How Young Is Too Young? The Career Minded Child and the Parents That Drive Them.

Whether it's Tiger Woods or Toddler's in Tiaras some children are trained at the youngest of ages to be the best of the best and do whatever it takes to achieve their dreams. But whose dreams are they really?

I saw an ESPN documentary on Netflix called The Maronovich Project where a father raised his child from birth to be a professional football player. He did stretches with him as a baby and he never allowed any processed food to touch his lips. He had rigorous training throughout his entire childhood and eventually did go on to be a quarter back in the NFL. Unfortunately he also became a drug addict which would end his football career shortly after it began.

On a more positive note I read an article recently where a family with 10 kids had 6 of their children in college by age 12 and the younger four that remain will probably follow suit. My first reaction was what is the hurry? It's not about how soon you start, but how you finish. So far it turns out they finish well. One is a space craft engineer, another an architect, and another is on her way to becoming  one of the youngest Doctors in history. The parents claim that they are just "average folks" and attribute their success to homeschooling. In a CNN interview 16 year old Serennah Harding speaks highly of her parents saying "They found our interests and they cultivated those and helped us pursue those and learn at our own pace" and she gives credit to God for what he's done in their family and how he has blessed them. It's easy to think these parents from Alabama were pushing the kids too hard and stealing their right to childhood, but after watching the interview I am convinced that they are a sweet loving family that just happen to have really smart kids.



I personally know of a couple different families who claim their kids knew what they wanted to be at a young age and they held them to it and I know them as successful adults now. For example one of my elementary school classmates did pageantry when we were younger and she eventually became Miss Missouri in the Miss USA pageant. Now she is a news anchor woman in Cleveland. She is expecting her first child, which they just found out is a girl. The city lit up one of it's historic buildings in honor of the announcement.

 

Her brothers have been equally as successful. Their parents truly are the sweetest most loving couple, but they are also "average folks". Their dad was and still is a coach at the school I went to as a child. At a resent graduation banquet he was quoted saying "Good stops at good, but great never quits." Call me miss lack of motivation, but that sounds exhausting to me. 

Speaking of quotes one of my favorite lines is from a Rhett and Link video about a college student telling his parents he is switching majors.

"I only did engineering because of that time when you said You're so good at Legos. maybe you'll be an engineer. Mom, engineering is harder than Legos."

This scenario is probably more common than the child prodigies we've seen on Oprah. More than likely the sweet little girl you bought so many kittens for, the one that wanted to be a veterinarian, will end up in real estate loathing the chore of selling homes with pets and you will be left raising all of her cats. Isn't that more typical? Seriously though, when is a reasonable age for a child to know their passion or their calling, and to strive for it? All I know is that right now Z wants to be Batman when he grows up  and when he turns 20 he wants to own a "batmovehicle" and I support him 100%.