this essay has introduced how young children acquire strategies within televisionculture that helps them configure their individual, yet also home-motivated versions of the American Dream. The television industry serves to provide images and messages about the “good life” in our culture, and how to relate a child’s current situation with that perceived “good life.” It is clear that, in this kind of television culture, young people find their own specific symbolic links that connect their current situations, their possible selves, and the good lives into which they want to