Every year during Read Across America week kids in our little town, and probably all across the country, read the great Dr. Suess book, Oh the Places You’ll Go wearing the outfits they picked out to support where they want to go when they grow up on career day. You get kids dressed as plumbers, doctors, teachers, farmers, rockstars, artists, stay-at-home moms and dads, and so much more. I love the dreaming and excitement that goes into kids choosing their careers. They pick based off of what they’re passionate about not understanding or really even considering the amount of money they’ll make in one profession over the other. Kids get asked ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ and they think, what would I want to do all day every day when I’m big and don’t have to go to school?
This year in our house we had a construction worker and a dirt bike racer. I mean, how perfect is that. Both careers that take an intense amount of skill and physical work, but that is really where the similarities end. The middle man wants to race anything and everything in the worst way. In the winter he drives the small, beat up, old used 4 wheeler with a missing headlight like it is brand new with sponsor stickers everywhere. He slides on his helmet and becomes a totally different person flying down the driveway turning sharp to make his U-turn and make another lap. He dreams of the day he’ll be big enough for his own snowmobile and if given the option will watch freestyle (the high flying stunts and flips) any chance he gets. In the summer, there is really not much difference except that the wheels go from four to two. He spends hours on the dirt bike going around the little circle track they built and hitting the ‘jumps’. Even through his helmet and over the engine noise you can hear him playing the parts of racer, announcer, and crowd in his own fantasy. This little boy hit the jumps, do the tricks, fall and get back on to go again, and encourage all of his friends to do the same.
Our oldest chose construction because he basically wants to be my husband in any and all ways possible. He doesn’t quite understand yet what sales and project management are but he knows Dad builds buildings so being the true construction worker is his most logical option. Now, I love my son and know that physical labor is not really his jam but giving direction to people is. I’m going to say that he’ll want to be construction adjacent when he grows up but I’m fairly confident he won’t actually carry the tool belt. What is really interesting is his entrepreneurial spirit and while I know he’d hate to admit it, one thing he got from me are some big freaking dreams. This kid at 8 years old doesn’t ‘just’ want to be in construction. He wants to have a huge farm with over 1,000 head of cattle. He wants to have an excavating business where he can run equipment if he wants but be able to dig foundations and pull-out tree stumps and about a million other things. Beyond all of his grand dreams he is actually pretty planful in this. He has intentions of working nearby farms in succession of his mode of transportation. (The farm only a mile away is first because he can ride his bike there. Then the one he could take a 4-wheeler to. Finally, when he turns 16 he will he’ll be able to work at the big farm several miles away.) The experience and connections he gains will help him in starting or buying his own some day. He has similar strategies on the construction front. Start at home and start small, get bigger and better until he can do it himself, or at least teach someone on his crew how to do it.
I absolutely recognize that my kids hardworking and passionate as they are, have a serious amount of privilege to be able to do what they do particularly at the young ages they are. Machines to ride, a place to do it, and parents who support and help strategize your big dreams, there are a finite number of homes where kids grow up like this. I also know kids want to be what they see. My husband and my dad both used to race, one snowmobiles and one dirt bikes. My husband works and leads in construction every day and the kids see me leading teams at work on the daily, even more so since the start of the pandemic. There are hundreds of farms in our ‘neck of the woods’ as my dad would say. Most of them small family farms and some family farms that grew into very large operations. The kids in your life may have different aspirations and may not have the same opportunity to experience these careers day in and day out. My guess is around this elementary school age they are still dreaming about what they could be based on passions and what they see others doing and succeeding at.
What about you? Are you still dreaming of what you’d be when you grew up? Do you have people around you that are modeling what it looks like to be successful at it? What is your strategy to get there? You have the power to intentionally dream. You have the ability to change who and what your influences are. Is there a voice telling you a certain story about what you can and cannot do? Quiet them or, if possible, cut them out completely, and fill your circle, your social, your podcast and book lists with those who have done it before and who encourage you. You have the skills to make a strategy to make a plan and get where you want to go.