Mother Daughter small talk

When your kid asks you to turn the music down in the car when you pick them up from school, it's a sure bet that your music is probably up way too loud, LOL!! Now if I were listening to the Spinners or Marvin Gaye when I rolled up I could understand the complaint. But I'm listening to things like "kiss me through the phone" by Soulja Boy or Beyonce's Diva (a personal fav these days) so I don't really understand what the problem is. Mucis has become therapeutic especially given all the minor setbacks I'm dealing with right now, that loud is the ONLY volume I know.

My daughter has been talking a LOT these days about things related to medicine and I guess it should come as no surprise given I've been a graduate student or Scientist all of her life. But I really, really, really do NOT want her to become a Physician when she grows up. Sure, I get that I don't have much control over what she becomes and I'll ultimately support whatever she decides, but I also can't deny how she is pretty much breezing though her scinece subjects like anatomy and genetics. As reference books, she uses and understands my college anatomy and biology books and even used my Robbins pathology book are a reference for a project (she's also a very good artist). Yeah, it probably comes as no surprise that this child, of Engineer father and step-father and Scientist Mommy, has a natural propensity for science, I was just hoping she follow in the footsteps of her fathers and become an Engineer. Now I'd like to think that I'm not one of those parents that pushes their own agenda with their kids in a lame attempt to live vicariously through then. What I do believe is that we did a great job of letting her interests drive our support for her. For example, for as long as I can remember she has always been interested in building things so we spent a great deal of time in the boys section of the toy department (I just regret we didn't let her be Buzz LightYear when she was 6 years old). Interestingly, when she was in second grade she expressed to her second grade teacher that she wanted to be a Civil Engineer when she grew up (one of the fathers is a Building Construction Engineer). The teacher suggested to her that since she was interested in building things, she should become a Carpenter. Now there's nothing wrong with Carpentry, but would any "other" child good in math and science who also liked to build things, be encouraged to go into Carpentry? Hell-to-da-Naw!! I angrily digress, the point is that we've spent a ton of money on building toys, build your own robots toys, computer software that lets you build houses, you name it, we've purchased it. And my thinking is that the key to true employment happiness is to ultimately work for yourself, so I already envision her one day having her own Architectural or Civil Engineering firm. Of course, that's MY dream for her which I must, as a good parent, keep in check somewhat. In the meantime, I'll get to listen to her explain things to me like why her uvula is itching, why a stroke in the brain stem is particularly deadly, and why excess alcohol consumption causes liver cancer.