Stop Asking Your Teen What They Want To Do After High School — Ask Them This Instead
Trust me, they’re tired of that question, anyways.
The college decision deadline is approaching, and graduation is in sight — a bittersweet time for Mom and Dad, and a busy, stressful, confusing time for high school seniors.
My younger brother is graduating this year, and watching him try to navigate questions about his future has been eye-opening to me — we expect kids to be so sure about their futures at such a young age. He’s planning on going to college for business, but he doesn’t really know much about it. At 17, how are you expected to conceptualize spending 8 hours a day on Excel spreadsheets? How are you supposed to know if that’s something you want to do forever?
Maybe, we’re asking these almost-adults the wrong question. Nathalie Marie Marichal shared a video on Instagram Reels, explaining that she wished someone had asked her what kind of lifestyle she wanted to have in the future, instead of simply asking, “What do you want to do?”
“I wish someone would have given me options, examples of what lifestyle looks like, and then told me, ‘Which one resonates with you?’ And then from there, we would have built a career,” she explained.
Marichal continued to explain that sometimes, the career someone is initially drawn to doesn’t line up with the lifestyle they want.
“I want to be a doctor because I'm going to make x, y, z, I like helping people, but is that going to fit into the lifestyle that I actually want?” she said. “What if I want to be a really present mother, but working at the hospital, that's not really gonna happen?”
The truth is, your job takes up just one portion of your day, but the rest of your life is greatly impacted by it. I know that when I applied to college, I imagined graduating and getting my dream job, but I never actually considered what my life would look like outside of it.
Instead of jumping straight to asking what your kid wants to do (they might not even know!), try asking questions about how they want to live day-to-day — and those might yield answers that can better inform the tricky career decision.
“What am I really good at?” Marichal asked. “And then from there, what are my strengths? What's my lifestyle that I want to have? And then from there, choose a career.”
Based on the comments, it seems like these are important questions to ask!
“As an academic advisor in a top 20 university, YES,” one user said. “I ask my students this all the time and it makes them think differently almost immediately. GREAT question.”
“100% agreed! I studied three years of medicine before I realized I literally could not see myself in that lifestyle. I realize what my priorities really were and how I wanted to spend my life and built a career around that🤍” said another.
“This is what I have told my kids. Is your goal to be happy at work or afford the goals you have for living life you want,” another added.
Asking your kid what they want to do for the rest of their life is a tall order (and also, a question they are probably tired of answering). They also probably don’t have much job experience at 17, which doesn’t help things. What your kid does have, though, is 17 years of life, and they probably have a pretty good idea of how they want to live the rest of it!
