What To Do When Your Kid Doesn’t Have An Answer To ‘What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up’
Last month, I sat across from an 8-year-old’s mom at my post-quarter parent-teacher conference, pushing a half-eaten Goldfish cracker crumb around the edge of my desk while the fluorescent lights hummed overhead. We’d gone through reading levels, math fact fluency, how Mia had started bringing extra stickers to share with the new student who still cries sometimes at recess. Then mom leaned forward, voice tight, and asked the question I’ve gotten at least a dozen times this semester: “She told the career counselor she doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. Isn’t that weird? Shouldn’t she have some idea at this age?”
I nodded, because I get the panic. I remember being 10, sitting at a family reunion picnic, when my great uncle leaned down and asked me the same question. I’d just spent a week at the beach collecting sea glass, so I told him I wanted to open a little shop by the water where I sold my glass and homemade lemonade. He laughed, wiped barbecue sauce off his chin, and said, “That’s a nice hobby, not a real job. What do you really want to do?” I didn’t say another word about my shop idea to anyone for almost 15 years, and I still remember the hot flush of embarrassment that crept up my neck that day.
That’s the thing no one talks about with this question: it feels harmless to us as adults, but it puts an enormous amount of quiet pressure on kids. We ask it like it’s a casual icebreaker, but what kids hear is “What are you going to do with your whole life? You have to answer right now, and it has to be impressive.” Most of the adults I know still change careers every decade or so, and half the jobs my students will end up doing don’t even exist right now. Why do we expect an 8 or 10 year old to have it all figured out before they’ve even learned long division?
I told Mia’s mom that the fix isn’t pushing Mia to pick something—it’s swapping the big, high-stakes question for a series of small, low-pressure ones. Instead of asking “what do you want to be?” at dinner, try asking “what was your favorite part of this week, no wrong answers?” Or “if you could teach a 10-minute class about anything you already know, what would it be?” Or “what’s something you do that makes you forget to check your watch or beg for screen time?” These questions don’t demand a career answer. They just ask kids to notice what they enjoy, which is the first real step to figuring out what matters to them, anyway.
I also told her not to dismiss any answer, even the ones that sound silly or unrealistic. Last year I had a fifth grader who told his dad he wanted to be a professional video game tester when he grew up. His dad shot it down immediately, saying it was just playing games, not a real job, and shut the whole conversation down. When I pulled the kid aside to ask about it, he told me it wasn’t just the playing—he liked hunting for glitches, writing down exactly where they popped up, and figuring out how to explain what went wrong so someone could fix it. I suggested his dad ask him a few more questions about that part, and a month later they’d signed him up for a beginner coding camp at the local library. The kid still plays games after school, but now he’s also messing around building his own small games on the weekends. He still doesn’t know if he’ll be a tester or a coder someday, but he’s found something he likes that he can keep exploring. That’s way more useful than picking a random answer to shut an adult up.
A couple weeks after the conference, Mia’s mom texted me an update. She said she stopped badgering Mia about a career answer, and started asking the small favorite part question at dinner every night. The first night, Mia said her favorite part of the week was digging up worms for the first grade class’s garden project. The next week, she said she liked sorting the library books by cover color because it made the shelf look neat and it felt calming. Last week, she told her mom she liked helping the retired teacher who runs the community garden down the street plant sunflower seeds, because the lady lets her teach the little neighborhood kids how to dig holes the right depth.
Mia still hasn’t picked an official career for the upcoming 3rd grade career day. She told her mom she might just write “I like growing things” on her poster and call it good. Her mom doesn’t panic about it anymore. They stop at the garden twice a week after school now, and Mia comes home with dirt under her nails and a handful of extra cherry tomatoes for the dinner table.
I don’t know what Mia will be when she grows up. I don’t even know what the job market will look like when she’s ready to join it. What I do know is that right now, she’s doing exactly what she needs to be doing: she’s paying attention to what makes her happy, one worm dig and one sunflower seed at a time. She doesn’t need an answer yet. None of us really do, at any age. And that’s okay.
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