Let Him Dream.
That feels like the right place to start.
I’m the parent of a future worker who isn’t thinking about work at all (and that’s exactly how it should be right now).
He’s Generation Alpha. Right now, his world is school, friends, curiosity, and imagination. I don’t want him worrying about job markets, AI, or whether the path he chooses at sixteen will still make sense at thirty. Childhood is not a planning exercise, and fear is not a useful motivator.
At this stage, my job is to help him become curious, resilient, capable, and confident enough to adapt when the time comes, not to prepare for a career.
That conversation changes slowly.
In middle school, it’s about discovering what he enjoys, where he feels capable, and how he responds to challenge. It’s about learning how to learn, how to work with others, and how to recover from failure. There’s no talk of majors or credentials. There’s no pressure to specialize. The goal is exposure, not direction.
High school is different. That’s when the questions start to matter more, and when honesty becomes essential. What kinds of problems energize you? Do you like structure or autonomy? Do you want to build, fix, analyze, coordinate, or care for others? What responsibility are you ready to take on, and what do you want to grow into?
By this time, the conversation isn’t about a single “right path.” We need to help them understand that there are many good paths. Some people go to college first. Some don’t. Some combine work and learning. Some return to education later with clarity they didn’t have at eighteen. None of those choices define someone’s worth.
What I don’t want is for fear to drive the conversation. No boogeyman AI talk here. No fear of being left behind or of choosing wrong. Those are adult anxieties, and they don’t belong in a child’s imagination.
The world will keep changing. Work will keep evolving. My responsibility as a parent is to give him the footing to meet his future, not to predict it. Help him build judgment, confidence, and adaptability so that when real decisions arrive, he’s prepared to make them with open eyes rather than borrowed assumptions.
For now, I just want him to dream. There will be time for seriousness later.
And when that time comes, I want the conversation to be honest, calm, and grounded in the reality of the world as it is. Not the world we grew up in and not a world we’re afraid of.