I was a perfect child.
I know that because my younger brother always tells me I was. Funny, though, he never sounds a bit proud when he says it. As a matter of fact, by the tone of his voice you'd think it pained him to grow up with a perfect sister.
Craig and I had different learning styles and might have benefited from differentiated classroom instruction. Could I help it that I found it easy to sit quietly in school and rack up academic trophies? Was it my fault I could pull down A's faster than he could pull crayfish from the local creek? While I read my way through the Young Reader stacks at the library, Craig careened down the nearest hill—on his skateboard or on skis, depending on the season.
His year-round passion, however, was airplanes. Craig provided himself career job training. He could look up and identify a particular model of flying machine before anyone else in the family could even spot it in the clouds. His favorite pastime was camping out on the observation deck of the Kent County airport and watching the planes come and go. He searched the skies wherever he went and would stop dead in his tracks the minute he heard the faint hum of a plane overhead. He lived, breathed and dreamed airplanes.
For all I know, he dreamed about them in school, too. He certainly dreamed about something besides his studies. My parents grew to dread school conferences, which they attended faithfully even after they had memorized the speech the teacher would invariably give.
"Craig is a very bright boy," they would say. "If only he would stop dreaming and apply himself."
Craig, meanwhile, applied himself to more interesting stuff--like parties and building complicated model cars, ships and, of course, airplanes. He would sometimes glance up from gluing a tiny propeller and catch me walking through the door with another stack of books. He would ask, in a voice dripping with a certain pity he reserved for all oppressed creatures, "What do you do with all those books?"
Unfortunately, his teachers never found a way to inspire an interest in books; nor did they find the key that would unlock all his talent and attention. He drifted his way through high school and one semester of college until my parents decided if he was going to throw away money, it had better be his own. Craig knew right away where he would throw it: he signed up for pilot school.
Bingo. Suddenly Craig knew how to apply himself. All the high school math he had endured finally came to life. For the first time, he read mountains of training manuals and aced every test. He was willing to learn whatever it took to realize the dream of a lifetime.
For many years he made a living flying clients around the country, until his role as Super-dad forced him to hang up his wings. Then he applied himself to six months of intensive self-study to prepare for the National Insurance and Securities exams. His goal in sight, he aced those tough exams and set himself up in business as a successful investment counselor.
I can't help thinking that with a little career preparation, his path might have been easier. A little career awareness might have saved my parents hours of frustration trying to convince him that math and physics are important. An opportunity to work with pilots or planes might have saved him from early failure and from wasting time in reaching his goals.
Spend some time this month talking with your teens about their life goals. Encourage your school to implement meaningful Career Preparation activities. Even kids with "perfect" academic careers benefit from career awareness and education development plans. They might even learn what they'll do with the diplomas they earn at college graduation.
Because the truth is, even though my brother still teases that I'm the "perfect" one, he's the one with the shiny new SUV. These days I look up from my writing and ask him, "What do you do with all that money?"