We ask our kids a lot of questions in the course of a regular week. How was school? What did you do? Have you brushed your teeth? How was your outing? Have you done your homework? Who did you play with? What are you eating? Why aren’t you eating? How was the party?
I’m not really a fan of asking kids lots of questions at all. Asking questions can show that we don’t trust our children. It doesn’t respect their right to tell only what they feel like telling or not to elaborate until they’ve processed something themselves. It can feel like interrogation. It can seem intrusive. It directs conversations in ways that often miss the depth and essence of what a child has to tell us.
Then again, our kids tend to ask us a lot of questions as well. We’ve already talked about why we shouldn’t necessarily answer them. Maybe I’ll put out a memo to kids not to answer their parents’ questions too!
So I realize I won’t get you to stop asking questions completely, but there is one question that you absolutely need to banish from your list. And that question is…
I’m not really a fan of asking kids lots of questions at all. Asking questions can show that we don’t trust our children. It doesn’t respect their right to tell only what they feel like telling or not to elaborate until they’ve processed something themselves. It can feel like interrogation. It can seem intrusive. It directs conversations in ways that often miss the depth and essence of what a child has to tell us.
Then again, our kids tend to ask us a lot of questions as well. We’ve already talked about why we shouldn’t necessarily answer them. Maybe I’ll put out a memo to kids not to answer their parents’ questions too!
So I realize I won’t get you to stop asking questions completely, but there is one question that you absolutely need to banish from your list. And that question is…
What to you want to be when you grow up?
I dislike this question for a number of reasons:
Firstly, it assumes that your child is not already somebody now. We need to focus instead on who the child is in this moment. What do they enjoy? Which things inspire them? What makes them feel alive? Who are they right now?
We need to stop seeing childhood as just a stage along the way to becoming an adult - As if only adults are fully human. Being a human is an ongoing process. We are complete (and not) in every single phase. We are not on our way to some final destination (other than, maybe, death).
Secondly, it assumes a future. And it invites children to only see the present as a means to fulfilling some future desire. Who says they will have a future? Many children do not grow up – literally. And why should they spend these amazing, alive, vibrant years of their lives only preparing for sometime in some uncertain future instead of fully engaging with and enjoying right now?
Thirdly, this question assumes that what you do equates to who you are. I may be a parenting coach, but I am also a student, a mother, a wife, a friend, a chef, a chauffeur, a child, a sister, a hiker, a swimmer, a dancer, a writer… and a host of other things depending on the day or time or year that you ask me. None of these labels capture who I fundamentally am.
And finally, the question assumes that our children will have only one career in their lives. This is highly highly unlikely. It may have been true two generations ago, but it is definitely not the case anymore. Most people will have multiple careers. Training our children to think in terms of one lifelong career will set them up for disappointment. How many of you have thought that you were supposed to have this one driving passion that you pursued? And how many of you actually found that to be the case? Most of us have messier lives than that – we follow hunches and curiosities and fall into things and fall out of things and try multiple things and abandon most of them. That lie that we were supposed to have one life mission (and that it would be career related) all started for us in that nasty little question – what do you want to be when you grow up?
Personally, as a child, I wish that instead of being asked that question, I had been asked - who do you feel like being right now? And then been given the permission to just go with that – to embrace that curiosity in that moment and see what journey it might have taken me on.
A child cannot decide at 4 or 14 what path their life should take. Most of us can’t even do that at 40. So let’s abandon that question and instead of asking any question, let’s just observe our children being who they are at any moment in time. They already are someone. Themselves. And aren’t they just magnificent?
Are you still trying to find your path in life? My Parenting Breakthrough Experience is designed to help you to love your life exactly as it is. Sign up now!
RSS Feed