Guidance Parents blend encouragement of children's passions with information about practical realities

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Caitlin Crawshaw
For Canwest News Service

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EDMONTON - As children, most of us had big dreams for our careers, telling curious relatives we'd become a doctor, actor, prime minister or, as one friend bragged, a fire truck.

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Canwest News Service

Montreal career coach and columnist Cheryl Stein says parents should start talking to kids about their careers when they're young, but should be careful to give them ‘space to explore’ rather than forcing them to choose one path.

Some look back upon those years and wonder why they stopped dreaming, while others wish they'd focused on practical realities - like finding a well-paid gig, not just a fun one (or the biological fact that a person cannot become a fire truck.)

Whatever our eventual path, career experts say most of us could have used more guidance. In fact, a September study released by a think-tank called Canadian Policy Research Networks called for more involvement from schools, advising that kids receive instruction in career planning as early as Grade 6 and that high schools revive vocational programming (which was out of vogue by the 1980s.)

But career planning should start at home, say career experts. Montreal career coach and columnist Cheryl Stein says parents should start talking to kids about their careers when they're young, but they should be careful to give them space to explore rather than forcing them to choose one path.

"We're different people throughout our lives. I think this notion of, 'I have to do this the rest of my life,' is an antiquated idea," says Stein. "When you talk to your kids, encourage them to be creative about what they're going to do with their lives."

It's also crucial to be careful about the messages you're sending your children about what's possible, she adds. If your daughter says she wants to be a train conductor, the knee-jerk reaction for some might be to say, 'But you're a girl.' Stein recommends that parents curb the impulse by saying, "Tell me more about that," instead of making comments.

Randall Hansen, a Florida author and proprietor of career site quintcareers.ca, speaks to groups of kids and teens through the Rotary Club, as well as colleges and universities.

He suggests that parents blend encouragement of their children's passions with information about the practical realities of the world.

"I knew a student who was a soccer player and started playing soccer at seven or eight. His parents encouraged that, not necessarily as a career path, but as a path to bigger and better things," he says.

This was a great way to handle things, says Hansen. Soccer led to a scholarship, but when he realized he couldn't go pro, the student had a solid academic background and had been mulling over alternative careers.

While not guiding your children at all does them a disservice, so does being overly involved. "I think the most important thing is to let things percolate; to have discussions once in a while that are open-ended and let those ideas grow in a child's mind and let them put the pieces together," says Hansen.

Edmonton career coach Robert Manolson is often approached by anxious parents concerned about their teen's post-secondary plans. "You can just see the stress and anxiety on their faces, as if their kid's going to live in a cardboard box ... You have to sit down with them and say, 'Breathe. Your worst nightmares aren't going to come true.' "

Manolson encourages parents and children to sit around the kitchen table and have conversations about career planning when children are young, since kids do need guidance. But he stresses that career planning is a process and advises that people consider "career" as a global term. Most career professionals see "career" as encompassing a person's interests, cumulative life experiences and paid work.

Boomer parents should also realize that career decisions aren't necessarily lifetime commitments, as it seemed when they were young.

"Today, it's really about encouraging, making a choice for now, and for the next step in their life, knowing that that can change, and that's OK. And different types of work options that exist today may not be around from three to five years from now, and new ones will be created because of new technology."

Stein says the biggest mistake parents make is treating their children's decisions as a reflection of their parenting.

"I think that when they're talking about their kids, parents should feel that they've done their job if they can say, 'My son or daughter is happy', not, 'My son or daughter is an accountant'."