I don't know if my son (now 14) will be what he said when he was 8 ("a professor of anthropology or history so I can travel and learn about different cultures"), but he's always been fascinated by geography and history. Hung a classroom-sized wall map of the world in his room, filled it with history books, globes, and geography games, and even put a map-of-the-world shower curtain in his bathroom. Not because I want him to be an anthropologist (or anything particular) but because I wanted to feed his passion. Don't think that can ever be a bad thing.

To be honest, it is not a good idea. and I'll tell you why. My kid is college age and while she was growing up we, being "deprived" of all the "nurturing of our interests" by our own parents, not because they were bad parents, it just was not common back than to "nurture", they just let us be, bought us good book, took us places, all the rest was up to us. Both me and my husband have PhDs in technical fields, our daughter was growing up when we were in grad school, she was around us in labs, she was growing up with a bunch of gradstudent's kids as well. And she remembers these days fondly, they were left to develop their own interests, explore the surroundings, build forts and such. It was our poor days, we had no means to "nurture her interests" with building her "veterinary hospital" or "space shuttle". With whatever little that we had we made her take swim lessons, ballet lessons, took her on hikes and such. Then we graduates and had more money, and we started to "nurture", picking up any clue of what her interests might be. You are interested in music? Here is a teacher and the instrument. Painting? Here is a teacher and all the supplies you need. Could you guess what a result is?
Poor girl did not develop real interest in anything. She is struggling to find herself. And We blame ourselves for that. TO DEVELOP A REAL PASSION FOR SOMETHING A PERSON SHOULD REALLY WORK FOR THAT, only than it it really valuable.

Have you ever thought that most children are different in the time it takes for them to find their passions in life? Some, like the example in the story above, will find it early on, while others (Grandma Moses became a world renowned painter in her 80s) take longer. What"s the rush? I found my career early on in life and my younger sister still struggles with what to do in her mid-20s. We were both raised by the same parents in a similar manner. I think parents try too hard to find that "perfect formula" to raise a child. There's no such thing.

I think the last two posters make good points.

This bedroom is fun, if you've got the time and money to create an 'animal hospital' bedroom and then change it out when the kid gets bored with it. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but it seems kind of indulgent and unnecessary. My 10-year-old niece has loved animals and wanted to be a vet for years, but she gets her 'fix' by playing with her real live pets and reading books about animals.

A lot of these overly-contrived kids' bedrooms look as if they're more for the adults than the kids, to me.

I hope that when I'm a parent, I'll be able to nurture my kid's dreams; I think my parents did that with me. Between the ages of three and five, I clearly remember wanting to be a doctor, a paleontologist, an archaeologist, and an astronaut - fortunately, lots of dinosaur models, a toy stethoscope, and a whole lot of science books were not hard to provide! I think there's a difference between nurturing a deep interest in a broad area and emphasizing a specific career through the materials in a child's life. That's not to say that the parents who created the animal hospital are in any way "wrong"; just that there are many, many ways to support and encourage a kid to have dreams and to follow them.

Guys I don't think we have to get too philosophical about these things. If your kids will enjoy playing with an animal hospital and you want to make one, why not. This to me just looked like an alternative to a play kitchen or dolls house.(it really was just a cupbaord painted white with some crosses) Zarazame I really don't think your daughter's difficulty in finding yourself is down to you attempting to "nurture" her many interests (don't put that on yourself). finding a true passion is not something that comes to everyone. I bet if you ask anyone who is lucky enough to live out their passion, it was something that was always there, that they always wanted to do. That is why we call it a passion. If your lucky enough as a parent to be able to nurture that, then I say go ahead. If not, lets have some fun anyway.

I find it important to strike a balance between overdoing it/spoiling your child and supporting their interests. My own daughter, who just turned three, has been obsessed with sharks until she could barely walk. "Shark" was her fourth word, behind "mama, "dada," and "why." I don't go overboard with her love of the sharks and of the ocean (we live in coastal New England, so thankfully the sea is part of our regular life anyway) -- but she does have a small fish tank and a sea-themed room, but within a reasonable budget, that is appropriate for a three year old. I realize that someday she may not love sharks as she does now, but I am happy to indulge her passions within reason.

I think it's cute. Especially the X-rays. If anyone's interested, I think the Swedish labels say "Swallowed key inside bear", "Mouse with broken back" and "Swallowed apple rabbit"!

Siolof, thank you but I really think that it exactly because we tried to "nurture", the way we did. Now being much wiser than back than I realized that there are two very different ways of nurturing, one is handing everything that a child has a slightest interest in to the child, robbing him or her of the pleasure to really getting the desired thing after working for it, OR helping them to achieve that something. One is overindulgence (like we see in this post) the other is true nurturing. If somebody just gave me all the things my heart desired back when I was a kid, a telescope, a chemical and physical lab kit, I would never ever considered being a physicist, it would be just too plain, too ordinary.

My daughter had just such a shadow box filled with little "collectible" ceramic animals (many were Red Rose Tea premiums). She loved that kiddie collection most of all.

Now that she is a teenager, however, I will treasure having it (she has not put it in her "high school" bedroom). It will go up when she leaves the nest for college and she'll just have to accept it as nostalgia when she is home.

Her interests have changed greatly--no longer does she want to work in a zoo with monkeys. What a shame..... ;P

I pretty much let my kids do what they want to their room. I won't go overboard spending it but if they are really into Star Wars, that's probably what sheets they have. If they decide they want Doctor Who stuff? I make a Dalek. no big. paint is paint and things can be redone.

"Me... have PHD" is the best thing I've read on AT so far - thanks for the laughs!

There's a difference between being slightly interested in something and having a passion for something. More likely than not a child will develop a passion for music, animals or what have you whether or not that passion is actively encouraged by the child's parents. Not every child/person has something they are passionate about. I feel sorry for children/young adults whose parents expect them to be passionate about something.

I think this is one lucky little boy and, as a previous commenter said, this to me is just another take on a pretend play space for a child.

The question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" is SO annoying. Let kids be kids. I wish people didn't start emphasizing the adulthood and careers so early on. A much better question would be "what do you like to do/play?"

That being said, if a child has a passion it's great that the parents will support it. But not hand out every whim immediately. If your child loves fish and the sea, you could wait and see a year and two, and if he still constantly talks about the fish, then go together to get him a fish tank ;) Let the child dream and wait a little and see if the passion is lasting.

I think the animal hospital here looks like it was fun to make and low budget, really no different than all the play kitchen etc (or actually better, since many kids get the play kitchen even though they show no particular passion for cooking..)

But as kids a super imaginative and resourceful, if they love to play veterinarian/ fireman/zoo/home they will fashion the play out of anything. My daughter's favorite plays include things that are not toys at all, and toys that are used very imaginatively. She uses her own socks as pancakes to cook, on her chair as a stove, and so on. We don't have room for a play kitchen. We have teepee that can be whatever she wants that day. (And can be taken down and put away.) "Building" the play is part of the fun, and encourages creativity.

Hinmelb, I am not a native speaker, me love, I hope you laugh some more, dear. And PhD is written as exactly like that PhD not PHD, hope it makes your day even better.

This is actually a really important topic to me. Growing up, I had plenty of opinions and wasn't hesitant to share them, so I was told I should be a lawyer because I 'liked to argue' so often I decided if that was how everyone felt, then that's what I should do. I can't remember anyone asking what I wanted to be.

I agree that it's a tough question for a child to be expected to handle. Most children can't even conceive of forty years down the road. And why is it so important for a person to have only one particular interest from which to build their career?

Among the many, I had a rock collection compiled from rocks I'd notice and pick up on my walk home from school, that my efficient mother made me throw away. I also had to throw away the first thing I ever grew, a pinto bean, which I placed into soil I gathered from outside my home and an empty, tossed out ice cream bucket. I think the distinction here is when the child reaches for something themselves. That's what you should pay attention to, and how you know where their interests are. I could have used a shadow box for that rock collection, or an age appropriate gardening book. But I also think it's critical to give children things like music and dance lessons. It's important, I think, to be well-rounded in the humanities. I'm no tiger mother but I can see how an instrument like the piano or violin teaches that excellence comes through diligent practice, and that instant gratification is not the goal.

I'm not so sure I'd feel comfortable devoting a whole room to their interests, maybe a particular space. The fish tank, for example is not the whole room, it's one particular space for designated interests. It more accurately reflects adult life: You conduct experiments/record observations in a lab, not your bedroom. But I might be biased, I lean more toward shared rooms until adolescence.

I don't agree that what these parents have done is a bad idea. A bad idea would be expecting him to continue to want to be a veterinarian for the rest of his life. Or to expect him to expect to make a career out of it in the first place. But I can appreciate how they have allowed him space to act out the situations he's learned about through his research and passion for being around animals.

I think some people are taking this a little too personally when it comes to finances and career paths.

You give a kid cardboard boxes, newspaper clippings, basic art materials like crayons and posterpaints and blue tack. Well, you got everything a kid needs to make their imaginative world with those items. We never had money. I never went to lessons. Still, I was given the tools to make it all possible. I turned my room into an art studio by sticking all my drawings on the walls and my brother turned his room into an ocean by cutting out pictures of marine creatures and sticking them on his walls! Give your kids the tools and they'll make it possible.

As for career paths, let's face it, it's unlikely your child will be the first cowboy spacemouse but isn't to say you should reject the idea. Instead, take your child's ambitions seriously. My parents did. When I wanted to be an artist they did everything they could to encourage me. They'd tell all their friends I wanted to be an artist, would show my drawings to others. They really made me feel confident, even when I had a massive ambition change at six and wanted to be an actress. They did the same to my brother who wanted to be a spy, then a marine biologist, then a physics professor and then, finally, a musician.

Had my mother decorated my room pink with purple and took all my Van Gogh books away and replaced them with barbie dolls, I'd have been absloutely heart broken. It should never be about what you think your child should be. They're little people and if you reject their dreams, you're rejecting them and it hurts when you're too young to understand. I have a friend whose parents wanted her to be a violinist. They invested a lot of time and money into their dream of her being a violinist. She was very unhappy and so at last threw caution to the wind and ran off to follow her own dreams of directing. You can't make a kid something they're not.

Oh and I became an artist. I'm working on the actress part.

My daughter is four. She still thinks "princess" is a valid career path. In the last few months, she's said that she'll be a princess, a ballerina, a cheerleader, a LEGO designer (after I showed her the AT post on LEGO's Denmark office), a "worker at the pop factory," and a MythBuster. :)

People tell me she should be an engineer. She's fascinated by how things are made and how they work. One of her crayon drawings was a cannon to launch pumpkins, complete with an automatic loader. Another was a dispenser that poured both water and juice, with two separate, hidden tanks so the drinks wouldn't mix but "the machine would still look good."

She hasn't zeroed in on one interest or one passion. So, I encourage her to play. Discover. Make things. Sing songs. Dress up. Talk. (she's a four-year-old girl...soooo much talking!) If she focuses in on one interest later on, I'll do what I can to help foster that interest. If not, I won't be surprised or alarmed. I do not have a laser-focused passion, just a handful of things that I like to do and a profession that makes me happy.

Oh my goodness, how is Kaspian's room over-indulgent?? I see a little wooden thing on the wall to hold plastic animals, a cardboard box to use as a sick bed, and a painted cabinet. It's cute cute and simple, and pretty affordable. There is nothing here that would be a waste of money or effort to change if he decides he wants to be a teacher or a chef in 2 years. Some people do princess themes or pirate themes. I think as long as you aren't doing something super permanent and expensive for a very specific stage your child is going through, it's great. I also don't think it's a big deal to ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. My husband and I have careers that are important to us- our kids see that. I think it's quite normal and healthy for them to expect to have careers of their own one day. My oldest is 4.5 and I don't expect her to have a "realistic" answer for "what do you want to be when you grow up?" She can say Princess, or ballerina, or even something that is unlikely, but certainly possible (like cellist). I don't expect her to say CPA or real estate attorney. It's ok for kids to dream and important for parents to support dreams, without holding the child to a particular dream for all eternity.

I don't see anything "indulgent" in this room. There are some lovingly handmade items that help a kid with role play. Sounds great.

My four year old dearly wants to be a pirate. I am cool with the pirate accessories and playmobil but I draw the line at Somali lessons. Now THAT would be indulgent.

These comments are so funny. People are just so negative! How can anyone have a problem with a post entitled "Embrace Your Child's Dreams"?!?! Or a room that clearly encourages a child to use his imagination- I mean, the "stretchers" are made out of cardboard boxes for goodness sake. WONDERFUL ROOM! I need to make a more creative environment for my son. Thanks AT.

Its one thing if your child decides, on a whim one day, to be a veterinarian and you impulsively change their whole room. However, if your child has been fixed on that single idea for a loooooong time, then I would say its well worth the effort and money to indulge in their passion, especially if their room is up for a re-do anyway. This room looks like it could easily transition into another theme/decor, so I don't think its over the top.

Agree with NKENA - I feel like the people complaining about this didn't look at the photos?? This is all low-budget DIY stuff, and nothing permanent. We see rooms on here for kids that are done by interior designers......... I can see how that is controversial, but not THIS. Might be different if the parents had spent big bucks or installed all kinds of semi-permanent features!
I think the child and the room are adorable. It's sweet that the parents did this, and I don't read into the article that the parents are forcing him to be a vet when he grows up!

Wait... Princess isn't a valid career path? EPIC WOMP. My dreams just got crushed.

It's disappointing to read negative commentary about "overindulgence." This isn't exactly a copy of the FAO Schwarz catalog. It is a lovely, simple expression of the child's current interest. The x-rays are fantastic! Will he be a veterinarian one day? Maybe, or maybe not. In the meantime, he can enjoy this wonderful space. If his interests change, so can his room.

P.S. Does anyone know where I might buy a similar curio cabinet? My son has a collection just begging for such a display.

SKING212: It appears to be a printers' tray painted white and attached to the wall. You can buy them second hand.

The x-rays are genius. Insightful parents, lucky boy!

BKLYNbaker: ikr? Tell that to the Duchess of Cambridge.