Talking about careers and choices with your child
Someone recently asked me at what age should one start talking about careers and choices with ones child.
My personal belief is that a career choice should follow an understanding of who we are and what we love doing. Also that we start showing our talents from early childhood onwards. ‘He has always loved reading books’; ‘She has always loved animals’. Anything we loved doing as children, is connected to an innate quality, a talent.
Learning to identify talents
As parents we have to help our children get to know themselves and we can do this earlier than we think.
When your five year old proudly shows you a drawing, a typical reaction would be: ‘what a nice picture!’ ‘Nice’? What does that mean? Be more specific: ‘I love the colour combinations, you have a good feeling for colours’; ‘What a scary tiger you have drawn there, look at the details! Look at those teeth!!’ When your child is facing a problem, see how she handles it. Don’t just say ‘well done’ when she has solved it but rather things like ‘that was a creative solution’ or ‘you don’t give up easily’. Statements like these relate to talents – being creative, solution oriented, perseverant, detail oriented… Your child will appreciate your comment and will start thinking differently of herself.
But stick to the truth because it is about what your child is really good at, what drives her and you shouldn’t give wrong ideas as, before you know it, you will hear your child using those adjectives to describe herself – yes, I am imaginative and creative!
We are born with our talents and we start showing them from the age of 4 onwards through games, activities, sports and until the age of 12 a child will only do those things she/he loves. Try to tell a seven year old to play Lego if he doesn’t like it. I’ve tried and can tell you that the seven year old won’t do it! After the age of 12, once puberty starts setting in, a child is more easily influenced by peers, parents and others and will be more willing to do things he/she doesn’t like (that) much. Therefore, those eight years form a great timespan to help your child know her-/himself, and for you to get to know your child in terms of talents.
Which hidden talent is it?
Although looking beyond the obvious is not easy, I do believe we can train ourselves to do so. If your child wants to be a football player, he might indeed have the natural talent for it and become a professional player, but more than likely it is just a game he loves. So what are the talents hidden behind this? Team play for one thing. And not just team play but very concretely ‘working together with others towards a goal, with set roles and rules’. Depending on the intensity of his love for the game, he will be likely to want to work with a team later in his professional life. Though there are more talents hidden in playing football, team play is a good starting point.
So at what age should you as parents start talking about careers to your child? Concretely when your child is about 15 years old you need to have the thinking process starting up. But well before that, you can help them understanding their inner talents and drives, which will need to find an outlet of some sort in their life for them to be happy. And that is what we want for our children – for them to be happy!
