Parents are Career Coaches

A coach is someone who is on your side and who wants to help you achieve the best that you can. As a parent, adopting the role of a 'career coach' gives you the best chance of providing useful guidance without too much or too little interference in the process.

As a coach you are a helper, supporter, encourager and partner. You are not the boss; you don't command or direct, you show by example, you listen, you reflect and share your experience.

Becoming a coach means...

• helping your child find their passions and explore their interests
• exploring career and educational options together
• helping your child set challenging but achievable career goals
• supporting your child in career-related choices and through their mistakes
• encouraging your child to 'test out' careers by volunteering or through work experience or job-shadowing opportunities at school or in the community

Parents consistently show up in research as having the greatest influence on a child's career path. Taking the time to discuss your child's concerns with a friendly and encouraging 'coaching' attitude will ensure the greatist likelihood of a successful outcome.

Understanding Your Child
By the time your child has reached the teenage years, you will know them well in many respects. Yet the teenage years throw up particular challenges in maintaining and developing your relationship with them. You want to provide the best emotional and motivational support for career and life choices but somehow other issues can get in the way.

It helps to remember that the young person is unique in personality, temperament and preferences.  They are hurtling through a difficult process of progressing from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood.  It’s helpful to recognise the unique needs of your child at this stage. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs shows that our most basic needs unfold in the following order:

1. PHYSIOLOGICAL – to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, maintain stable bodily function and basic biological needs.  
2. SAFETY – personal, physical, emotional and material security. 
3. NEED TO LOVE AND BELONG - through family, friends and romantic partners.  
4. ESTEEM – our self esteem, confidence, sense of achievement, respect of and by others.
5. Finally there is SELF-ACTUALISATION - when we become the person we are meant to be – morally, creatively, intellectually, occupationally, with spontaneity, lack of prejudice and acceptance.

When the basic physiological needs are met we progress to fulfilling other needs. This is a useful theory to help you understand the development of your child but each person’s development journey is unique to them.

As parent or guardian, you have provided your child’s physiological, safety, love & belonging and esteem needs. As your child progresses through life, they become increasingly responsible for the fulfilling these needs themselves. Once they have mastered the basics, they then look towards reaching a point a self-actualisation. The Career Journey is part of Self-Actualisation.

Keeping Up To Date

The working world is in a state of constant change. In order to be able to best assist your child you need to identify trends, find out about emerging occupations and discover which industries are expected to have the greatest demand for workers. With this information your child can make informed decisions.

Your child may be facing some of the same decisions you did when you were young, but there will be new challenges. Technology changes rapidly, putting young people are under pressure to keep up with new developments. These rapid technological changes can affect the labour market dramatically and influence your child's decision in the career path they choose.

At any moment in time the labour market in Ireland will be experiencing specific skills shortages. For example rapid technological advances are creating new opportunities in STEM while other options become more competitive. A career is long and trends change, so it is important that these decisions are balanced with what the child feels would be a personally rewarding career.

The choices available to today's students have increased dramatically and the information they have to sort through can be overwhelming. To help your child prepare, it's important to understand what they may need to know.

Talking with Your Child

During the teenage years, our children begin their transformation to adulthood. During this period, our communications with them change gradually from 'top down' instruction and control to a more 'equal' and shared experience.

Some of the concerns expressed by young adults are:

• They aren't sure how they want to live their lives
• They are uncertain whether to follow their dreams
• They have difficulty making decisions as they feel overwhelmed
• They worry about making choices that will have a big impact on their future
• There is so much they don’t know about occupations or career paths they are interested in
• They don't feel they can talk to their parents about what is going on in their lives

As a person's career covers so much of their life, many topics can be discussed that indirectly relate to their career direction and these can inform them on possible choices. We suggest:

• Openly discussing career choices and interests at mealtimes
• Actively introducing your child to anyone you know who works in an area your child expresses an interest in
• Encouraging your child to undertake as much work experience as possible (especially during Transition Year). A work experience that indicates to a student that they don't like a type of work is just as valuable as one that confirms their direction.
• Drawing attention to articles in the media on people who describe their career path
• Recommending and discussing any music, books, websites, movies, TV shows, sports activities that interest you and may provide inspiration for possible careers

Some of the best discussions involve your experiences and how you made the choices you did. Some of the following may open discussions with your child:

• What is your story - how has your career unfolded?
• How much of what you experienced do you think is relevant to today's children?
• Are there any experiences you went through that they could learn from?
• How did adults in your life help/hinder you along your path?
• Was there help and information available to you that you needed, but didn't know how to find?
• What did you want to be when you were your child's age and what are you doing now?
• What changes would you have made if you could?
• What things happened to you that you wouldn't change?
• How can you learn from your experience with your parents? 
• What were your 'career decision milestones' - those big decisions you made along your career path to date? What events influenced these decisions and what actions did you take?

You might also encourage conversations around such topics with relatives and friends in the company of your children. Through these conversations, a child can pick up a lot of influential information, including the values people have and the reason why people make 'big' decisions and live by the consequences.

Being a Good Role Model

Your personality and character defines who you are, this will have a significant influence on your children. If you hate work and always have, that message will quite likely be absorbed by your children.

Likewise, if you believe (and show by example) that always doing a job well is the best approach, your child is most likely to adopt a similar attitude.

How you live your life is the strongest example and encouragement you can offer any young person on their career journey. Setting a good example is often the most significant career coaching your child will ever experience. They will learn valuable life skills from

• How you organise and manage your career and personal life
• The way you conduct your relationships and social networks
• How you show respect and concern for others
• How you set and reach goals
• How you cope with setbacks and achievements
• How you handle your mistakes and those of others
• How you manage your mental and physical wellbeing – e.g: diet, exercise, emotions and general outlook on life.

Positive Role Models

Here are some guidelines to assist you in helping your child to develop the skills they will need as they learn to make 'big' decisions for themselves:

• Demonstrate positive choice-making
• Show by example the choices you make and the consequences of those choices. If you show anxiety when making choices, your child is likely to feel the same when it is their turn.
• Think out loud
• When you have a tough choice to make, allow your children to see how you work through the problem, weighing the pros and cons, and come to a decision. The process of making a good informed decision that has personal consequences is a skill. A good role model will show a child how they came to a decision.
• Admit mistakes
• Most of us have made poor decisions at some point in time - and may not be inclined to tell everyone about them - least of all our children. Yet our children need to know how to handle such mistakes and bad judgements and how we coped with the consequences. This will help them understand that (a) everyone makes mistakes; (b) it's not the end of the world; (c) you can recover and fix most problems; and (d) you can take responsibility and act as soon as possible to make good any damage. If you can be a role model for handling mistakes maturely, you will empower your children to do the same.
• Follow through
• If you demonstrate the ability to stick to your commitments and promises, your child will learn the benefits of such actions for themselves.
• Show confidence in yourself
• Whatever you choose to do with your life, be proud of the person you’ve become and continue to become. It may have been a long road and you may have experienced bumps along the way, but it’s the responsibility of a role model to pass on the lessons learned and character developed in the process. In order for children to celebrate who they are, their role models need to show that they too can celebrate themselves.

 Finding Additional Help

There are many parents who, even after undertaking some research and discussing matters with their child, have little confidence in their understanding of the complexity of the career guidance process, and who would like to get further help to clarify the choices available to them.

The first point of call is to the school guidance counsellor. Every school in Ireland should have a qualified guidance counsellor, whose job it is, amongst others, to provide guidance in matters concerning career choice. Encourage your child to make an appointment with the school guidance counsellor to discuss whatever matters are of concern, ensuring that your child has prepared in advance some of the questions they want answered. The process of preparing questions can be informative and can help focus the mind.

It may be appropriate for parents to make an appointment also, as your participation in the process may provide necessary support for your child.

Some parents will also seek advice from a guidance counsellor independent of the school, for example, in private practice. Guidance counsellors in Ireland are regulated by the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, so it is worth ensuring that any professional you meet with is a current member of that body.

List of professional Guidance Counsellors offering private consultations