What are you going to do to take care of yourself and make a living? This is one of the most important decisions a person can make in their life, and it’s something your children will face in their lives as they grow up.
As a parent, how do you talk to your children about what they want to do in the future and how can you help them make a good decision? Let’s take a look at what you can do to help your children with this huge life choice without being too overbearing.
When Is It Too Early?
It’s never too early to bring up serious topics with your kids, as long as you’re doing it in an age-appropriate way. No, it probably wouldn’t make sense to talk about 401ks, work-life balance, or career growth opportunities with a 6 year old, but they can understand more than you might think.
You can talk about how some jobs require you to go to more school or how certain jobs may pay more than others. Speak to your kids in a way they can understand, especially if they’re asking questions about work. This is going to help them form a realistic understanding of what work is like as they grow.
Bringing It Up vs. Waiting for Them
As with any serious topic of conversation, there’s always a question of whether you should sit them down and talk about it or just let it come into conversation naturally when they ask. Some kids may be very curious about working while others may not ask a lot of questions about careers even as they get older.
It’s all about balance. Don’t be too pushy with your kids about making career decisions early, but be there as a source of information to help guide them as they grow. If you want to know their thoughts about their future career goals, ask them. If you already have an idea or they openly talk about work options a lot, you may not need to bring it up.
Whether you’re bringing the conversation to them or waiting for them to talk to you, you can make a greater impact by focusing on practical advice, acting as a guide, listening to what they say, and being open to talking about it. Let’s look at each of these points a bit more closely.
Giving Practical Advice
Entering a career field is a huge decision your children will face in the future. As their parent, it’s good for you to be around to give them practical advice about how to make a good choice. Practical is the keyword here.
There’s a lot of bad information coming at your children from all sides. Your responsibility is to help them cut through the misinformation and focus on what makes sense for their life and their future.
For example, you can be there to assure them that they don’t have to decide immediately what they want to do with their lives. They can make a career choice and then change at any time, as long as they’re willing to put in the time and effort to make that change.
Practical advice comes in many forms, but the goal is to help your children understand how a career fits into the context of their lives.
Guiding, Not Telling
In a similar vein to giving good advice, your role as a parent is to guide your children, not to tell them what to do. Telling your child to go into a specific field or pressuring them to take on a certain type of job removes their autonomy and forces them into a path you want without accounting for what they want.
Try not to put your positive or negative biases onto your children. Tell them about the positives or negatives of certain types of work, but try to avoid telling them a career is good or bad and allow them to make their own decisions about it.
You can help guide your children in very practical ways. A good way to teach your children about careers is to show them, not just tell them. If they express interest in a job, you can go through job listings together in the field they talk about so they get an idea of what they would need to do to get that job. You can also show them opportunities adjacent to what they’re looking at, especially if they’re looking at a broad job category.
For example, if they’re interested in psychiatry, you can look at specific fields of psychiatry to help expand their options. Addiction psychiatry jobs, child psychiatry jobs, and forensic psychiatry jobs are just three specialties within psychiatry that have a completely different set of responsibilities and impacts.
Help your children see what opportunities they have so they can make a decision about what to do with their future careers.
Listening Closely
Kids say a lot. If you’re willing to listen closely, you can get a lot of insight into who they are and what they value most. You can use this knowledge of them to help give them better advice about their future.
For example, if you hear them talking about hating the sight of blood you might want to remind them about this if they bring up wanting to be a doctor.
It’s not about weaponizing what they say or refusing to allow them to change. Instead, you should use your knowledge of who they are to give better, more targeted advice.
Keeping the Conversation Open
Most importantly, talking to kids about their careers is never a one-time conversation. Because this is a huge decision, they’re likely to want to talk about it a lot over the years. Be open to talking about careers and all that comes along with preparing for a career.
Just being open and willing to talk is valuable in and of itself. Your children will appreciate having a reliable source of advice who’s available when they need help.
How can you make sure you’re doing this? Prioritize family time and being around your kids regularly. Whether it’s downtime or doing household chores and errands together, giving attention to your children opens up the door for a lot of important conversations.
Children grow up faster than we expect. When they’re ready to look at what they want to do with their future, be there to support whatever decision they make. The most important thing is to stay close and be ready to help your kids when they need it.