How do I help my child set realistic career goals?

When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you’ll hear all sorts of creative answers. Some kids have surprisingly practical goals—others, not so much.

Neurodivergent kids are particularly interesting because they're creative and think about all kinds of outside-the-box things. 

On this episode of Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn, you'll learn about how to help kids create appropriate and realistic career goals and help them work on the path toward having real, reinforcing work in their lives.

We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org.

Related resources

• All about careers for kids who learn and think differently

• 8 steps to help your child set personal goals

• 6 steps for easing the transition to work   

Timestamps

(0:54) How to encourage skill development

(1:59) What can help kids with learning differences?

(4:04) How to turn interests into actual skills

(9:49) Accurate self-assessments and neurodivergent kids

Episode transcript

Andy: When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you can get a whole wide variety of creative answers, including the classic, "I don't know." Some of my favorite answers have been things like, "I want to be an NFL quarterback, I want to be a pop singer," or "I want to be a police officer." Some kids have very realistic goals. Other kids, well, not so much. Neurodivergent kids are particularly interesting because they're creative and think about all kind of outside-the-box things.

This is "Parenting Behavior" and I'm your host, Dr. Andy Kahn. I'm a parent and licensed psychologist with over 20 years experience working with kids and families with behavioral challenges. On today's episode, we're gonna talk about helping your neurodivergent kid develop appropriate and realistic career goals.

(0:54) How to encourage skill development

I wanna begin by talking about the American Idol fallacy. If you've seen the show or any of the singing competitions on TV over the last 20 years or so, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's the idea that media and pop culture has taught us that if you have some reasonably good skill in singing or performing, that you should be able to have a career and fame based on this. Of course, this isn't true.

There are a lot of factors that go into becoming successful in any number of fields. And countless great singers aren't famous, aren't making a living doing what they're doing. It takes a lot of other factors to be successful. So, listen, we don't want to crush our kids' dreams as a part of this process, but we want to encourage them to develop interests and skills that are consistent with what they're able to do and help them find a path forward.

The world is a mean enough place for kids sometimes, and we don't want to kick them while they're down. Generally speaking, we also don't wanna promote unrealistic ideas, the idea that you can be whatever you want. Well, this has to be grounded in realistic ideas, skills, and access to certain activities.

(1:59) What can help kids with learning differences?

Kids with learning and thinking differences like ADHD have many things that interest them. And unfortunately, they're prone to brief and intense periods of engagement in certain topics, only to drop off from them several months later. Kids with ADHD may collect every required item to engage in a hobby or an activity, and then lose steam after only a couple of weeks and no longer pick those items up any longer.

One of the things we need to consider is that the differences with LTDs like ADHD come with challenges that can really significantly impact day-to-day activities. Things like limited concentration, impulsivity, and difficulties doing multi-step tasks, which we call executive function skills, are things that can really stand in the way in kids being successful.

These skills are often central to the ability to do some complex and really interesting jobs for folks. Things, like being a physician or a surgeon, engaging in activities like computer programming or recording music, all require these skills, so they may need some supports. As a parent, you need to be aware of your child's differences because so much of what you do engages with spending your time, your money, and your energies to engage them in activities that they may need support to do well and to certainly move them towards a career path in their future.

First, here are some strategies to consider for kids who quickly change their interests. Rent or borrow that instrument or equipment for these expensive activities they do. Oftentimes, when kids drop out within a few weeks, then you're not stuck with gear that you can't use.

Second, consider signing up for low-cost or free activities. If your child decides they wanna be a singer, sign them up for the school chorus or join a choir at your place of worship. In other situations, you might find that a community rec soccer team is gonna be fairly inexpensive compared to signing up for the local travel team, so these are really important options to consider.

Finally, seek programs that offer a trial period where you can pay for a single lesson or a couple of weeks of service. So, if your child loses interest and doesn't stay engaged. you have the opportunity to get out without losing a lot of money and time.

(4:04) How to turn interests into actual skills

Let's talk about what we can do as parents to help kids develop skills around their areas of interest and talents. And let's be clear: kids with ADHD and kids who are neurodivergent have many areas of interests. So, our role is to encourage them to investigate what they like, to build a real-world view of what maybe things would look like as a career path for them in the future.

And this can give us an opportunity to think about things like, what does the job pay? What kind of education does it require? What kind of experiences do you have to have? And this can help kids build a realistic worldview about what they may want to do as they get older. So, let's start with an example. Let's imagine your child says they want to be a singer. Well, great, you can encourage them to do this through a variety of ways. Give them the opportunity to audition for a local chorus or join your church choir. Giving them opportunities to do free activities, like signing them up for an online music theory course.

The great thing about music and other activities is that there are other skills that are built in. As a member of a chorus, your child may learn social skills, they may learn to be part of a larger group, and considering things like music has lots of math in it. Not in the math that you would see in the classroom, but if you look at a time signature, what you have is a fraction. So getting involved with kids in their musical interests or developing their interests with a careful plan can be super helpful.

Maybe your kid likes sports, and playing on a volleyball team, for example, can teach your child things like sportsmanship, engaging in physical activity, and being part of a team. One of the things you may see is, let's say your kid likes video games, and well, what kid doesn't like video games? But certain games can help kids develop certain reading skills or build fine motor skills, or even work on things like strategy, which is engaged in multi-step thinking ahead before they do something.

The cool thing is that there are dozens of free coding classes online and ways to connect video gameplay with developing interests for kids. Lots of kids who learn coding maybe come to the conclusion pretty quickly. I like these games, but developing and building them isn't something they wanna do. But you can find this out for free with a little bit of planning.

Even if your child ends up working in a field that has nothing to do with these early life interests, it gives them the opportunity to learn transferable skills, to work with others, and have opportunities on a career path that they might not have otherwise had.

Another upside to learning this way is that it helps kids build confidence and work ethic. The idea of doing something that you enjoy is something that can help you feel better about yourself and work through and persevere through challenges. Kids who work through challenges build more confidence, and they see the opportunity in expressing their energies and having a work ethic.

Finally, failing forward is a great concept here is that as you do something that you really enjoy, failure isn't something that blocks you but motivates you to try to find new and cooler ways to be successful. One concept I hear a lot about is that people think they need to be lucky in order to be successful. And while there's a little bit of truth to this, hard work is typically a much more important quality.

What we see in real-life success stories is that people generally work hard, engage deeply in the task, and that in turn puts them around or in communication with people who can help them be successful. Opportunities come as the result of hard work and access. If you're just doing something at home and in your bedroom and not accessing people or working with others, it's pretty unlikely that you're gonna get lucky and find a way to be successful.

Another way to help your child think about what's possible and what relates to their skills and interests is to break it down into smaller steps. Let's use an example of a child who wants to be a zookeeper for exotic animals. First we have to identify, "OK, my child's interested in animals and their care." What we don't want to do is immediately say, "Oh no, this is impossible. There's no exotic zoos around us," or "There are no veterinary programs immediately in our area."

We have to talk to our child first about, "OK, what's the kind of skills that you need to develop in order to have this job? What kind of education is required? And start in those areas." When thinking about older kids, then the next option may be helping them think about enrolling in more science classes or maybe even doing a STEM-based summer program, giving your child access to information like biology and information about animals that can help them really develop their interest and see if this is something they feel like they can do.

In addition, consider assisting your child in creating a program like a dog walking program in your area, or doing pet sitting, or even volunteering at a local animal shelter. The skills they'll learn can apply across to more advanced skills, or maybe they realize this is not something they wanna do. When your child's in high school, they can continue to grow their skills and research by doing things like working at a local veterinary clinic, or engage in personal research on animals and topics that may be connected to what they wanna to do.

Again, this aligns with the idea of a growth mindset. If your child finds, say, that studying biology or veterinary medicine isn't something that they like, they're still growing skills in research and investigating topics to an end point, which is gonna transfer to other activities in their lives.

You know, as we're talking about older kids, it's certainly easier to see how these steps come into play. But younger kids have strong interests too. For example, I work with some young kids who wanna be major league baseball players. And obviously, we know statistically this isn't very likely. But it really, is there any downside to helping them develop agility, or discipline, or teamwork skills? Well, no, of course not.

Even if they don't play baseball at some later point in their lives, the skills they've gotten from being part of a team, experiencing failure, or navigating through difficult skill-building is something that's gonna be helpful to them. All these lessons can pay off in the future when it comes to how they handle work, career training, and just dealing with adversity in their life.

(9:49) Accurate self-assessments and neurodivergent kids

Something that many neurodivergent kids struggle with is having accurate self-assessments. What this means is that kids who are creative and have plenty of intelligence don't always know how realistic certain options are in their lives. Thinking about how to inform them and support them without crushing dreams is really important. One of the best things we can do is supply our children with real-world information and giving them an opportunity to make their own decisions instead of being a dream crusher.

I wanna give you one of my real-world examples. When my daughter was young, she was a very talented dancer, and she was really being told by a lot of her teachers that she could pursue a professional career in ballet. Well, rather than saying "This sounds unrealistic" or "We don't want to do this," we let our daughter investigate the information with some guidance from us.

First and foremost, because she loved dance, we kept her engaged and kept supporting her going to lessons. But the other thing that we did is encourage her to talk to her dance teachers, to do research on the career, and to take a look at how dancers were living in the real world. This became really important because she was able to form some of her own conclusions.

You know, for a kid who wants to pursue a career in the arts, there's a lot of information to know, and it's really challenging because we often want our kids to have security and stability in their careers, to have good livings, and not to be struggling. So, for us as parents, we really felt reluctant, but we were encouraging to our daughter and gave her all the information and access to information.

After a number of weeks and months, my daughter came to the conclusion, "Wow, being a dancer has a lot of complications. They don't usually make a lot of money. By their mid-20s, they're usually no longer dancing, and that they don't have a lot of job or financial security." So, she came to conclusion on her own that that wasn't a path for her.

What we did want to encourage, though, is that as she loves dance, to encourage her to look at other paths. Could she be a dance teacher? Could she run a school? Could she be a choreographer or help run a company? There are lots of options adjacent to interests that can help kids develop and still use what they love to drive a career and future path.

One super important thing to consider is to let your kid know about as many options for careers as humanly possible within reason. You know, it's important to understand that there are plenty of paths to success in careers in our country. The idea that all kids have to go to a four-year college is something that doesn't always make sense. Accessing community college or trade schools or apprenticeship programs in your community. can get kids engaged in really productive and financially stable career paths.

So, thinking about your job as a parent here, it's to provide your child access and expose them to the options that are available to them. Keep in mind, kids with learning and thinking differences like ADHD will often think that they're bad at school. So, thinking of having education beyond high school can be really overwhelming for them.

Giving them information that the options available, whether it be trades, working specifically in some sort of skilled field can be really helpful to them, and giving them those options can really give them a connection to what they love and what they're interested in, which is ultimately what we want them to do and also to be independent.

We know that the path through school and into the world of work can be challenging for neurodivergent youth. A lot of what we see is helping them develop their interests, and getting engaged in things that they like can be a great connecting path to future career and goals in their lives. If we think about the opportunities for failure in life, This isn't something we want to look at avoiding for our kids. Rather, we wanna give them exciting chances for growth.

Having failure doesn't mean your child isn't going to be capable of things, but rather it's an opportunity to realize that working harder, getting good advice, and getting good training can help them do harder and even more interesting things. So, I've said this before: giving your kids access to opportunities to fail and engage in things that are difficult is good for them, and it's not gonna break your kids.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior" with Dr. Andy Kahn. We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the show. You can email us at parentingbehavior@understood.org. I'll put the email in the show notes too, where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

"Parenting Behavior" with Dr Andy Kahn is brought to you by Understood.org, it's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Gail Belsky. Music and Mixing by Justin D. Wright. Our video producers are Calvin Knie and Christophe Manuel. Special thanks to Dr. Karen Wilson. Briana Berry is our production director, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick.

Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.