The arrival of GCSE and A-Level results is a testing time for families. The pressure on your child to do well, and give them the best chance of starting their career positively, can cause major stress for them and you! So what can you do to lighten the load? Here are our top tips:
1) Talk to your teenager
Keep communication open by discussing their future.
Ask them to think about these questions:
- What career would suit me?
- What career am I able to do?
- What do I want to achieve in my career?
- What are my career goals?
- What career path should I follow?
Listen to what they say and attempt to offer objective career guidance. This is difficult for parents as naturally your hopes for your child are high. Most teenagers would benefit from speaking to a careers advisor – their neutrality allows the teen to speak freely and so opens up constructive discussions about their career path.
2) Keep Calm
Emotions can run high in teenage years and tempers can flare. Understand that your son or daughter may be apprehensive about their capabilities and worried about what their future career path will hold. Try not to fix on exactly what your child’s career will be, but think about their strengths and weaknesses, and what would be a good fit for their personality and interests. This will help them make a final choice about their career path and further education, if relevant.
3) Get professional careers advice
Getting professional career guidance at this point for your teenager can be very rewarding. Our experienced careers advisors – who are all fully qualified Occupational Psychologists – are trained to help and support, even if your child has little or no idea of what career they would like to do.
We also understand that you may wish to be involved in your teenager’s new career choice too, so we offer Parent and Guardian Extension sessions – https://careeranalysts.co.uk/parents-and-guardians.php In the teenager’s session on their own, they will focus on careers advice and you can use the extension to explore the outcomes of their consultation and talk about their career choice with the career counsellor. We find this is the perfect opportunity to discuss career recommendations in an objective and professional manner and it really does add value to the careers advice programme.
Want to find out more about our careers advice and career guidance for teenagers? Read more here about our programme https://careeranalysts.co.uk/careers-advice-teenagers.php