career path

[lumberjim]

sorry about the long post.....


I thought I had very supportive parents. And I did for most things. I never really wanted for anything, and we had a nice house in a good neighborhood. good school district. I figure I started on at least second base, jinx says third because I'm male, but whatever...I had advantages. I have no complaints about the way I was raised either. My parents were consistent for the most part, and I respected them.

When it came to "what I want to be when I grow up", though, I didn't get a whole lot of direction. I probably would have resisted it anyway, and I can see definite perils surrounding pushing a child too hard in one direction or another. I wonder, though, what other people's situation was like. Jinx and I are the same, pretty much. Our parents always just said, " We don't really care what you do for a living, as long as you're happy"

That's the answer I wanted to hear as a young teen, so I went with it. And I never focused on one path. I dabbled with my courses in high school and the 1 year of college i attended.

I took art courses, shop classes, learned guitar outside of school, I learned computers from my propeller head father, read way too much, telling myself i might be a writer. I was interested in astronomy, science fiction, football; I was gonna join the airforce,.... the list goes on.

It just occured to me as i write this that ( I mentioned the guitar) I learn songs the same way. I know the intro and usually the solo leads in a whole lot of songs, but i can only play about 5 or 6 from start to finish.

I guess I just took what i wanted that was enough to make me happy, and moved on. Unwittingly I may have been training for a career in sales. Good salespeople know a little bit about a whole lot of shit (that way they can converse and relate to a wide variety of people, gain confidence, and earn sales).

I wonder what my life would have been like if my dad had strong armed me into computers or business management (he was a VP for unisys for a long time) Or if my mom had pressured me into teaching ( she's a speech pathologist at devereaux)?

So what to do with MY kids? Spencer is 5, and he can argue and manipulate and cajole with the best of them. He also, on the other hand appears to have a natural ease with math. At 3 he was adding and subtracting .....~~he woke up one night with a bad cough, so i took a cough drop up to him, and sat there while he sucked on it, waiting for him to feel better, and take the drop away so he didn't choke on it. So i said," you about done with that?"
and he said," no, i need 3 more minutes."
so i waited. and again i asked
"no, that was only 2 minutes...I still have 1 minute left"

this was in his early threes, too. he's good at puzzles, plays monopoly, stratego, and all kinds of board games with the older kids at his school. Do I try to enhance his apparent talents by leading him firmly in the direction of a career that will provide him a good life, or do i stand back and see how the tree grows?

how were you raised when it came to this facet?