A grandmother recently told me she was incensed her only grandchild, an 8-year-old, has been told he can be anything he wants to be.

"What a bunch of baloney!" she exclaimed. "What a completely irresponsible thing to tell a child!"

I agree wholeheartedly. One cannot be whatever one desires to be any more than one can have anything one desires to have. Here, for example, is a short list of the things I could never have been, no matter how hard I tried: professional football player, fastest man on the planet, tightrope walker, nuclear physicist, brain surgeon, fighter pilot, concert pianist and king of England.

My parents never told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. They told me what all parents should tell all children: I was blessed with a finite set of strengths. It was primarily my responsibility to discover what they were, develop them, and use them for the benefit of my fellow citizens. (I'd rather do this parenting thing than be king of England anyway.)

Ah, but those were the dark ages of parenting, when children were spanked and told to be seen and not heard and were, statistics say, a lot happier and more carefree than today's over-managed lot. Then, parents tended to tell children the truth about themselves. When children behaved badly, they were not told they'd made "bad choices," but that they behaved badly, even atrociously, and ought to be ashamed of themselves. That's now called "shame-based" parenting. And the mental health of the American child has been in free-fall since the Great Psychological Enlightenment of the late 1960s.

Today, this "you can be anything you want to be" hooey has become ubiquitous as enlightened parents seem to believe telling children fictions is one of the obligations of a truly caring parent. As a consequence of this lack of guidance and leadership, increasing numbers of young people in their late 20s still haven't discovered their Inner Wannabe.