It’s always important to talk to your children about what they love, in order to figure out potential career options for their futures, says Cindy Glass, director of Step Up Education Centres.
She was speaking on POWER Lunch on Monday.
“There’s no better gift than getting into a career and feeling happy and fulfilled,” says Glass.
It’s really important to have a conversation about the wide-ranging career opportunities available to our children, she adds.
She says the most important thing is for parents to talk to their children to find out what “they are passionate about and what they enjoy doing the most because it’s not a good idea to make career choice based on anything else”.
She says many people are unhappy because they made wrong career choices that don’t fulfil them.
“The schooling system is only one aspect of what we can become. It is a painting of the background of the opportunities that are out there.
“Having these conversations throughout children’s lives is crucial, even as early as Grade 1. Ask your child: ‘What is it that you’d like to do more than anything in the world?’”
She is against the perception that only conventional careers in law and medicine, for example, translate to success.
“It is also the people that go into plumbing, the arts and others careers that also become extremely successful in life.”
We need to be supportive to see the things that our children really love, Glass says.
When kids are young they want to be many things, but when they get older it’s time to have serious conversations about their futures, she says.