Children need to start early to think of careers as having many possibilities, not just one. That famous question – What do you want to be when you grow up? – is not really the best question nowadays. Even if children’s answers end up being their first jobs, these first jobs will not likely be their only jobs.
A better questions is, “What are threethings you want to do when you grow up?” This question encourages your children to think they have lots of things they can do in the future. How exciting is that? If they want to be both a dancer and a firefighter – they can be.
So, don’t worry about how young your children are when they start thinking about their interests and skills as careers. Just make sure they know that changing their minds is OK – not only just OK, but one more thing that makes them special.
All their interests and skills are like building blocks. How they stack those building blocks stack up over time and will be very different from how anybody else stacks them up. And, their “stacks” will make them stars!
Picture Book Parenting 