How To Help Your Child’s Career Development

A parents’ role in their child’s career development is to lay the foundation for his trajectory and encourage them to engage in as many assorted activities, at the early stages of growing up.

Instead of choosing a particular career interest for your child, you can guide them in choosing a profession of their interest.

Here are a few ways you can help your child find his career interest:

1. Enhancing the child’s thinking ability

• Giving them opportunities to talk, and share their views and opinions from an early age helps them in thinking and taking their own sound decisions. Just engaging children in your daily conversations encourage them to talk to you about their problems too.

2. Early foundation

• It’s the roots that make children grow in a particular direction, and take responsibility for their choices as they become adults. Pushing children towards extracurricular activities and hobbies helps them develop interests, that later become career aspirations.
• Having hobbies helps them discover their innate skills, and talents thus contributing to their confidence and personality development.
• Encourage your child to work towards his passion to help them achieve a clearer career path and a satisfactory life as adults.

• 3. Decision Making

  • Decision-making is a significant part of a child’s personality development. The skill helps him choose a logical career interest of his calling.
  • Encourage your child to make small decisions from an early age, to develop this skill into a major trait of your child’s identity.

  4. Be Aware of Resources, Educating, Training opportunities

  • Nowadays schools provide several opportunities for students to showcase their talents, through events, competitions, and their overall performance. Physical education, Art, Reading, Dance, and Music classes along with other activities are a must for students up to class X.
  • These classes provide an outlet for your child to explore his options and enjoy activities that he loves the most.
  • Schools also organize camps, trips, and hobby classes covering many fields of interest for students to dig their potential, and work towards it.
  • Career counselling and aptitude tests also help in determining a student’s career interest.

   

  Factors That Influence Your Child’s Career Interest

  When we think of “career interest”, several factors like ‘job description’, ‘degree’, ‘scope and future’ and ‘salary’ come to mind, that influence your decision-making.

  Besides these, some other factors that influence your child’s career interest:

  1. Childhood Fantasies, Inspirations, and Role Models:

  • As children, we read a lot of comic books, watched a lot of movies, and had several inspiring characters- fictional and real. We try to ape these figures as kids, subconsciously drifting towards their qualities and personality, wanting to become like them when we grow up.
  • For example, many of us desired to be like Kalpana Chawla, and thus wanted to become astronauts, while some of us were awed by the charisma of Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khand and wanted to be actors, models, and most of us wanted to be like our parents, in our childhoods.
  • As adults, we end up desiring similar career interests as our childhood role models.

  2. Culture and Socio-Economic Background:

  • Ethnic and racial background, region of belonging, community, and family often affect a child’s career interest. The economic background of the child’s family often interferes with his career interest and passion for the field. It may or may not make a child follow his dream profession.
  • The culture is many a time responsible for our expectations from life, including jobs and professions.

  • 3. Gender:

    • At a very young age, we experience several career-related stereotypes. The opportunities we get are often according to our gender. Girls were advised not to play football while boys are never asked to participate in dance competitions.
    • Gender and career development still go hand-in-hand and often affects your child’s career interest, if subjected to such stereotypes.

    4. Personality:

    • Being aware of your child’s personality type can help you guide him in the process of career development. The personality helps in carving out an appropriate career interest, which can be your child’s perfect profession, fit for his abilities.
    • It also helps in job searching, self-marketing, and evaluating opportunities.
    • Personality awareness will help your child in battling the inevitable career challenges throughout its course.