"I really wanted to be the doctor because they make the most money."

"I don't want those weird houses, I like the motor home. It's the cheapest."

"I need two cars to fit all my kids!"

"I'm not paying the taxes."

7-year-old's say the craziest things, but I have to admit, kids can sometimes teach you great lessons. And playing the game Life with a 7-year-old the other day did just that. I learned some really great lessons about myself and some really sad things about our society.

I learned that even from a young age, kids somehow have it ingrained in their brains that the only way to make money is by being a doctor, a lawyer, or something very similar. My nanny kid didn't pick lawyer because she wanted to be one, she picked it because of how many zero's were in the salary. She picked the motor home because it cost the least, not because she liked it the best. This got me thinking about how much our society values money and measures all success by wealth. It's all about obtaining as much as possible and showing that to the world. This made me really sad because I realized that at such a young and innocent age, this kid already had it in her head that to "win" at life, you have to have the most money.

Now, this is not due to how she was raised, but rather to how everything in our society seems to work these days. School, games, social media, and everything in between seem to be all focused on one thing: success that is flaunted and measured by grades, money, and likes. My nanny kid showed me that this problem is not just with adults, but starts at such a young and vulnerable age. Rather than being encouraged to find success and measure it in things like relationships, joy, and experiences, it's all about money and likes, things the world can easily analyze.

So, while it left me pretty bummed out to see such terrible misconceptions being enforced in our youth, there were a few things I learned that gave me a lot of hope and helped me recognize areas in my life where I follow these same social constructs.

My nanny kid really wanted to pack her life with people. She wanted to fill her car up with kids, skip past anything that distracted from her family and friends, avoid taxes like the plague, and only picked up her pay day once during the whole game. So, while she may have picked a lawyer because she knew it made a lot of money (though not as much as the doctor), she never picked up her pay days. She may have been aware of what jobs normally earn the most income, but she couldn't have cared less about collecting what was owed to her. She really just cared about how many kids she could have, what her husband was like, and how many fun experiences she could have.

Playing this game with her taught me that our world might measure success by how wealthy a person is, but kids don't and we shouldn't either. It taught me not to worry about how much money I'll make in my future because life is not just about the money. It taught me that relationships should always be the most important thing in my life. It should always be about loving the people in my life the best I can. And it taught me that the little joys in life should really be appreciated. Because seeing her face light up when she landed on a pet adoption or family vacation space made me realize that life is all about experiences and people, not likes or money or status.

And while I know she didn't think about any of this while playing and will one day discover the harsh reality of paying those "darn taxes," she sure taught me quite about about this game of life.