For moms of older/adult kids, do you think the things your kids played with during the majority of their childhood set the stage for their chosen profession?
For example, if they played with blocks and Legos, did they grow up to be engineers or worked in construction? If they like animals, did they grow up working as a vet?
I always wonder that about my son. He loves building things - not just out of Legos or Knex or even Tinker Toys. I often find him taping all the paper plates in the house into some sort of structure or he piles up the pillows in the house to make a maze or something. So I wonder if he'll grow up building or designing things.
But with me, I also loved building things like that as a child. Instead of playing with dollhouses, I was more into arranging the furniture, renovating my friend's dollhouse's and building add ons with cardboard and empty Kleenex boxes. I could have cared less what the dolls were wearing or the color of the wallpaper. But I grew up reading and writing for a living. So my childhood interests doesn't really match my chosen profession.
Just curious how some of your kids turned out.
JB, I also have a Literature degree!
I work for an editor for an international media company, so I have to read a lot of his work (reading), communicate globally and even write some of his assignments (writing). I never aspired to work in journalism, but I knew a guy who knew a guy and that's how I got this job. Its interesting - I talk to a lot of international people, they always want to hear my American perspective on things, I travel a little, and I get to use my writing skills, which is what I love to do. I don't ever want to write a book or novel...I like writing the short pieces my boss gives me from time to time and give my own American woman spin on it.
My 13 year old has wanted to be an electrical engineer since the day he knew what one was. He was 4 when she started taking a hammer to his Snap Circuits so he could rewire them. He builds amazing robots out of legos, old parts, etc. Made a paper pistol with a working slide and trigger mechanism.
I don't know what the kid will end up doing for his career, but he hasn't wavered in his interests.
Well, my older brother was always VERY into building stuff as a kid, and even into his teen years. He especially loved finding new ways to make things stay "up," like using magnets to float a plate, then making a model building on top of that. Or suspending individual rooms with connecting walkways from cables, with only the support beam touching the ground. He would spend months building one of his projects. We all thought for sure he was going to try to be an architect or something.... But he became a career marine. (Infantry for the first half, fireman for the last several years.) which is funny, considering that he always HATED playing any war games other "gun" games with us. Lol.
We are not a musically inclined nor electronically inclined family. My husband was in the Navy and I was a stay-at-home mom. My hobbies are scrapbooking and cooking. We have 2 kids, now 26 and 22.
So, when my son (the 26 year old) graduated from high school he didn't have a plan. Just "some kind of college". He tried a community college and hated it. Then he tried another liberal arts college and hated that. We sat down to talk. (He wasn't a bad kid, just unsure of what to study). I asked him to picture himself doing something that he loved. He thought and thought, and said, when I think of doing something interesting, there's this guy named Bill and what he is doing looks so great. I want to do what Bill does. I asked what Bill does. My son said "I'm not sure, but he is in charge of the sound at concerts but I don't know what that's called." Like I said, this was not in our field at all. I assumed it was some kind of producer, and I said that if Bill was a decent human, he'd welcome questions about his career. Turns out, Bill was and did. He is an audio engineer. We looked up colleges and found one specializing in the highly technical field of sound engineering. We told my son this was it. Stick with it even if he didn't like it. The school was really strict and demanded professionalism. I wasn't sure how this would go, really.
But within 1 day of arriving and checking in, my son called with such excitement. He said this was what he was meant to do. He never looked back. He quickly learned to play a guitar from other students, and graduated with a full certification as an audio engineer and a perfect GPA. He stayed late in the labs and never missed a class except for one due to car trouble. He studied the electronics parts of microphones and sound logistics and acoustics and pitch and sound quality and all that. He now works full time for a sound stage and a sound studio and is well respected and sought out. He loves music, is really good on the guitar, and is a really skilled sound engineer. He has worked at some concerts for some big entertainers like Kelly Clarkson. His music tastes run mostly to rock music but he loves jazz, and classical and appreciates all musical talent.
So what does this have to do with him as a kid? We recently moved and in the process of packing, etc., I found an old plastic storage bin full of his preschool and kindergarten papers, and his t ball t shirts, etc. In there was a drawing, long since forgotten. It was in finger paints and childish and simple. I had labeled it on the back "his first drawing of himself, age 3". It was the first time he drew himself with an actual head and arms legs and torso and identifiable eyes in the right place, etc., so that's why I kept it. Oh, and in the picture, he is clearly holding a guitar. (Well, not really "holding" the guitar, but he kind of has stick arms and the guitar is in front of his stomach with his arms kind of bending towards it). Nobody in our family had a guitar, but I would put a kids' tv shows on where the host played a guitar and sang simple songs and my son would pretend to sing along. And in my label on the back I wrote what he told me about the picture when he drew it. It says "I asked him to tell me about the picture and he said 'this is me'. I asked him about the guitar, and he just said 'that's me' He did not describe the guitar but when I pointed to it he said 'that's me'." Two decades passed between him drawing himself with a guitar and graduating from an audio engineering school and being able to play the guitar well without any musical training or experience, and he didn't even know what an audio engineer was, I think there was something in him even as a young child that would draw him to a life of music.
My kids are in high school so they're not "finished" adults - but I can' see the direction they're heading.
I think what they play with as children shows their strengths and interests - and it can show what they can do as adults that would be fulfilling. BUT - we become young adults and consider what kind of job we can find and we adjsut our aim.
My son lived and breathed lego, Knex, and built every variety of things he could. Our high school has an engineering program and in 9th grade he's been taking a class on Computer Aided Design and is earning 3 colleg credits in engineering. He's also interested in computer science and is taking computer classes as well. For the last year he's been more interested in computers - but that's been changing back towards engineering lately as he's been doing some computer programming now and realizes how boring it is. What he ends up doing is anyone's guess but I suspect it will involve computers and engineering. but only becuase he's been exposed to it.
My niece was speaking in full sentences by 18 months and has been an avid reader since she could read (kindergarten). She also is a great writer. In between her interests were always animals, bugs and martial arts. Now in her senior year of high school she's interested in graphic design. I think she'd be a successful writer - but since it's really hard to break into that field it seems she's going into graphic art.
Finally, my daughter coudl never really focus on one thing. She changed her mind regularly about what she wanted to do and what she found interesting. She loved making house floor plans so I thought she'd like architecture or home design. Another thing she stuck with was dance. She traveled to a third world nation this year and taught dance to girls at orphanages. Now she wants to go into international business so she can travel around the world and use her business skills to help people. Huh!
so who knows. I think it can show us their interests and skills - but ultimately they get to 18 - 25 and sometimes their thought process can just be a huge puzzle to us!
Interesting question! My oldest are in high school and I don't see a clear path for either of them.
My SD never played with dolls but she wasn't a Lego girl either and really has never shined in math or science (she's in honors classes but she's also in those level classes for language, history, English etc.) BUT right now she says that she wants to be an engineer. She's on the robotics team at her high school and enjoys it but she doesn't have that nerd/tech/science vibe that the other kids seem to have, but who knows? I hope she does go into engineering because it's such a great field, especially for women, with lots of growth opportunities.
My oldest son is an enigma...he was a Lego kid and used to draw a lot and is quite good at it but doesn't really pursue either hobby as a teenager. He says he wants to go to college and become a teacher or psychologist, but has terrible grades and might not make it into college. However, he has no interest in doing any kind or manual work, but does talk about the military. So again...who knows?
I was an avid artist as a child and developed a portfolio that was accepted by several competitive art schools for college but instead studied Communication and English Lit in college and now work in finance analyzing data all day. My artistic sister is an interior designer so her childhood passion did translate into a career, but honestly growing up her room was a disgusting pig stye so it cracks me up that she designs beautiful homes for a living. My younger sister is a dental hygienist and decided on her career when she was 7 and has never entertained anything else, which is great but not the norm.
BTW how does one read and write for a living? That's a job I would love! Obviously with my degrees that's the path I had seen for myself but it didn't pay well just after college so I got sucked into finance and haven't looked back.
I don't think our interests as children say much of anything about where we will end up. At different points in my life I thought I would be a pe teacher, and then a scientist. I spend hours preparing slides and looking at them under my microscope. I am now a stay at home mom with a psych degree I am not using.
I think the types of toys I gravitated toward may have been a precursor to my profession, yes. I'm a construction manager by trade, and had a bunch of Tonka trucks as a kid, as well as Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and wooden blocks. Of course, I also loved my Barbies (although to be fair, I was probably most fascinated by her Dream House, and spent a lot of time "remodeling" it... hmmm...).
I have always provided both of my daughters with the same toys I enjoyed as a kid, but to my dismay, neither one of them loves building things like I did. It will be interesting to see what professions they choose!
I don't think it always correlates exactly to their future profession, but it shows a lot about their personality.
When your kids are grown and you look back, the type of person they are was always evident.
Yes, my children are in their twenties and are in careers related to things that they loved to do as children. However, I think it's more a matter of children gravitating toward their interests in their play, rather than the toys being provided influencing their interests and talents.
My daughter loved to draw from the moment we would allow her to hold a crayon (without chewing on it). Now, she's an illustrator.
My son was a wonder with Legos and other building toys. He made his own models of all kinds of things after making whatever was on the box. He loved figuring out how to make something, which involved careful observation of how that kind of thing worked. He was very inquisitive and wanted to understand how something worked from the inside out. We thought he might become an engineer. Instead, he's now studying how the human body works, in training to become a doctor. So, it was his general inquisitiveness and interest in science that fueled his interest in medicine and understanding how the human body works. In his case, he's focusing on learning how the the brain and nervous system work and how to surgically manage dysfunctions, because he wants to be a neurologist.
My sister and I used to line up our dolls in rows of make-believe desks. We made little worksheets, etc. Now, we're both teachers. We also played other roles with our dolls, mostly with us as the mothers. We've both loved our real-life roles as mothers, too!
Your son might find a profession that involves building, or it could be designing or creating in a different way.
There are so many variables involved --- environment, inherent, destiny, etc.
But with my son I could see even when he was a baby those wheels turning as to how he thought. As he grew he was always pulling things apart and putting them back together, he was always building things and drawing in detail how things work and new designs. Now he is an engineer for designing for jets.
My other son always had his nose in a book and was always writing and very witty and quick to anything academic. He is a paralegal and very good at it.
nah. both of mine would have been paleontologists. oh, the dino books i still have!
i went to war with the BOE when my older son was hitting high school age. they insisted he had to take music because the public schooled kids were. i wildcatted about my reasons for homeschooling and refusing to follow the stupid PS syllabus, and i was right- don't you know, the next year music got cut due to budget issues. my finger-up compromise was to have him write an essay about beethoven to fulfill their stupid, unreasonable 'requirement.'
and after all that sturm und drang, my miserable kid who was soooooo uninterested in doing music that year ended up with a bachelor's in .....
i can't even say it.
:) khairete
S.
Sometimes its not so much what they play, but how they play that can be an indicator, if not of a future profession, but their temperment/disposition. No telling though whether a kid will end up doing what their temperment is suited towards professionally, or how time/ life events might shape their life.
Best,
F. B.
My older daughter had a dump truck she would sit in and push with her feet. She would hold on to the side windows. That was her favorite. She is a crafter for a show on the strip. She never showed an interest in art until 6th grade.
My favorite thing to do was to play with ants, watch them tunnel and build tunnels in the dirt to push my cars through. So I tunneled from one side until it opened on the other end. The trick was to not let it cave because the top was to thin. I do desk work now and photography. I did take a lot of snap shots as a kid. I used to drop the roll off in the mailbox and wait for the prints to come back in double. I couldn't wait to see what turned out.
