The idea of helping your child identify their career calling is daunting, and the process can feel just as overwhelming and frustrating to our kids. There are a lot of adults who aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives – how can we expect our children, who have barely experienced life, to know with surety what career they want to pursue?
Thankfully it doesn’t have to be as intimidating as you think. Here are four things you can do in your home to help your child start exploring careers.
This post is sponsored by Seattle Christian School.
Focus on aptitude and interests, not a specific career. Help your child become self-aware about their gifts, the types of tasks they enjoy, and their personality. Do they work well with deadlines? Do they enjoy doing things with their hands? Are they exceptionally observant and detail-oriented? Are they creative problem-solvers? Communicators? Listeners? Advocates? Artists? Teachers? Rather than taking on the Herculean task of pinpointing a specific career, help them understand their attributes that will affect their long-term career performance and satisfaction.
Encourage career research. Have your child learn about career options – they’re changing all the time. Beyond looking at a generic overview, have them understand what the day-to-day looks like in specific jobs, expected salary, physical requirements, career ladder, and the typical work schedule. Make it standard practice in your home that when you encounter a job you don’t know much about, you look it up together to learn. This will help expand your child’s horizons and introduce them to career options they may have never even thought about.
Don’t condemn any careers. You want your child to be excited about their future. Don’t try to talk them out of a certain career choice or temper their enthusiasm for a specific industry. This is their life and their choice. If you have legitimate concerns about a job they are interested in, encourage them to do more in-depth research. They’ll come to the right conclusions on their own – just be patient.
Use all the tools at your disposal. Have your child take aptitude tests if they’re available. Encourage them to participate in job shadowing opportunities or internships. Let them ask questions of your friends in other industries, or interview professionals you work closely with.
It can feel overwhelming to help your kids find their career calling, but it doesn’t need to be as hard as you think. By simply helping your child increase their self-awareness and expand their horizons about the myriad of career options available, they’ll be ahead of the game by the time they finish high school.
Seattle Christian School recognizes that each student’s career pathway is unique, and helps to position them for their unique post-secondary future with a personally tailored program of study.
Our College and Career Center uses gold-standard technology like Naviance to help identify student gifting and passion in Middle School so that their plan for High School courses is aligned with and supports each student’s individualized pathway after graduation. College and career counselors also help them identify an internship, mentorship, or apprenticeship with business, ministry, and educational organizations across the region.
SCS’s Personalized Pathways enable students to investigate their passions and dive deeper into their area of gifting prior to graduation — so they will be even better prepared AND positioned for training beyond SCS. Learn more about how SCS is committed to your child’s success well beyond their time at our school.
