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Try and relate the story with that of someone in your life. Clap for yourself if you learn what you didn’t know.

Career mistakes, parenting, non serious approach, student, future, happiness. keep these close while you read.

How many parents across the world will have their child’s career in the Top 5 of the list to do? Not many, so lets begin to find out the errors and practical solutions.

What has changed in our generation is the access to private lives of the celebrities via Internet. In my interaction with many students I have come across many who have replied ‘a Rolex watch’ when asked about their goal in life. To add up the bitterness to the thought, 90% of the students say they don’t have any discussion at their house about career and the choices. All they are hammered with is the blabbering of scoring more marks in synchronized alignment with the movement of earth. The only thing always interacting to these teens is the Internet and so they reciprocate by burying eyes in to glass for at least 6–8 hours a day, even more during the lockdown. The impending question is that why is no one spending more time with these teenagers and not occupying more space in their vulnerable minds. Parents, teachers, grandparents are so entwined with tiers of their own life, even if they act on advice of articles like this and manage to spend some time with kids, its mostly unproductive because they don’t have the content to discuss.

Our prerogative as parents must be but not limited to the following;

1. Exchanging views even indirectly with the kids, like a covert spy op and keenly observing their pattern of thought. Throw questions like what’s new with your friends ?, What’s your friends elder brother doing ?, Have you heard about (choose latest topics )?

2. If a certain pattern emerges, need to dive deeper to find the cause behind it and validate it.

3. To ensure this pattern of choice is virtuous for the child and it is perfectly all right to seek professional help if you are not sure how to handle this.

4. Keep a track of how often this pattern is changing; if it becomes regular it needs attention.


LACKLUSTER APPROACH

There is a stage in the life of a child, when he or she must decide the future path to follow in order to establish a career, achieve success and ensure a survival. Coming straight to the point, let me tell you that this decision-making ability is often blinded by pastimes in absence of serious educated approach and access to options. The main reason behind it being this particular stage of the child does not make it to the top of priority lists.

At this stage of decision-making, exposure to many options is key, which we often miss. Poster boys inspire teenagers to take up dreamy but unrealistic careers but it’s their rocky, uphill and tumultuous journey that should inspire them, which we completely miss, leading to egregious judgments.

Watching Ronaldo bursting into expressions after a supreme goal, following him on social media and dreaming of cars, lavish lifestyle, ostentatious discourse is definitely luring and may even inspire youngsters to take up football as a profession but it’s the grind (path to glory) that we should focus upon and not the end result.

IMPERSONATION BY ATTRACTION

Many of the students I deal with have their idols based on the respective social media persona of these celebs and not the exposure and awareness of the hard work and perseverance these celebs had to endure to be able to reach where they are. Good professional bad professional concept stems from this error in basic judgment. Not just celebrities, even our own family members who have done well and have the image of rich, secure and successful also indulge in career advices to the youngsters in the most callous ways.

A software engineer based in US or Canada attracts almost every breathing human being in India or any other developing countries leading up to blind-siding the inner instincts, the passion or the craving for at least identifying what you love doing most. Children must be exposed to various career options offline or online to see what invokes a real spark, a desire to translate that stimulus into action and becoming happy and confident getting into a particular college or office.

REAL LIFE EXAMPLES

To be more in sync with the times, I have a lot of students enquiring about adopting online gaming as their career with indulgences like PUBG, Fortnite, war craft etc. After carefully analyzing their skills and competencies, when they are informed about the core competencies required to be a gamer, longevity of this career, communication skills required in case you want to take the youtuber options, code learning in case of becoming a developer, the look on their faces makes me feel bad about the good noble career I am in. Its like a bubble burst, a utopia destroyed, waking up from an amazing dream and facing up to brutal realities of real life.

If your child is suddenly talking about being a civil engineer, one must ensure that it’s not because of the following reasons:

  1. One of the best friends wants to be a civil engineer and so do I.
  2. The child is under the spell of rich lifestyle of one of the civil engineers living in the neighborhood.
  3. The child has an image of Civil Engineering College being the coolest one.

MORAL OF THE STORY

Start realising that career choice will play a significant part to shape the rest of the life. Pin up the career path on top of the priority list.Invest time and compassion in your children, be their guides and friends, understand them closely. We do not control the outcomes but we definitely can make the journey to the outcomes celebratory.

Yogesh Misra

www.thecareercurve.com

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