Their life, You decide?

What do you want to be when you grow up? I don’t know Daddy, what do you think I should be?

Although I haven’t specifically had this interaction with the kids, I feel that children are generally empty plates when it comes to their individual passions, ambitions and life goals. Or maybe ours are just directionless and lack ambition?

I don’t think anyone is born with an innate desire to become a sportsman, dancer, lawyer or doctor – these ideas are implanted in their minds either by their parents, teachers, friends or the environment in which they exist. Or maybe they saw something on TV and decided it might be cool to be a racing-car driver, spy or a superhero?

So what do we do? We send them for activities which we ourselves like – be it in the sports or arts. Perhaps things that we wish we did when we were younger? Or activities we think cool kids should be involved in, like martial arts, karate or something else violent and deadly? And then we spend hours and dollars each week sending, fetching, waiting, and so on – you know, the typical life of a parent. And we complain – but that’s a topic for a different discussion.

Shannon at a recent performance. Which one is she?

I think that as parents, we essentially have to make decisions for them which would very likely affect the course of their life. Encouraging a child to play a certain sport could result in the birth of an Olympic star! Signing them up for piano lessons might give rise to a composer or concert pianist! Sending your daughter for ballet lessons from age 4 and making her stick to it might … who knows? We didn’t know any better I guess and just kept going, lesson after lesson, exam after exam, performance after performance. And since she didn’t complain, and we had already invested that much (yes, to a certain extent, it is an investment), there was no need to pull her out.

Some say that we should not impose our plans and ideas on our kids, but instead let them choose what they want to do. But which five-year-old child would have the information or decision-making skills? And by the time they get old enough, that critical early absorption and muscle-memory forming years would have been largely over, making it more difficult to learn new skills.

So pick something. Start them young. Keep them motivated as far as possible and see what happens. A child is a blank-slate and parents have the responsibility to start off with a few strokes of the paint brush.