I was starting to worry it would never happen

My daughter is 6, and like a lot of kids that age she's pretty blase about things. She kind of likes Barbies. She kind of likes horses. She seems fond of ballet, but I still have a hard time prying her away from the TV when it's time for her lesson.

That's why I was so excited a while back when we saw a video of an 11-year-old rock climber who is one of the best in the world at her sport. As the tiny sprite scrambled up one impossibly steep face after another, her father told an interviewer that the girl was born to be a climber.

My daughter's face lit up.

"I was born to be a climber too!" she exclaimed.

Could it be true? She had been spending a lot of time on the artificial boulders at our local playgrounds, kicking off her shoes when she sensed she could gain a better foothold with bare toes. She had good instincts on the rock, it seemed, and more importantly, she had enthusiasm.

Maybe, I thought, something amazing had happened at an early age: My daughter had discovered her passion.

Thank God. I was starting to worry it would never happen.

It's crazy, I know — something that probably ought to be filed under "White People Problems" — but a lot of parents these days get anxious if their kids aren't fully self-actualized before they learn to tie their shoes. Bouncing from mild interest to mild interest isn't enough. We want our kids to have a purpose so rousing they leap out of bed each morning and seize the day with a strangler's grip.

Unlike most parental follies, I thought, this one came from a good place. We all know people who drift along with no focus and no inspiration, seemingly incapable of putting lasting effort into anything. What kind of life is that? Who would wish that on their kids?

But after speaking with Betsy Brown Braun, an author and child development specialist who practices in Los Angeles, I'm no longer convinced of the purity of this impulse.

Braun wrote a column for the Huffington Post in which she described passion angst as just another manifestation of competitive parenting. Moms and dads see their children's apparent fecklessness as an embarrassment, something that is bound to keep them out of the Ivy League. So whenever they see a flicker of curiosity, they rush to kindle it into a roaring blaze.

She told me about a couple whose apathetic teenage son began to show an interest in drums. Not only did the parents buy him a first-rate set of skins and hire a personal instructor, they got him to give drumming lessons to underprivileged kids at a local school so he could build a more impressive college resume.

Needless to say, the young man hasn't played a lick since high school.

"Parents' desire for a child to find a passion has been around forever," Braun said. "The investment in a child finding a passion — that's a growing trend. I think it has reached silly, epidemic proportions."

There is no switch parents can flick to turn kids into hyper-motivated achievers, she said. The best we can do is create an atmosphere that encourages exploration and hard work, all the while remembering that a child's passion might be hiding in plain sight.

"Sometimes, we're so selectively perceptive looking for that spark that we miss something that's there," Braun said. "A child can be enthusiastic about all sorts of things. Maybe she's a great friend and gets very excited about play dates. That's also a demonstration of involvement and the pursuit of something that pleases her. We become very single-minded looking (for certain interests) and not at the big picture."

As for my daughter, it turns out she might not have been born to be a climber after all. Her interest in skittering up boulders ended soon after she hurt her fingers clinging to a rock. Naturally, I was bummed. I didn't even have the chance to hire a rappelling tutor.

Still, it's probably for the best. She started doing a running club this summer and seems to like that pretty well. She's having a great time going to the pool, baking cupcakes and drawing pictures of rainbows and fairies.

I wouldn't call any of those things passions, exactly, but she's having fun and that ought to be good enough. Her life's purpose will arrive on its own schedule. I shouldn't try to rush it.