It’s amazing how a simple decision like choosing a Halloween costume can reveal so much about who your children see as their role models. A decided to be a presidential candidate for Halloween this year. It started as a joke. A set a goal to become student council president. It’s a position reserved for eighth-graders.

Not long after he was appointed to that post, the National Junior Honor Society elected him president as well. At that point, he decided to complete the trifecta and run for class president, too. After he won that election, his friends all started referring to him as Mr. President. His best friends have also used the title sarcastically at times, which has been good as it helps keep his ego in check.

As it got closer to Halloween, he decided to flesh out his costume a little and he added a “For President, 2044” sign to it and entered the race. It was easier to explain that on trick-or-treat night than to explain that he is the “president of everything” at middle school. At any rate, while we were putting the finishing red, white and blue embellishments on his campaign propaganda, we got to talking about what it might be like to run for president.

A surprised me with a well-thought-out plan, from college through a graduate degree and into the work force. Of course, it would take a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, and he’s only 13, but still, just the understanding of the work that would be required to be successful impressed me. What also surprised me was that he credited his late grandfather, my dad, as his inspiration to run for both class president, and to want to grow up to be president.

My dad had heard John F. Kennedy speak as a teenager, and it motivated him to get involved in public service. I can’t believe that A remembers these conversations. He not only remembers them, he’s inspired by them.

Just a few days after we had that conversation, I came across an online article that was something like “American kids want to grow up to be YouTube stars, Chinese kids want to grow up to go to space.” Now, the investigation was slightly skewed as it limited the survey to five professions and gave the choices to 3,000 8- to 12-year-olds. Professional athlete, teacher and musician rounded out the five choices. Now, this isn’t a great study, since there are thousands more professions that kids have to consider, but the point was made as to who kids these days look to as role models.

Thanks to the internet, I don’t always have a good grasp on who the people are that my kids are following these days. It’s not like I can tell by who is on the cover of Teen Beat or Young Miss magazines. A is a devotee of some dude called PewDiePie. Why this person is famous is beyond me. I’ve been told that I’m “too old” to get it. From what I can tell, he doesn’t seem offensive, and the antics that get repeated in my presence are harmless, so far. But, as I’ve explained to A many times, there are only so many “dumb tricks on the internet” wonders out there. Really, I find the market to be oversaturated with one of them.

Since we’re not huge professional sports fans, my kids have a hard time picking a team to like, let alone a professional athlete. We’re big connoisseurs of movies, but the kids seem more interested in the characters than in the actors who play them. For example, they’d much rather grow up to be Tony Stark than they would Robert Downey Jr.

Although my kids don’t have any desire (at this point) to be teachers, they are still inspired by their teachers, and their interests in the subjects taught by those teachers come to the forefront of what they want to be when they grow up. G is having a great year in his history class, and suddenly, that’s something he is taking into consideration when it comes to his future plans.

When E was in kindergarten, they read the Dr. Seuss classic “Oh The Places You’ll Go,” and then completed some exercises about their futures. E brought home a little drawing of a hot-air balloon, with her picture attached, and it said, “when I grow up, I’m going to be a writer like my mom.”

E has changed her mind about what she wants to be about 75 times since then, occasionally coming back to writer, and sometimes going with my other job as a scientist, which is the kick she’s been on lately. It most recently manifested itself in her “mad scientist” costume for Halloween, complete with flasks and beakers full of slime, which really added to the effect.

The future is a long way off, and no doubt they will have many experiences and role models over the next few years that will ultimately shape their career decisions. I’m both excited and terrified for them. A quick Google search reveals that the average person changes careers between five and seven times in their lifetime these days. If that’s an average, that could be as many as 14 times, or as few as one. It’s exciting to have so many opportunities, and terrifying to think about possibly failing that many times, or to think about the amount of money that it takes to acquire training and make those kinds of changes.

At any rate, I’m grateful for the outstanding role models that they’ve had in people like their grandparents, and I’m humbled when I discover that they really do pay attention to what I do. It’s an awesome responsibility. I keep E’s little balloon drawing in my “to-do” planner, so that I remember that setting an example for her is always on my “to-do” list.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.