Apparently I’m the Adult

When my son was five years old, he decided he wanted to work with computers.

And somehow, unlike most things five-year-olds decide, this one stuck.

For years.

Computers. Coding. Programming.

That was the plan.

Whenever anyone asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he had an answer.

When we started looking at colleges, we weren’t just looking at colleges.

We were looking at coding programs.

Schools that would get him where he’d already decided he wanted to go.

So when he had the opportunity to attend Vo-Tech for computer programming in high school, it seemed like the obvious next step.

This was his thing.

This was what he’d talked about forever.

Except there was one small problem.

He didn’t like it.

And suddenly the plan he’d had since he was five didn’t feel like the plan anymore.

When Changing Your Mind Feels Like Failing

This wasn’t just a casual:

Eh, I don’t think I like this class.

He was upset.

Really upset.

There were tears.

And that’s when my mom heart broke a little.

Because he wasn’t only worried about what he was going to do next.

He thought he had failed.

And even worse?

He thought he had disappointed me.

That one hurt.

Because there was absolutely nothing about this that made me disappointed in him.

Not one thing.

But I could understand why it felt so huge to him.

Every college he’d been looking into was based around coding.

Every conversation we’d had about what came after high school started with the assumption that this was what he was going to do.

He’d had this picture of his future for practically as long as he could remember.

And suddenly someone had erased it.

So now what?

What am I going to major in?

What colleges do I look at?

What am I going to do for a career?

What am I going to do with my life?

At one point, through all of this, he actually said:

“I guess it’s the military for me.”

Sir.

No.

Absolutely not.

We went from maybe computer programming isn’t for me to I guess I’ll enlist awfully quickly.

Can we perhaps explore one of the approximately eight billion options between those two things first?

😂

But once I got past the little heart attack, I realized what he was really saying.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t have an answer to that question he’d always been able to answer:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

And at sixteen, not knowing felt like failure.

Except He Didn’t Fail

This was the part I needed him to understand.

Not just hear me say.

Actually believe.

You did not disappoint me.

You did not fail.

I’m proud of him because of who he is.

Those are two completely different things.

If anything, I’m proud of him for being willing to admit that something he’d wanted for years might not actually be right for him.

Because that’s hard.

Sometimes it’s easier to keep going simply because you’ve already told everyone that’s where you’re headed.

Adults do it all the time.

We stay in careers we don’t like.

Relationships that don’t work.

Situations we’ve outgrown.

Sometimes changing direction feels scarier than staying somewhere we know we don’t belong.

And here was my sixteen-year-old realizing:

This isn’t for me.

Maybe that’s not failure at all.

Maybe that’s actually a pretty important thing to learn about yourself.

So Now We’re Back at Steinert

He made the decision to leave Vo-Tech.

And now he’s back at Steinert full-time, taking mostly Honors and AP classes.

The kid who had his career mapped out since kindergarten currently has no idea what he wants to do after high school.

And you know what?

That’s okay.

Although I’m not entirely sure he believes me yet.

I think we put an insane amount of pressure on kids to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Pick your classes.

Pick your major.

Pick your college.

Pick your career.

Start building your resume.

Make good decisions because apparently the choices you make at sixteen are going to determine the next sixty years of your existence.

Meanwhile, half of us adults are walking around thinking:

Wait….is this what I’m doing with my life?

I Definitely Didn’t Follow the Plan

Maybe that’s why I want him to understand this so badly.

My own career wasn’t some perfectly mapped-out journey.

Growing up, I wanted to be a teacher.

Then a nurse.

Then a news reporter.

Spoiler alert:

I am none of those things.

I eventually found my way into HR and Operations – a career I don’t remember ever considering when I was younger.

There wasn’t some grand plan that got me here.

There were jobs.

Moves.

Changes.

Opportunities.

Starting over.

Learning what I was good at.

Learning what I wasn’t good at.

Going back to school as an adult.

And eventually building a career that I’m proud of.

My path wasn’t straight.

Actually, if we’re being accurate, it probably looked like someone handed a toddler a crayon and told them to draw a line.

But I got somewhere.

And I think that’s what I want him to understand.

You Are Allowed to Change Your Mind

Five-year-old Parker picked computer programming.

Five-year-old Parker also wasn’t responsible for choosing a mortgage, deciding where to go to college, or determining what would make adult Parker happy.

Maybe we can give the kid a pass.

He tried something.

He learned more about it.

He realized it wasn’t what he thought it would be.

And he changed direction.

That’s not failing.

That’s information.

Now he knows something about himself that he didn’t know before.

And honestly, figuring that out at sixteen seems a whole lot better than figuring it out after spending four years getting a degree in something he doesn’t want to do.

The Hardest Part Is That I Can’t Fix It

This is one of those parenting moments I’m realizing I’m going to have more and more as he gets older.

When they’re little, you can fix almost everything.

Hungry?

Here’s a snack.

Scraped knee?

Band-Aid.

Lost toy?

We’ll find it.

But then they get older and the problems become things like:

I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

And apparently there isn’t a Band-Aid for that.

Rude.

I wanted to make him feel better.

I wanted to give him an answer.

I wanted to be able to say:

Don’t worry. Here’s exactly waht you’re supposed to do next, here’s the college you’re going to attend, here’s the career you’re going to love, and everything is going to work out perfectly.

I can’t.

And maybe I’m not supposed to.

My job isn’t to choose his life for him.

My job is to remind him that he has time to figure out what he wants that life to look like.

So… What Now?

I have no idea.

Neither does he.

And I’m actually trying to be okay with that.

He doesn’t need a new ten-year plan by Monday.

He doesn’t need to immediately pick another career just so he has an answer when someone asks.

Right now, his job is to go to school.

Work hard.

Try things.

Pay attention to what interests him.

Figure out what he’s good at.

Figure out what he absolutely hates.

And give himself permission to change his mind.

We’ll look at different colleges.

We’ll explore careers he may never have considered before.

Maybe he’ll find something completely unexpected.

Maybe he’ll change his mind three more times.

Maybe somehow he’ll circle back to technology in a completely different way.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that his life isn’t suddenly off track.

The track just changed.

And if my own life has taught me anything, it’s that some of the best parts of it weren’t part of the original plan anyway.

So apparently my sixteen-year-old doesn’t know what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

And apparently I’m the adult who’s supposed to reassure him that everything is going to be okay.

The funny thing is…

I’m 43 and I’m still trying to figure out parts of my own life too.

Maybe that’s the lesson neither one of us realized we needed this week.

You don’t have to know exactly where you’re going to keep moving forward.

And changing direction doesn’t mean you failed.

Sometimes it just means you’re finally paying attention to where you actually want to go

As for what my sixteen-year-old is going to do with the rest of his life?

I have absolutely no idea.

Thank God. He has plenty of time to live it first. ❤️