by Kent McDill, Pick up your shoes and other fatherly advice: From firefighters to pop icons, kids make the funniest career choices

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

That is one of the first questions you ask your child when he or she gets to be the age of reason (reasonably). I know that age is about 4 years old, because I remember when Kyle came home from pre-school one day and said everyone was asked that question in school.

Kyle told the class he wanted to be a professional athlete, but was most impressed when one of his friends said he wanted to grow up to be a robot.

When children are young, there really isn’t a wrong answer to the question, and I’m guessing parenting experts will tell you it’s OK for young ones to want to be a professional athlete or professional model. That’s what my oldest, Haley, wanted early on when everyone told her how pretty she was.

As a parent, you want your kids to aspire to greatness. You want them to have goals, and if their goal is to be an astronaut, you tell them astronauts have to get good grades and be able to swim and be able to tie their own shoes. (You can tell them the same thing if they say they want to be teachers, or doctors or Batman. Whatever it takes.)

When the kids are little, you want them to dream big dreams. You want them to say they want to be President of the United States, or the first person to step foot on Mars, or to win American Idol. Then you get to ask them, “Why do you think you would be good as President of the United States?” and they tell you it’s because they organized the entire kindergarten class in the recess snowball fight that day.

But some kids are realists from the start, or set their own expectations lower, or just know what they are destined for. My brother-in-law, when first asked the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” said “Garbage man.” I’m not sure how my in-laws reacted to that statement, but today he owns his own environmental waste removal company, which certainly relates.

When Haley was 9 years old, she entered and won a contest sponsored by a magazine for pre-teen girls. She got to participate in a photo shoot, and actually ended up on the cover of the magazine. She was even mentioned in the Daily Herald, which did a story on the magazine. She had reached her dream. She was a model.

But this is where reality set in. She wanted to be a runway model, but she was too short for that (at the age of 16, she is only 4-foot-10). My wife and I knew all the horror stories about child models and actors and wanted Haley to have a more realistic and less worrisome career goal. She does now, but I bet she would tell you “professional model’’ was a darn fine answer back then.

Then there are the 14-year-old twins, Dan and Lindsey, who are as different as you might expect boy/girl twins to be. Lindsey decided some time ago she wanted to go into law enforcement, and is currently aiming for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But she just recently announced plans to consider a career as a lawyer. Is that something I’m supposed to encourage?

Dan, on the other hand, is very straightforward when he says, “I have no earthly idea what I want to do.” Sure, that could be interpreted as an indication that he has no direction, but we tell him it’s not necessary yet to make a choice, since my own childhood choices (weatherman and American history teacher) had very little to do with the eventual reality.

Dan is in a radio and TV class at school that he thinks may have given him direction. What’s funny about that is that my college degree was in broadcasting, a fact that Dan knows but did not find the least bit motivating until now.

One of my many current freelance jobs is covering the Chicago Bulls home games for nba.com, an extension of sorts from my former position with the Herald, for which I covered the Bulls from 1988-99. Today, when the Bulls play road games, I watch them on TV with 12-year-old Kyle, who writes his own pretend newspaper story after the game is over. He claims he wants to be a sportswriter once his professional soccer career is over (he still holds on to that dream).

My wife also worked in the newspaper business before she went legit and got “a real job.” We are both aware of the perils that exist in the newspaper business and journalism in general, but we have not yet discouraged Kyle’s interest in pursuing a career as a reporter and writer.

After all, what’s the best answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s “I want grow up to be just like you, Dad.”

Ÿ Kent McDill is a freelance writer. He and his wife, Janice, have four children, Haley, Dan, Lindsey and Kyle.