After my parents separated when I was a kid, I lived with my father. At 52 years my senior, he could be difficult to connect with, particularly when it came to the minimal guidance and insights he could offer regarding preparation for the future.
My father was old school. When some kids from a neighboring school district beat me up, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t get the police involved. Get some friends together and take care of it yourselves.” This insight had its roots in a series of experiences he had with MPs and local law enforcement while stationed in Europe during the Korean War.
His career selection advice was equally out of touch. He still believed in the path of getting a job at a company and getting taken care of for life, pensions and all. As a teenager, though, I realized this system and the expectations that went along with it were crumbling around me. I was skeptical. But my skepticism didn’t prepare me for a future less certain than the one my father still believed in.
Not long before he died at age 78, my father said to me, “Son, the Empire is waning and feels as England felt when I was a boy. I’m glad this isn’t my future. Good luck to you.”
All in all, I had no idea what was ahead and really no sense of guidance. From 12 on, I always had a job, so I knew how to work. Savvier friends convinced me to travel. Through travel — paid for by the jobs I held in my teens and 20s — I met a number of the people who would help me find more interesting work. That work and those people became the cornerstone of the business I run today.
I bring all of this up because this background has made me especially sensitive to how we engage our daughter and the skills and attributes we hope to foster in her. The speed at which technological evolution and the widespread adoption of new technologies occur helps to define my work, so I know that agility — the ability to pivot — is as important a characteristic as technological literacy itself. Standards change quickly, so comfort with this reality is imperative.
And so with our daughter, who turns 7 within the month, our focus is not on what she might be but how she will need to be in order to be equipped for this future.
The “good choice” vs. “good girl” model we learned a number of years ago from her preschool encapsulates this focus. We celebrate making good choices, and we examine bad choices as a means of sorting through how and why we make decisions. We don’t put the emphasis on whether she is inherently good or bad.
Of course, we emphasize our love for her, and she knows this. But focusing on inherent goodness instead of how and why we do certain things leads to a number of problems. If one is good but does something questionable, how questionable could it really have been? And calling a child “bad” for any reason feels ridiculous. We are what we are, and we’re ultimately judged by our actions, so we try to talk about this in a way that puts an emphasis on the actions.
Sometimes, our daughter asks questions about the future, and I’m honest about not knowing the answer. I don’t know if she will drive or if the car will drive itself. I don’t know if she’ll work with robots. She asked who I’m voting for, and I told her honestly I don’t know. I told her there are many choices that go into making that decision, and we walked through that process. I try to show her the process in which I engage to figure something out. How you end up sorting things out is just as important as where you land.
Not long ago she told us a number of things she hopes to be, one of which was “a strong woman.” I know where she got this trope by way of her media consumption, but that phrase — a strong woman — is not necessarily one we’ve ever uttered in exactly those terms in our household. She came to it on her own.
It was exciting, even though she is still very young, because instead of what she wants to be, it focuses on the how, which is the imperative perspective for wading into an unwritten future.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.
