Supporting your child’s vision is key to their growth.

Parenting is one of the greatest and most important jobs in the world. It gives you the opportunity to impart into another human beings’ life, guiding them to greatness.

As a parent you want what’s best for your children. As they grow up, you protect them, teach them, and love them all while readying them for their future.

You have dreams of them succeeding in life and you should; you see and know their potential. You see them as: a doctor, lawyer, business owner, or even married with kids. But what do they see for themselves?

What do they want to do? What is their dream for their future?

These are important questions to ask your children, but when asking make sure to be open-minded and listen. No judgment, not even an ‘I don’t agree’.

This is your chance to support and encourage them to do their best at whatever it is they want to do. No matter how hard it is for you to hear what they choose, let them be themselves.

Let them determine what they want to do in life. Wanting your child to do what you feel is best for them isn’t wrong, that is, until it clouds your judgment and prevents you from acknowledging when they want something different than what you want.

The older your children become their own idea of their future will become clear. Your responsibility as their parent is to nourish whatever dreams they have even when its not what you see them doing.

Seeing your child choose a career that doesn’t line up with your dreams for them can be hard, however, it’s their life and their choice.

Getting discouraged about the career path they pick will come up, but this is when you remind yourself that you are a great parent and have done your best to raise them to succeed.

Parenting will seem rough at times, because as a parent you can sometimes unconsciously take your child’s career choice as a negative representation of how you raised them when in all honesty, it is not. No matter how much you coach your children to go down a certain path, in the end it is ultimately up to them what they choose to do.

“The best thing you can do is support them; show them that regardless if you agree or not they have your support.”

As a family counselor, I talk with lots of parents who are upset because their children chose a career they didn’t agree with; they had their children’s whole life planned.

As I spoke with them more I realized the issue was that the parents were trying to live their lives through their kids.

The parents wanted their kids to become what they couldn’t and started pressuring them to do what they wanted. I explained that it’s unfair to pressure their children into living out dreams that aren’t theirs; it is selfish. If you want your child to have several options get them involved in different things.

Children are like sponges and if we feed them encouragement and positivity they will soak it all in and become what is
necessary to live successful lives.