Are you a parent or guardian wondering how best to help your child navigate the difficult yet exciting journey of careering? If so, you’ve landed on the right blog. It comes directly from career expert Tamara S. Raymond, author of the award-winning book for parents and teens Careering: The Pocket Guide to Exploring Your Future Career. Raymond is on a mission to help you and your teen(s) win in the game of careering, and today she’s here to give some general advice to help parents do exactly that. Read on:
Welcome to today’s blog, “How Can You Help Your Kids Navigate Careering?” I’m career coach Tamara S. Raymond, and I’m going to share a few tips to help you get your kids on the right careering path.
First, as a parent or guardian, know that it’s normal to fret over and question whether you’re properly advising your teens about careers. After all, helping them figure out what they may want to do professionally is a big, important task with potentially lifelong implications. But I hope to tamp down some of your stress by assuring you that you’re already on the right path—you’re reading this blog, after all—and by sharing the following advice:
- When helping your teen take important steps on their career journey, think of yourself as their partner as well as their parent. Both roles are important, but one should not overshadow the other. As the parent, set down rules when it’s necessary—like insisting that your teen meet all college application deadlines, for example—but don’t assume the attitude that “father or mother knows best.” This especially applies when it comes to the teen choosing their course of college study and ultimately the career they may want to take up. Partner with your teen to help them select the career path that they—not you—want to pursue.
- Work with your teen to help them explore various career options. Talk with your student about their interests and passions and about what they think they may want to take up as a career. Ask them questions and truly listen to their answers so you can understand their concerns. Although it is natural to feel frustrated, try to stay in a place of love so that your child is willing to listen to you. Use your conversations as a launchpad to help them find opportunities to explore careers. For instance, if they’ve shared with you that engineering is a possible career goal, help them research teen STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs that may give them insight into whether that field is truly for them.
- Once you help your teen find and enroll in programs or take advantage of other opportunities, ensure that they have a way to travel to and from them. If the opportunity does not provide transportation, your teen does not drive, public transportation is not accessible or desirable, and you can’t transport them or can only do so on a limited basis, then reach out to other parents/guardians and/or other teens who can take them or with whom you can share transportation duties.
- Help your teen discover published resources about the various careers they are interested in. Go with your student to the bookstore and/or library and examine books in the career section that may give both of you insight into the career that they may want to pursue. Do the same on the internet—work together to research career information online through Googling and using other search tools.
- Regularly talk with your teen about their career exploration. Regular chats can provide insight into whether your teen’s feelings about their career goals are shifting or are remaining constant. This can help you provide them with the proper advice they may need as their goals are changing or remaining the same.
- Attend teen career fairs with your child. Attending career fairs with your teen allows you to hear what they hear as they speak with career representatives. It also allows you to ask the representatives questions your teen may not have known to ask and to later talk with your teen about what you both learned at the fair. Such ongoing conversations can help the two of you brainstorm new questions to better help your teen as she or he makes career choices.
- Help your teen find mentors. As you learn where your teen’s career interests lie, help her or him find mentors in that field. For instance, maybe your teen is interested in pursuing a fashion career and you know someone who works in that field who may be open to speaking with your child. Connect your teen and that potential mentor; this potential partnering could lead to important conversations, lunches, and possibly job shadowing, all things that can help your student better answer the question of whether the “career of their dreams” is really for them.
Don’t forget: You can find even more careering tips in my book, Careering: The Pocket Guide to Exploring Your Future Career. Buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retail sites.
