May 14, 2002
I WANNA BE...
“What do you think I ought to try to be when I grow up?”
I ask small children that question when we are playing some times and they laugh in their light-hearted but quizzical manner as they realize I am kidding ...although a few come up with rather original replies.
It’s a lead in to discussions about what they would like to be when they grow up. Some have pretty firm ideas of what occupational group they’d like to be in, while others, very obviously, have been led to think of such a thing for the first time. A few turn away in disgust and return to their play.
The welcome suggestions. You do so by saying “I wanna be a
carpenter ... and make things....” Someone will take it up at that point with “I’d build a bird house! I’d paint it red and yellow and hang it in a tree... real high up!”
All such proclamations are, of course, said with explanatory marks in place. Enthusiasm runs high for those planning a lifelong career.
Some will show signs of having been coached. “I wanna be a school teacher, a minister, a doctor, or some occupation of that nature, “because, then, I can help other people.” In most such cases you can sense the prior presence of the parental rodent has undertaken to brain-wash the child early in life before he or she has been influenced by other grown ups. Most kids seem to be interested in what happens to Number One; “others” can considered later - much later.
When you insert the sub-question: “Why do you wanna be a..” creative thinking rears its flashing head and some of the replies show specific needs the child has at the moment.
For instance, the little boy or girl who tells me: “I wanna be a truck driver!” and when asked why, he tells me: “’Cause they come home lots more than other Dads do! They can play with us more often and sometimes it goes on for three or four days before he gets to take another ride in his big semi!” What does that suggest about that child’s home life? Does he have a friend or, several friends, with fathers whose father drives big rigs?
Astronauts? No, more often than you might think. Too much smoke, too much noise, too much high-tech palaver. Adventure is tempting, but it wears thin with unearthly speed.
TV in fuels many such choices, I’m sure, but they, too, seem to last for a short time only. So often the majority of children want to be what their Daddy or Mommy happen to be. That’s a positive sign, perhaps, and shows strength of parental ties which are most important. But it can also be replete with some dangers, too, because far too often a child wants to be a brain surgeon because his father is a brain surgeon and the kid has no aptitude whatever for such a specific talent and wastes his entire life trying to be one, because he was never permitted to think of being anything else. That is an extreme illustration, but it shows how parental dominance mighty cause problems later on.
Answer the question yourself: “ What do you wanna be when you ‘grow up’?”
A.L.M. May 14, 2002 [c556wds]
