What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? Part 1

I love to ask Caleb and Naomi what they want to be when they grow up and I ask them very frequently. Caleb's dream career has changed over the years since he was a pre-schooler. At one stage of his life, he had wanted to be a train driver when he was very obsessed with trains. He also aspires to be an astronaut when his keen interest in space developed. He is not satisfied with merely reading about space and looking at the pictures of it in the Grolier encyclopedia. He desires the real stuff! Caleb also dreams of being a pilot and a doctor, specifically a gynaecologist.

However, in the last term of Primary 2, Caleb was found to be myopic. His Mother Tongue teacher had observed that he borrowed his friend's spectacles while copying some notes from the board. I should have suspected something amiss when he failed to copy the extra spelling words/phrases/sentences, which were usually given the day before the Chinese spelling test, in Term 4! Anyway, we brought Caleb to an optometrist for an eye assessment and had a pair of glasses made. He is disappointed that he can no longer be an astronaut or a pilot as these professions require one to be perfect sighted.

Hence, when I ask Caleb the same question nowadays, he will say that he wants to be a gynaecologist. He loves babies and wants to be the first person that the newborns see when he delivers them. I teased him that he should help his future wife to deliver their very own babies! Besides, I told him that a gynaecologist is a happy doctor as seeing babies is truly a joyful experience. And the patients that a gynaecologist sees are usually healthy expectant mothers and not sickly patients.

Occasionally, Caleb will still ask me about what he should eat to 'perfect' his vision as his first ambition is to be an astronaut! I just keep reminding him to trust God for a miracle. Well, with his manner of reading, i.e. lying down on the bed, and the number of books that he reads, I sometimes wonder when his miracle will manifest.

You may be wondering why I love to ask my young children this same old and 'annoying' question so often. The reason is I want them to have a goal in life and work towards it. By making them confess with their lips what they want to be when they grow up, it enables them to be more and more convicted (I hope) about what they want in life and their learning becomes more purposeful. Now that I know what my children want to be when they grow up, I can better guide and nurture them or provide them with the resources accordingly.

Little children, what do you want to be when you grow up? ;D

God's Beloved