As parents, it is no secret our biggest parenting goal and desire is to watch our child become the most successful and happiest individual they can become. From early on, during their development stages, we try our hardest to support their dreams, but are we doing enough? Are we doing it right?
The Destined vs The Experimenters
Some kids seem to have it all figured out since their early ages. Like they were born to do something in specific. There are, on the other hand, kids that may hop around various interests without having a dominating primary specific interest. Kids may still be experimenting and testing out new things to be able to find their ultimate passion, but later forced into a career that is probably not aligned to their strengths, or even worst, not aligned to what makes them happy.
Watching kids develop their interests and passion into what becomes their future career and lifestyle is undoubtedly one of most exciting aspects of being a parent. We should prioritize big efforts to help guide our kids in finding and pursuing their pressing passions early on.
Guiding Your Kid and Avoiding Future Problems
Besides the major emotional benefit of making them feel self-fulfillment by helping them find their true passion, there are a few other benefits that makes this extremely important:
- Well being – feeling directionless and with a meaningless career to one’s self can easily evolve into feelings of depression, aggression, and feeling miserable. We might think a bad career choice is not the end of the world, but think again. We now live in a world of technology where, from a young age, kids see and learn from everything around them, as well as people online. It is now easier for kids to see and connect with other people doing what they love and living their passion. Are you going to take that away or delay it from them?
- Relationships – when finance stress meets parental frustration, the parent-child relationship can majorly be affected. What started out as us parents trying to do the best for our kids might end up deteriorating our relationship and driving them away.
- Finances – did you know college students without a career interest often take longer to graduate? How do you think that would impact your wallet? Our guess would be A LOT, since college tuition usually range between 6k to 30k per semester.
Because of all of these reasons, and more, it is important to support your kids’ passion and to start early on! The quicker we help them realize what they want in life, the better chance we have at enabling our kids to feel confidence in living their passion and to save ourselves from the possible issues listed above.
We have researched and formulated some great strategies that we as parents should implement to help our kids discover their passion early on in life. Even if they are not clear on a conventional career path, these strategies will help them clarify their interests, their strengths, their gifts, and have an initial vision of what they desire their future to look like.
Additionally, we also gathered some tips to help us parents support and understand our kids’ choices, whatever they may be.
Expose them to different activities
How is one supposed to discover their passion if they haven’t experienced it? We need to expose our children to a variety of activities as early as possible, so they easily identify what they like best.
Try different sports, different art classes, different learning methods. Even if their life path is not specifically within those activities, it will teach them different skills, working methodologies, interaction environments, etc. Therefore, your kid will have better experience evidence to draw and shape how their future life may resemble.
Ask the right questions
Instead of asking ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’, think of questions more like ‘what do you like to do?’ what kind of people do you like to hang around with?’ what do others say you are good at that you enjoy doing? what type of games do you like to play and solve?’
Again, we don’t need to figure out a specific career just yet, but we want to understand the type of person he or she is. Finding out what they are good at and how they like to interact with other people is a really good place to start.
Don’t impose your passion onto your children
This is something we parents tend to do a lot, even unconsciously. We always dreamed of being a ballerina or watching our little girl recitals, so that’s the first extra curricular activity we enroll them to. Or maybe we wanted to be a professional football player, so we enroll them in this sport and push them hard, instead of trying to see if they have more artistic skills, for example.
Now, we are not saying not to let them try it out. But be on the lookout to how they respond to it. Are they liking and enjoying it? Do they want to keep going? If yes, it’s a win-win!! If not, let’s move on.
Don’t impose your beliefs onto them, either
There was a time when we all thought we needed to be doctors, lawyers, or engineers to be successful. We needed to study hard to land a corporate job, and that would make us have our dream life: the American Dream.
This story might still be true for some of our children and if it is, great. But don’t push that philosophy onto them. Don’t think this is the only way to be prestigious or successful. We know we always want what’s best for them, but is pushing them to a corporate job they don’t enjoy the best we can do? Let them discover what they want and let’s try not to fill our own selfish desire to say your kid is a doctor!
Don’t be afraid
I know it might sound overwhelming to try many activities with your child, but don’t be afraid to enroll them even in activities you think they might not like. Children are in their prime learning stage. Their brains are open to many things and absorb at a high-rate. They don’t have to be an expert to enjoy it, so don’t be the one to shot it down for them.
Keep it fun and light
Even though we are trying our hardest to support and find their passion, don’t put too much pressure on them. They have time, many years of it. Practice patience yourself, and instill it in your child by taking time to develop their passion naturally.
According to an article by The Washington Post, about “70% of kids quit organized sports before the age of 13”. Why? Simply because “it’s not fun anymore”. They start feeling too much pressure from their parents and the system to become ‘the best’ and achieve the highest level. What could’ve been their dream job, becomes a daily chore forced down on them by their parents. Sound familiar? Don’t be one of them! There is a fine line between pushing them to do their best and forcing them to do something. Be careful!
In short, the biggest piece of advice we can give you is to relax. Let them be themselves and discover their true potential. Don’t push your passions or your beliefs, don’t be afraid to let them try new things, and always keep this topic light and fun! Kids like that, right?
Doing all of these things can help our kids find their passion, but are we, the parents, truly happy and accepting of it? Are we truly supporting them?
Supporting our kids dreams is an essential part of the parenting process. There are careers and paths that simply did not exist when we were growing up or that may not even exist now, but remember that you can always create the life you want, and so can our kids. It’s important not to shot them down because you think there is “no future” in that field or dream.
To wrap it up, we want to finish with some quick tips that can help you be more open and supportive of your kids dreams.
Don’t precipitate
Don’t be quick to judge, but instead, understand what they mean and truly want out of their career choice. Learn to think with today’s dreamer ideology and with a future vision. An ideology where everything is possible and you just need to work hard to create the life of your dreams. We are not in a world of “only doctors, engineers, and layers can be successful” anymore.
Understand their why and ask for the how
Let’s listen to WHY they are making the career choice they are making, and HOW they plan to achieve it. If they have an idea of their answers for this, they are halfway there. If not, be their supporter and tool to help them get there. A dream is just a dream until we design a plan and start implementing it. So instead of destroying their dream because of a lack of possibility, help them make it possible!
Let them fly
Our world is evolving. Let your kids evolve with it. We live in a world with a lot more possibilities now, let our kids discover what those possibilities might be.
Their dream may not look achievable, successful, or understandable at the beginning, but remember, that today’s current definition of success is not constant, but rather, constantly changing. Let them be them, allow them to learn and live, and if you see they are happy, then share that with them. Be happy with them. Be passionate with them!
Summary and Key Takeaways
There is no doubt in our hearts that watching our kids develop their interests and passion into what becomes their future career and lifestyle is one of most exciting aspects of being a parent. Ultimately, it is their happiness that’s going to make us happy, whatever that happiness means for them!
Therefore, our role as parents should be to give them all the tools possible to discover that passion. Give them tools by showing them the wide range of possibilities through different activities and asking the right questions: what do you like doing? Why do you like it? What is it about it that you like?
Always try to stay away from enforcing your passions and beliefs. Even though our kids might be a reflection of ourselves, they are too their own individuals, who will be one day capable of making their own decisions, so let them start now so we can avoid things like depression or a bad parent-child relationship.
Relax, enjoy, and let them fly!