I recently surveyed parents and asked what their top questions were when it came to career planning with their children. One recurring theme was the difference in opinion between parents and their adolescent children with regards to when the child should begin planning for the future. This difference in opinion has led to parents wonder how to motivate their child to plan for the future.
If you are a parent and you have heard comments such as…
“I have time to figure it out.”
“I don’t need to start career planning yet.”
“I am going to concentrate on college first.”
“Stop bugging me about it.”
…or have gotten complete silence when you’ve brought it up, you might relate with some of the feelings these parents shared.
Motivation is a need or desire that causes a person to act. If a child/teenager/student doesn’t see a need for something, he or she is going to have no intrinsic motivation to take action. But we, parents and adults, know career planning is important and we are motivated to help them get motivated! We want them to grow up, move out, and pay their own bills, am I right? So how do most parents go about motivating their unmotivated teens?
Students said that their parent(s):
- Sent job opportunities
- Began networking on the child’s behalf
- Brought up the topic of academic and career planning often and gave advice and suggestions that were uninvited
While parents are doing the above things with the best intentions, these actions don’t typically motivate an unmotivated child; in fact, the opposite happens. It causes the student to close off communication.
In my years of working with students, I have had the privilege of testing various methods of motivating young adults. From my experiences, I have put together a short, informative guide that will help parents ditch the frustration and empower their children to take action. The guide has five tips to help you better understand what is going on between you and your child as it relates to the topic of planning for the future as well as action steps you can take that will, in turn, evoke critical thinking and action from your child.
