Four Steps to Helping Your Teen With Career Guidance, Even if They’re Resistant: Part 1
Over the last 12 years as a youth career guide, I’ve connected with thousands of parents.
Between informal conversations and formal surveys, it’s clear that many parent/teen relationships are strained when it comes to talking about future career plans.
Parents often share their frustrations with teens and twenty-somethings who aren’t open to their perspectives, suggestions, or advice.
Here’s how they describe it…
“They don’t want to hear it from “mom”, they get to hear it from someone else.”
“She wants to do it all herself and takes our 'suggestions' like a personal attack.”
“Anything I say is taken as criticism”
“She shuts us down whenever we raise the matter. Says we are stressing her out. Refuses to accept help.”
“I can’t push him, or he digs his heels in.”
These parents want to help, but they’re struggling to find a way into the conversation that their kids will welcome.
In this series, I'll introduce you to a four-step strategy you can use to become more competent and effective in talking with your teen about their career path, even if they're resistant.
Before we start that journey, I want to use this article to explain why talking about career stuff is often filled with friction and fallout.
Reason 1: Adolescent Development
Part of what makes these conversations so difficult is the developmental stage our kids are going through. Adolescence includes a natural move toward greater degrees of self-rule and self-sufficiency.
Our kids are becoming less dependent on us while wanting more freedom and a greater say in their own decisions.
That doesn’t mean they no longer need us.
It means we may need to renegotiate how we get involved in their lives instead of assuming they’ll welcome the same approach that worked when they were younger.
At the same time, brain systems involved in emotions, rewards, and social experiences are especially responsive during adolescence.²
An exciting career idea, the chance to do something new, or approval from friends may carry a lot of weight. A teen may focus on only the appealing parts of a job and have little patience for a parent’s questions about its less appealing realities.
The prefrontal cortex, which supports planning, prioritizing, and decision-making, is still developing.³ Those abilities that would normally help a teen slow down, look beyond the exciting parts of an idea, and consider its longer-term consequences aren't as strong.
They may feel strongly about a particular job without knowing much about the actual work or the path required to get there. That can make a parent’s questions about the facts feel like a challenge to the dream, even when the parent is trying to help them avoid an expensive mistake.
The collision between perception and reality plays out in the relationship and
often contributes to the topic’s tension.
Reason 2: Negative Associations
Is there an issue or topic in your life that generates unpleasant emotions?
Most of us have at least one.
When it comes up, are you eager to talk about it, or would you sometimes rather avoid the conversation?
Career direction may be that kind of topic for your teen.
Confusion about what to do next is often associated with worry, pressure, and a fear of getting it wrong.
Research with high school students has found a connection between difficulties making career decisions and negative emotions.⁴
I regularly hear the career-confused clients I work with describe their uncertainty with words like lost, anxious, panicked, alone, overwhelmed, desperate, pressured, ashamed, stressed, worried, and afraid.
That’s some pretty heavy stuff.
So when your teen seems uninterested in another conversation about their future, consider what the subject might bring up for them. What looks like disinterest or avoidance, in some cases, might actually be reluctance to revisit a topic that already feels difficult.
Reason 3: Unhelpful Reactions
I think this is probably the biggest culprit.
Simply put, parents often respond poorly to their teen’s career ideas that they feel are concerning.
You know…you hear your kid say they want to be a YouTuber, and immediately picture them broke, lonely, and living in the basement into their forties.
You go into “Oh, hell no!” mode and make it crystal clear that it's a terrible idea and you don’t support it. Maybe you even take the opportunity to tell them what you think they should do with their life.
Anyone?
What WE may have intended as a compassionate reality check and loving rescue is often interpreted by our kids as judgment, control, and pressure.
While the initial concerns may be legitimate, this type of response can be deeply detrimental to future career conversations.
They link negative experiences to the topic, leading to avoidance and refusal to engage.
If previous conversations haven't gone well, our teen may expect the next one won't be any different.
Four Steps You Can Take
Throughout the rest of the series, we'll be unpacking the four steps you can take to give yourself the best chance at providing meaningful career guidance while preserving, and even strengthening, the relationship you have with your teen.
Here’s a quick teaser…
Celebrate means welcoming the fact that your teen has found something that interests them even if you don’t condone the job.
Investigate means gaining a thorough understanding of the job so you have credible intel to back up your opinions and pass along to your teen.
Recalibrate means changing the way you approach career conversations. If past conversations have left your teen feeling judged or pressured, that may include acknowledging your part in what happened and making it easier for them to talk with you again.
Collaborate means sharing what you’ve learned, listening to your teen’s perspective, and exploring questions together. Your concerns have a place in the conversation, but your teen needs room to think through the information rather than feel forced to defend their interest.
The Bottom Line
There are valid reasons career conversations can be hard.
Your teen wants more say in their decisions, uncertainty about the future may make the topic difficult to discuss, and past conversations may have left them expecting judgment or pressure. Not to mention feeling unprepared, uninformed, or unwelcome.
Those challenges are real, but they don’t mean you’re powerless.
You can do more than you might think and play a meaningful role in helping your teen with career guidance. The four steps in this series will show you how.
In the Next Post
In the next post, we’ll start with Celebrate. You’ll learn how to respond well to your teen’s career interest even when you don't think it’s a good idea. That first response can help you avoid another relational shut-out or shut-down, preserve your teen’s ownership of the idea, and keep the door open for you to make a difference.
Sources
¹ Life After 12th. Facebook Community Member Entrance Question Responses, 2020–2025. Unpublished internal questionnaire data; author analysis.
² National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2019). “Adolescent Development.” In The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth (Chapter 2, pp. 37–76). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/25388/chapter/5
³ National Institute of Mental Health. (2023). The Teen Brain: 7 Things to Know.
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know
⁴ Kulcsár, V., Dobrean, A., & Balázsi, R. (2020). “Does It Matter If I Am a Worrier? The Effect of Worry as a Moderator between Career Decision-Making Difficulties and Negative Dysfunctional Emotions.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49, 549–564.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01118-8
Parent Reflection
This question is designed to help you pause and clarify your own thoughts, assumptions, and opinions about the issue raised in today's post.
When career conversations become difficult in your family, which seems to play the biggest role: my teen’s desire for more say, the feelings this topic brings up, or the way I’ve responded in the past?
Recognizing what’s happening can help you approach the next conversation differently.
Start a Convo
Choose one of these questions to start a conversation with your teen about today's topic.
- When I bring up careers or your future, what does that feel like for you?
- What kind of involvement from me would be helpful as you think about career options?
- Have any of my past responses made it harder to share your ideas with me? I’d like to understand.
Your Free Resource
Why does your teen get excited about a career but impatient when you ask practical questions?
The Teen Brain and Career Choices: Five Connections Parents Should Understand explores how adolescent development may influence your teen’s career interests and conversations about the future.
With research, relatable examples, and reminders to keep in mind, it can help you better understand what may be happening and approach those conversations with more patience and perspective.
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