Mary Angel

(3/2022) Savor those wonderful days when your child is young and playing pretend. Enjoy every moment of them pretending to be a movie star, chef, or fire fighter. Encourage their amazing creativity as they walk a runway, arrest a "bad guy", or paint a masterpiece. When kids are young their imaginations can take them to places they have never seen, or let them be someone they can only dream of. As your kids get older there will be many times when they know exactly what they want to be when they grow up, and then there will be other times when they don’t have a clue.

I have certainly told you enough times about how different my children are. From a very young age my oldest knew he wanted to be an actor. We found a local dinner theater that offered a summer camp and enrolled him immediately. He "LOVED" it! The camp lasted for two weeks and ended with a meal and a show, obviously. Later, in high school he would immediately get involved in the theater program and actually started marching band with an acting roll. We encouraged him to pursue every aspect of a career in the performing arts. By his junior year he was enrolled in the video production program at the career and technology center, so he could learn some of the behind the scenes careers that were available in theater. When the theater club offered a trip to the Hippodrome, followed by a backstage interview opportunity with the cast of the play, we jumped at the chance for our son to hear about theater life from someone who was living it. This was a pivotal point in his life; this was when he decided he would like to have another career to pay the bills in the slow times while he was getting started.

Our two girls are a bit more complicated and undecided when it comes to a career path. The older one is getting her cosmetology license while in high school and then going to college to pursue something? She has absolutely no idea what and is all over the place with ideas. One day she wanted to be a teacher, the next a cyber security officer, and then on a day when she forgets how much she hates needles and blood, a nurse. Luckily she has time. We have told her to take every obscure class in the book her freshman year so she can narrow down the field. The closer she gets to her high school graduation the more neurotic she gets. We keep telling her she doesn’t have to have her whole life planned out, just have a plan for the next step and keep swimming. The younger one is just a freshman in high school and truly doesn’t have a clue or a direction for her life. It wasn’t too long ago when she would tell me she was going to live with me forever (I miss hearing that). We are continuing to find various interesting and exciting experiences for her. She also gets to hear many of the conversations with her sister about making the most of the high school years and freshman year of college in trying new careers, interests, and hobbies.

My second son has, by far, been my most unfocused child of any of them. He has always been all about having fun and enjoying life, while not working too hard. Don’t get me wrong, he has always gotten decent grades, but not for lack of procrastination. He was the child who would sometimes do his assignments and then forget to turn them in. There were classes that he would have an "F" in until the teacher would say, "Any assignments turned in by Friday will get full credit" and he would hand in a ream of paper (slight exaggeration). Honestly, he might have had many more straight A’s if not for his lackadaisical mind set. He was never concerned about his future or what he would be when he grew up. It wasn’t until he was a sophomore in high school that he came home one day and announced he thought he might want to be a teacher. My husband and I were not surprised because he had always been amazing with kids and had helped out with VBS at our church every year. We were shocked when he followed up with the fact that he wanted to teach high school. You see he had such amazing teachers in high school (thanks to Mr. Smith, Mrs. Bell, and Mr. Kimble) that he wanted to be just like them. He wanted to be that positive influence in a child’s life when they needed it most. From that moment on he was hyper focused, while still being a bit of a procrastinator.

When he got to community college his procrastination started to get better, then we had him tested and found out that he had a reading disability, which allowed him extra time on tests and the ability to test in a testing center; that made a huge difference. Fast forward to junior year and he starts his student teaching. After only a few days he comes home upset. He musters up all of his nerve and says, "Mom, I think you were right." I immediately grinned ear to ear and asked proudly, "About what, exactly." He proceeded to explain that the high school students were so disrespectful to the teacher that he was heartbroken. We reminisced about his high school experience and the fact that his class would never have done that to a teacher and how much things have changed in a short period of time. He wasn’t sure high school was the right direction for him and he was thinking about switching to elementary education. I was thrilled because, again, he had always been amazing with small kids. We talked some more about how wonderful it was that he had come to this realization before he graduated and that college is the time to figure these things out. Eventually he calmed down and said he would look into switching his major.

This is how our kids figure out "what they want to be when they grow up". It is our jobs to expose them to amazing and wonderful new paths and let them discern what interests them and what doesn’t. No matter how old they are it is never too late to try something new. That actually goes for you too, moms!

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