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Early in my life, not directly, but they did support me learning anything. Whatever I wanted to learn about, they taught me if they knew it, or learned with me

Early in my life, not directly, but they did support me learning anything. Whatever I wanted to learn about, they taught me if they knew it, or learned with me if they didn't. Later on (in my teens) when I was narrowing in on technology, they gave some gentle nudges towards engineering because of the good long-term life prospects. But when I went through a phase in HS where I thought maybe I wanted to be a journalist, they never pushed back and said "no no, engineering is better". I think they were less concerned with career choice for me (or my sister) than they were with making sure we came out good people able to make our way in the world, by whatever means made sense. They did stress that sometimes any work will suck, but always choose something I find interesting, becuase I'll spend a third of my life working, and why choose to be unhappy all that time?

christiangenco 13y ago
This this this. I was homeschooled up until high school, so my childhood was just a long swath of time to get really into obscure things. I could map out ages 3-15 as phases of things I was obsessed with (Batman, Pokemon, Magic Tricks, acting, Harry Potter, making things out of duct tape, film making, making websites, and coding), and every step of the way - no matter how obscure or ridiculous the future prospects were - my parents would feed the passion. When I have kids, I'll definitely try to make science and engineering seem cool (by sneaking movies that glorify building things and scientific discovery, like the Iron Man series and Cosmos), but I'll focus on getting really into whatever my future progeny happen to stumble on themselves.