Career Advice for Anxious Parents of Teens and Young Adults
Dear parents,
Are you stressed about helping your teenage child prepare for their future career? Worried you’re not doing enough to help them make a decision and focus their studies? Thinking about hiring me to get your teen on track to a lucrative, surefire career path?
I wrote this article for you.
I’ve been working with teens - and parents of teens - in career preparation for a decade. Throughout my 10 years working at 5 universities, I’ve worked as career counselor, administrative staff, instructor, and admissions reader. I’ve helped students edit essays and practice for interviews to get admitted into college, graduate school, and professional schools (dental, medical, law, business) as well as obtain internships and jobs. I studied career counseling in my master’s program.
I genuinely love and care about teens and young adults. They are at a very special stage of their lives full of growth and potential but also often immense pressure and debilitating anxiety. Some of the negative emotions come from schools and peers, but a lot can come from parents. Parents’ anxieties can come from schools and their peers as well!
If you’re reading this, I will assume that you are a parent with pure intentions for your child’s contentment and fulfillment by choosing a career path that best fits their interests and abilities, NOT a parent who is trying to push your child into a career choice based solely on maximizing prestige and wealth to make yourself look and feel good. If you find that you fit more into the latter group, my blog post will not align with your values.
My goal in writing this is to help lighten your anxiety by presenting facts and observations from my experience as a career coach to share a healthier perspective towards career development while helping you improve your relationship with your child and actually increase their preparation to choose a fitting career for themselves.
My main point is basically this:
You do not need to push your child into a career path decision right now.
Consider this…
There are various personal factors to choosing a suitable career path - interests, strengths, values, personality, etc. All of these are still in the development stages throughout adolescence and into their mid-20s. Trying to pin them down too early, like in STEM or the arts, could stunt their development and exploration.
The workplace is changing at the fastest pace in world history and it’s better to be adaptable and well-rounded than highly specialized, especially at a young age. A minority of youth will have a strong determination to enter a highly specialized field, in which case it would be beneficial to start gaining knowledge, skills, and experience right away, but most teens are still uncertain.
Many job titles that people hold today didn’t exist when they were younger. Some people’s “dream jobs” may not have been created yet. Some jobs will become obsolete in a few years as technology and the world economy changes.
Youth - and sometimes their parents - have very limited knowledge of career options, both due to limited exposure to the world and their lack of interest because it is not immediately relevant to their current lives. Neither you nor your child may be aware of the best career option yet.
The average person will change jobs many times over their lifetime career. It’s okay to start out with something that is not a “perfect fit” as they are gaining experience and skills.
Career advice and norms that worked for your generation or your parents’ generation may be irrelevant or even harmful to your child’s generation. For example, it is now increasingly unlikely that someone will graduate from college and stay in the same job until retirement, so becoming complacent in their first job out of college without actively managing their career would leave them vulnerable if unexpected lay-offs happen.
Most professions have many roads that can lead to it.
All jobs require a range of soft and hard skills. Specialized technical training and versatile interpersonal skills are equally important in all jobs, so youth should be developing both.
Most people would do well in more than one type of job.
My advice
DO foster your child’s curiosity and exploration of their interests through classes, extracurriculars, hobbies, and volunteering. Encourage an open mind to learn about new and unfamiliar things. Help them become aware of issues in the world and observe where their natural passions lie because genuine interest is the best motivator to gain knowledge and build skills.
DO motivate them to maintain good grades in all their classes because that opens up opportunities in the future to get into the college of their choice (if they choose to go to college) and be more competitive for scholarships.
DO encourage your child to engage in self-reflection to increase self-awareness through conversation, artistic expression, and/or journaling. What did they like/dislike about an activity or experience, and why? How did they feel about themselves afterwards? What do they feel motivated to do about it?
DO teach your child to talk to or shadow (with your supervision as needed) people whose professions they’re interested in. Help them build healthy relationships with mentors. If that is not possible for whatever reason, help them look up “day in the life of [profession]” on Youtube and watch the realities of those professions to decide if they want to pursue them further.
DO help your child become aware of their natural abilities and talents, then take opportunities to improve upon them both in school and outside of school. Skills mastery builds confidence and self-efficacy to learn anything in the future.
DO celebrate their uniqueness and find contexts where they are rewarded for who they naturally are. The best-fitting career paths are chosen to match who we already are, not ones that require us to change or hide who we are. For example, if they are very introverted, help them explore careers that are more behind the scenes and allow for more quite time to work alone.
DO inspire your child to look to role models in history, fiction, or real life. What do they admire about them and why? How do they want to emulate them? (Of course, no role model is perfect so be sure to point out not all parts of a person are worth emulating.)
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DO NOT compare your child’s development or decisions to others, especially to make them feel inferior.
DO NOT internalize your child’s career decisiveness as a reflection of your success or love as a parent.
DO NOT try to narrow your child’s career path before college. If your child’s school is forcing them to choose a certain focus or concentration, let your child choose which one sounds more interesting to learn about, not which one will lead to the most impressive or high-paying job.
Helpful frameworks
Career coaches and counselors like myself tend to love theoretical frameworks because they help provide clarity and structure to what often feels like a messy, ambiguous process. Here are a few I find particularly helpful for teens and young adults:
CliftonStrengths was created by psychologist Don Clifton who proved that people are more engaged, confident, happy, and successful if they focus on developing their strengths instead of trying to fix their weaknesses. He wrote books and developed an assessment (including a youth version for ages 10-14) to help people identify their top natural talents and find ways to intentionally utilize them in their goals and challenges. I am a Certified Strengths Coach and offer coaching to help people better internalize and apply their strengths.
The Challenge Mindset was created by career consultant JP Michel who designed a new way of helping students choose their career path. Instead of using the traditional filters of job titles or majors, he created a set of cards to help youth see the world through interesting challenges to tackle and then figuring out what role they want to play in it.
Career Diamond Model was created by counseling professor Patricia Andersen to capture the career decision process in a simple graphic representing the integration of personal and external knowledge from awareness to decision (not extending to the action steps of carrying out the decision). Teens and many young adults must go through the expansive stage of gathering information about themselves and the world of work before narrowing their options and making a final choice. This process is usually repeated throughout a person’s life as internal and external factors change.
My personal example
I have lived, observed, and taught all the principles above. Here’s a glimpse of how they worked out in my life:
I had many career ideas growing up: paleontologist, beautician, dermatologist, personal trainer, jazz singer, food taster, nutritionist, motivational speaker, movie critic, high school history teacher…I eliminated all of them as I considered my abilities and values through the years.
I chose all my high school and college classes based on pure interest without any strong direction towards a viable career. I resisted all parental pressure to take college classes in high school to get through college faster, or choose traditionally prestigious and high-paying jobs like engineer or lawyer. I majored in American Studies because I love U.S. history and spent most of my time/money/focus on my minor in Ballroom Dance because I knew I’d never have those learning and performing opportunities after college. I don’t use either of those subjects in my professional career but they have greatly enriched my life by expanding my intellect, network, skill sets, and work ethic.
I discovered my current passion for career coaching through happenstance during my last year in college through my interest in volunteering on campus and then my need for a summer job as a mentor/counselor for younger college students. It took me 5 years of trial and error to get my first full-time dream job after graduation.
I’d never heard of a blog, podcast, webinar, or professional conference in high school but I’ve written/spoken for dozens of them since then. I never imagined having my own coaching business, but I’ve had one for 12 years now. Nobody - neither my parents, teachers, advisors nor myself - could have predicted or prescribed this career path for me. But by following the advice above which I learned along the way, I have been very successful and satisfied with my rewarding career choice. I hope to help many more people create a meaningful career and life. And there may be additional exciting jobs and roles I discover in the future!
What I can offer…
Therefore, I will not steer your child into any certain career path before college, but I am happy to offer these services for teens and young adults:
Strengths coaching to help them identify, internalize, and utilize their natural talents.
Essay editing to increase their chances of being accepted by the school, program, or scholarship of their choice.
Interview preparation to help them confidently articulate who they are and what they have to offer in a job, internship, or graduate program.
Resume/LinkedIn review to best demonstrate their experience and skills in writing for school or job applications and networking.
