“So you want to be an astronaut? Um, Well…” (Reischer). Many people believe that a kid’s imagination should run free without basis. However, doing this may cause the child to see failure and success of their own doing instead of how others influence this outcome Erica Reischer explains, in “No, Honey, You Can’t Be Anything You Want to Be. And That’s Okay,” that the stigma of kids being able to grow up and be whatever they want to is wrong and hurts the kids instead. She summarizes this by quoting Daniel Kahneman as he says that “Success = Talent + Luck. Great success = A little more talent + A Lot of Luck.” Kid’s books usually show the main character being anything they want which shouldn’t be ingrained into kids. Most of the time there is a minimal role played in their own success which causes “overly-ambitious goals … [to] be harmful” (Reischer). Everyone’s destiny doesn’t reflect their internal qualities, Reischer uses her own experience, data, and word choice to explain how society affects kids.
The author uses her own experience as the starting point of the article. This is used to explain why she is qualified to share her perspective. Reischer points out her son received one of the books that makes kids think they can do everything and she had strong opinions about the message that she decided to share. It also gives her a purpose
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She repeats words; such as average and high achieving, to understand why some connotations are given to words. This is shown when Reischer asks “why … so many of us dislike the idea of having average children…” when “…most of us will be average (that’s the definition of average after all).” Readers are prompted to think about society and convince them of the effect of people and the words they use. She tries to stimulate conversation about how this affects the growing mind of a kid and their perception of society. Throughout the