Several months ago, as my four-year-old played with a family friend who has known her since she was a baby, she paused to proclaim, “Me want to be musicker when me grow up.”

“You can be a doctor,” my friend corrected her. Then, appearing to catch herself, she added, “You can be a doctor and a musician.”

I was flabbergasted. It’s the type of comment I’d expect of my nuclear family (my father, when she was three: she’s good with her hands; she’d make a great surgeon!) But my friend is progressive, a feminist, and works as a counselor in a highly diverse high school. I’ve chatted with her at length about the overwhelming pressure I faced growing up to be some kind of doctor – doctor of medicine, doctor of dentistry, doctor of jurisprudence, doctor-doctor, those were all the options available to me, it seemed.

And yet, even at four, and even from the well-meaning adults in her life who proclaim a desire to do things differently, my daughter is learning that only some jobs are acceptable. Other jobs might come with the asterisk of acceptability, but only if you do something else prestigious and worthwhile, and only if that “something else” is your primary occupation, the one you lead with.

Personally, I try not to comment about my four-year-old’s future job aspirations. She’s four! I fully expect a whole list of jobs will interest her before she reaches adulthood. I also fully expect most of them will be passing fancies, indicative of some interest that captures her imagination for a few months or perhaps a few years. Before musician, she wanted to be a constructioner, so that she and her best friend could build houses together (“Ah! An architect!” remarked another friend – why don’t we ever think “general contractor” or even “construction worker” or “developer”?). At other points, she has wanted to drive a garbage truck or deliver mail.

Perhaps you notice a trend? These are all activities she witnesses in daily life. And that, to me, is the point of a four-year-old’s career interests. She’s exploring the world around her, trying it on for size. And so, rather than try to persuade or encourage her toward a particular set of professions, what I ought to be doing, perhaps, is broadening her world more generally, so that she has a wider base to choose from in the first place.

After all, I doubt she will remember any of these passing whims. What she will remember is our reactions. The more we make a big deal about something, the more children take note: Oh, this seems to mean something, I wonder why?! Thus, a seed is planted. With each subsequent conversation or overheard remark, every time the dinner table chatter turns to what college this person is attending or how that person is wasting their potential in that job, the seed is watered.

Every time we naysay their desires and push them toward a different option, we germinate self-doubt, mistrust in their instincts, fear of their curiosities, and unwillingness to pursue their interests. How often do we, as adults, cut ourselves off from even considering a wild idea before the thought fully formed? Yet the price of those half-formed, unacknowledged dreams is regret and dissatisfaction.

If one of the largest deathbed regrets is not living a life that was true to you, then let us consider the responses we offer to dreams and desires, whether our own, or our children’s. Let us consider which seeds we intentionally or unintentionally water.

Of late, my four-year-old has taken to saying, “What the fucking?” when perplexed. Beyond doing my best not to crack up, I try not to respond, and continue the conversation as though nothing happened. I’m fairly certain she does not know the meaning of those words, and is just repeating a refrain from the playground (from a child who, no doubt, is just repeating what they’ve heard). If I just wait, the phase will pass. Just as musicker passed, and constructioner before it.