Guiding Children Towards their Careers : When to Start and How to Help !

 Why Early Pressure Can Backfire

As parents, we sometimes get overwhelmed and overly excited, leading us to make career decisions for our children based on our own dreams. I've seen parents discussing the careers they want their children to pursue as early as when the kids are just 6 or 7 years old.

We try to pass on our aspirations to our children and start preparing the mind of the child towards what we feel is the right path for them. Is this the right approach? Certainly not. By doing so, we

1. Prevent the child from exploring their interests before they make their career decisions.

2. Place unnecessary pressure on the child to perform and live up to the expectations of parents and loved ones.

3. Lead to the loss of the child’s natural sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness.

4. Develop a dislike or lack of interest in the career that was imposed on them, eventually leading to not pursuing it.

Moreover, careers and skills required for those careers are rapidly changing and many careers that we talk about now or the skills that they need to hone will not be same few years down the line with rapid advancement in Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

Encouraging Exploration

Child’s mind is always curious and they are like sponges, absorbing everything around them. They always see, observe and explore careers around them. 

You would have noticed lot of children when asked at a very young age, they would say that they want to become a police, doctor or teacher because of the exposure they have to those people in their immediate environment. But you would also notice that it keeps on changing when they grow and when they start learning about more careers and by getting in connect with more people from different career paths.

 Riya, a 13-year-old, was always interested in animals. After meeting a veterinarian during a school visit, her curiosity turned into a passion.”

This is actually a good sign and this shows that the child is constantly exploring and analysing his/her interests and ensuring it matches with his/her skill set. It is beneficial to expose children to lots of career activities like arts, sciences, business etc and allow them to informally meet successful people from different walks of life to develop natural interests especially in their middle school (11-14 years).  Kids need to know that there is no one path to success and anyone can be successful in their own path.

When to Begin Career Conversations

The right time to initiate professional career talks is when the child is around 14 years of age. As parents we need to have open conversation and ask questions that will lead them to discover their subject interests or sometimes career interests and start providing more exposure to them on those careers by making them meet successful people in those careers, listening to their videos or podcasts, internships, university fairs etc.  Yet research shows that the children might require more time to explore and make choices.

Practical Ways to Support Career Discovery

It is ideal to take the help of career counsellors to identify the strengths through conversations and various career assessments including aptitude and skills. In parallel need to have a goal-setting mechanism to work towards that goal with specific tasks at clear timelines so that they land of in their course of choice and university of interest.

A clear career roadmap defining their preferred courses and universities and the pre-requisites for admission should be detailed and necessary support needs to be established by the time a child turns 15. However, it’s perfectly fine if the child takes more time, as long as they are actively exploring and gaining exposure.

Let Them Lead

One thing that we need to remember in the entire process is to create an environment for them to explore, analyse and decide on their own and we as adults being just the facilitators. Even if you find children coming up with career choices that you actually feel is not lucrative in terms of social recognition or wealth, the discussion should be around how more options can be explored with the child based on his/her interests rather than us providing alternate career choices.

Discussing careers with children nurtures curiosity, creativity, and confidence. Most importantly, it helps build the assurance that it’s okay to change career paths if their initial choice doesn’t feel enticing or interesting.

As parents, our role is not to dictate but to guide. Begin the conversation, keep it open, and be their biggest cheerleader—no matter the path they choose.

Dr. Shiv Kumar

Managing Director

The Indian Public School

Erode / Salem / Trichy.