinking that you are any better than the rest of us". It is actually said to someone to put them in “their place” which is right where they were before what others might see as “success”. It is a great indicator of the speaker’s feelings of inferiority IMO.
We should remember that a child’s goals and expectations decline from a generic ‘I want to be the world’s great astronaut’ to something more compromised like ‘I want to be a college professor.’ This process of decline/understanding in the process of attaining pours into the feelings they attach to the situation. It’s best that a parent encourages their children with this attitude of idealism, but they should in the process give the child tools and education to unlock it. In this the child understands how to go about achieving, and if they understand the goal as being comprised of its process, then they probably will back away from being the second Walt Disney. If we also teach them to love the learning instead of treating it as a means to an end, they won’t be disappointed if they don’t get exactly where they’d first started.
Funny example. My first career dream ever - I was probably around six or seven when I dreamed this up - was to be an Air Force fighter pilot. I have no idea where I got this notion from. I didn’t know anyone in the Air Force or who was a pilot at the time. Probably television, lol. I started wearing glasses shortly thereafter and quickly realized that I couldn’t be a pilot with glasses. I moved on in life. (My next dream was Supreme Court justice of the U.S. - and specifically first black female Supreme Court justice - so I didn’t exactly come down lower, lol.)
I think the key is not telling kids - especially small children, under 13 or so - that dreams have limits and that you can’t be anything you want. I don’t think we should stop kids from dreaming big - I’m certainly glad that no one ever told me to stop dreaming, since all of my future career dreams 1) required a bachelor’s or higher when no one in my family had one and 2) usually required me to imagine myself in roles that African Americans and women didn’t ordinarily take. Big dreaming and realizing that dreams take hard work aren’t mutually exclusive, either, so I’m not sure why the author of this article is acting like they are. Big dreaming and realism aren’t mutually exclusive, either - I realized at 10 that I was probably never going to actually be a Supreme Court justice, but it’s like that cliche, right - “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll end up among the stars.” A kid gunning for the high court may end up a federal appellate judge or a corporate attorney for a mid-level firm. Not exactly what they were going for, but not too shabby either!
The key is fostering resilient kids who aren’t afraid of failing and trying new things and changing their minds should something not work out. My mom always told me to “let it roll off your back, like a duck” - “it” being any variety of obstacles. Not being able to be an Air Force fighter pilot anymore didn’t really bother me because I realized that there were lots of other things I could do and that I would eventually find my niche (another thing my mom talked about a lot).
Besides, psychologically it’s far more crushing to a person (a child, especially) to give the message “don’t hope for anything big, because most of life is determined by chance anyway and hard work is no guarantee that you’ll do well. Just accept that you’ll always be average and learn to be content with that.” I mean, really, who says that? That’s not going to motivate anyone.
Most kids learn their limits on their own if they are exposed to a lot of things. I believe that personal experience is more valuable in learning who you are and what you are capable of than telling them. As far as telling, I went with the encouragement to try and see how it feels. My younger kid when we had more resources than with the older, was in 5 different activities at the tender age of 7 and she was racking accomplishments in some of them already. I just had to drive her everywhere after full time job but it was rewarding. Also, it was very funny to watch that sometime learning her own limitations took her several years. It was the case with gymnastics and figure skating. But after she realized that she is stuck at some low level for few years, she dropped them without any of my input. Well, after dropping these, the other 3 got stuck to her with great accomplishments and satisfaction with them all thru HS and she minor in one of them at college. She grew to learn herself very well and be able to easily connect to very different people. She, herself mentioned several times that being closely engaged in unrelated activities at the very young age made her very outgoing person who can easily understand others outside of her immigrated surroundings. This ability is crucial in many professions and definitely when serving others as a doctor when your patient may be a homeless, very poor, mentally unstable or even a prisoner.
Anyway, what I am trying to say that there is no risk in exposing kids to everything their hear desires and let them see by themselves where their set of abilities are. There is no limitation there, aside from very obvious in certain cases, like learning music if you a deaf. They may benefit from these experiences in the way that is not so obvious, but they definitely will benefit. And learning on your own at the very young age that you cannot be good at everything is also a great advantage.
“Just accept that you’ll always be average and learn to be content with that.” - was never ever our family philosophy. I totally disagree with that. Yes, while it is a true statement and at the end that is a life of vast majority of us, saying it to the young person is very wrong, at least it is considered to be wrong in our family.
This article reminds me very much of a conversation I had one day with my teenage kids. Everyday, nothing interesting happens at school, ever.
A friend mentioned that the kids had listened to a very good speaker at school that day, so I asked my kids about it. Their eyes suddenly lit up. They told me this speaker had indeed been very good, becuse instead of a motivational “you can do anything” speech, he had said it’s okay not to do anything. Both my kids told me that they liked him because he said something they could relate to.
All the other speakers always said things like “you can climb that mountain! You can win a medal! You can be president!” My daughter said she always tuned those speakers out, because they made her feel bad about herself.
I was blown away. I wanted to know how it could be that the other motivational speakers made kids feel bad about themselves? My daughter said “they said we could do all those things. Problem was, I wasn’t doing any of them.” Humbled by my kid.
Cheeringsection–The radio guy’s family knew what he had done–they didn’t CARE nor even ACKNOWLEDGED that he had succeeded. Which was just sad to me–everybody needs a cheering section no matter how old you are.
Lindagaf–I hope he said you don’t have to be the “best” at what you do vs you don’t have to do “anything”. In fact, you should try lots of things to see if you happen to like doing it without the fear of failure.
You don’t need to win medals to enjoy life and grow as a person.
@gouf78 , it probably was along those lines, I wasn’t there. I did watch a video later of the speaker’s presentation at another school, and if I recall, he seemed to focus more on appreciating what is important to you, be it family, activities, or education. The really memorable part was watching him speak about his mother, and how he would give anything to see her once more, and how he didn’t appreciate what she meant to him at the time. (I got the impression she passed away when he was a young adult.) Wish I could remember his name. Whatever he said, my kids related to the message.
As I’ve always said to my parents and anyone that brings it up is that my wife and I have always been concerned about WHO our children will be and could really care less WHAT they will be.
@gouf78 They probably didn’t acknowledge his success because it wasn’t success on their terms - something else very common around here. @Cheeringsection Your observation about inferiority is dead on. Appalachia in general and West Virginia in particular has a kind of collective inferiority complex where someone’s success is seen as a slap in the family’s face rather than something of which to be proud. “Your daddy and your papaw and his daddy before him were all coal miners. You don’t need to go to college and become an engineer when you could be working and making good.” Then they lay off almost 1,000 miners like they did here recently and these guys can not understand why they can’t get something else making $25 an hour with a HS diploma (if they even have that.) And a lot of them have stay-at-home wives with expensive SUVs with decals that say “Coal Miner’s Honey Spending Coal Miner’s Money.” Very few of them work outside the home. Yet the kid who goes to college is the loser. BTW, I specifically spoke about men. There about 12 female coal miners in the world - they are raised to leave the good-paying jobs to the men.
no matter how old you are.