Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: You have written this pocket guide to careering for teenagers and young people. I'm interested in this because the high school does not seem a little bit early to kind of start thinking about careers. It's hard enough to get high schoolers thinking about just what they want to do for college. This seems like a big stretch. Why do you think that the career conversation needs to start this early?

Tamara: That is a great question. Actually, I think high school is a perfect time because you are given the opportunity to explore different things from the different clubs and activities, extracurriculars. A lot of students are already doing a lot of that anyway for college. But this is the perfect time to take a look at, well, what are you really interested in?

Because I've seen a number of students go to college and end up spending an additional two years and with those student loans, that's no fun. Or leaving and going to another university, say from liberal arts to something around engineering or something that really has to do with their area of interest. It's really great to start when the pressure is off.

So they're getting the opportunity to play. It's not make it or break it place at that point. And you can start out by saying, "Oh, okay, I thought I wanted to do this. It was great to get the experience, might look good on the college resume, but that's not where I want to go. So let's try something else." So that's why I think high school is a great time.

And I've heard adults ask a question, "Oh, I wish I had known," or, "If only someone had told me." Or, "What do you think about it?" So the earlier you can start, I think the better. And after leaving high school, I went to college myself and I thought, "Oh, I want to major in economics." And then I thought, "No." Then I got exposed to psychology. And so it's like, oh, this is way more fun. I'm way more interested in this.

Then the question becomes, okay, well what do I do with that? How do I make money doing that? And the earlier you can start asking yourself the various questions and start reaching out to the networks, the network you have in your life that you don't even realize is there. It's a great conversation starter for parents as well as for teens, especially around those awkward holiday dinners. It's like, "Oh, so how's it going?" "Well actually, mom or granddad or uncle, thank you for mentioning it. I was thinking that I wanted to work in a radio station and I remember that Cousin Jane works there. Could you have a conversation for me? Could you get me in?"

It's the perfect time to start conversations, especially when there's this big question mark about, okay, where do you want to go for college even? Because depending on what you're interested in, that might dictate what type of college you go to, whether it's a technical college, a four-year institution, or maybe it could be trade school. The biggest challenge I've found is when you go to school for four years and realize that, "Oh, I could have gone to trade school or I could have majored in this." And now you have student loans for four years, and then you're going to go do something else for another two or what have you.

So that's the reason I think the earlier you start, the better. And it actually doesn't matter where you are in your career search or exploration. It's what I like to call it, a career exploration, which is really what I mean by careering, taking steps, taking the actions towards pursuing something, a goal, your career or whether it's even entrepreneurship. So yes, that's why high school, the rest of us are having the opportunity to look back and say, "Oh wow, it would have been nice if ..."

So if I can help young people start earlier, the better.

Andy: So then talk to me about your journey a little bit and what got you so interested in this topic and helping young people figuring out their careers.

Tamara: Absolutely. As I mentioned a little earlier, so I thought, "Oh, psychology would be great." And then there are different fields within psychology. There is clinical or IO psychology. So then even after you identify what your area of interest is, there is a whole lot involved in that, right? And I thought, I don't know if I have what it takes to be a clinical psychologist. Would that work for me?

And I still had that love and that interest in economics and business. I actually ended up doing an internship in human resources and got to play in all areas of that field and thought, "Huh, well, that's interesting. That's a good place to go." And that's where the direction my career took from being an HR executive, so being an HR generalist actually. So exploring different areas within human resources, finding out change management as well, recruiting, employee relations, you name it.

So getting the chance to explore and to play, I found, "Oh, I like leadership development. I like helping people grow and develop and achieve what their goals are." And here I am ending up in coaching, which you can see I took my own sort of journey of exploration to end up where I am. And it's definitely not a place I would be if I didn't explore.

Andy: You have a section in here on independent study, which I thought was pretty interesting. How does that work actually? And how do you set something like that up?

Tamara: Well, it varies depending on where you are, whether you are in high school or college, what that looks like. But usually it's having a conversation or engaging your teacher.

Andy: So it starts with an educator.

Tamara: Whoever it is from your school to get some structure around that. So it could be that you want to learn an additional language or you took Spanish and you want to learn Italian, or you'd say you were programming in one language and then it turns out you want to learn C++, whatever the case may be. So you can have a conversation to get some structure around doing self-study.

And some places actually will give you credit for that. So you can definitely have an opportunity to get two benefits right there. Not only do you get to explore and learn, and many times you can do that with the aid of, say, your teacher or there are some programs people do. Summer school will sometime have opportunities for that. But then you also get a chance to say, "Okay, this is not what I thought it was."

Andy: Totally, yeah.

Tamara: So you get to learn and you get to make those decisions, "Nope, this is not how I thought this was going to go, or not what I thought it would look like, so we'll not be doing that again." Or it could be, "I absolutely love this, what do I need to do next?"

Andy: Yeah, I think those kinds of opportunities are so important. Getting a chance to just experience as many different things as possible and seeing what they're like. And so finding those things that teenagers are interested in and then just getting them more involved in it somehow. It strikes me that independent study is a really cool way to do that. And you also then get them connected with a teacher in a cool way. So they're getting a mentor a little bit. If you can find a cool teacher to get them hooked up with, that can really just be positive in itself.

Tamara: Absolutely. Exploration can have so many facets and it can look different depending on what method you decide to use to explore a particular subject. So it could be independent study, it could be an internship, it could also be that you pay attention, just be present. And as parents, that's one of the things you can do is ask questions.

When you, say, take them with you to a volunteer opportunity, so there's a local sporting event and you are all volunteering and you notice that they spend more time in one particular area than another. So, say, supporting the medical team or supporting the organizer more so than anyone else, then you can definitely help them explore that by asking questions.

"I noticed that you spent a lot of time with Jane. How was that? Tell me more about that." So they can have the opportunity to share and also to dig a little deeper for themselves to see what they like because you as the parent or the grandparent or the uncle, you've been there. We may not remember.

The jobs might look a little different and the experience such as using the computer ever since using paper and pen, at least in my day, it might be a little different. But at the end of the day, the feelings and the experience can be the same. For a lot of us, it was a lot of anxiety about deciding what to do next. And we'll remember that.

Andy: One the things you write about in this book actually is sort of about planning for your career by being careful about what you do on social media. I thought that was really smart, because it's sort of easy to overlook, I guess, and you don't really think about it as career planning. It's just your personal life. It's things you're posting with your friends and things like that, but it really can have an impact on your career.

So I'm curious what you think, how would you approach this topic with a teenager and what would you try to talk about with them in terms of their social media conduct in terms of planning for their future career?

Tamara: Absolutely. One of the advantages to that conversation is that we see so much right now in the last couple of years and couple of months even in the news where people are feeling the impact of things that they shared or wrote about on their various social media platforms in the past. That is the perfect segue, I think, into having some of these conversations.

Well, it's sort of bringing some of that up that you just saw in the news, this politician, this actor got pulled from this job or this endorsement opportunity because of something that they mentioned 10 years ago.

So that provides the opportunity to really pull the real-world experience into this, so they can see it's not just you sort of wagging that finger and saying, "Oh, hey, you need to be careful." It's like, "Wow, this really happened." You hear about policemen, teachers, actors, you name it, having their either job offers rescinded or being offered a particular opportunity like an endorsement or the opportunity to host an event and having that taken away because of something they may have said 10 years ago or so, even if now their viewpoint has changed.

So usually, it's the same as everything else. It's really great to express yourself and to be unique. But if you're ever in a position where you're upset, sleep on it. Don't go ahead and just go straight to the computer and rant in that moment. That might be ... Okay, let's think about that and see how you feel about it tomorrow.

Because we've all done that. It's just now that there's social media. In the moments, it's like, "Oh my goodness, I'm so frustrated. Okay, I'm going to take a step away." And we do this a lot in life and in work. There are certain things that you may want to say in the moment that you might want to pause and reflect on before you can have an effective conversation with someone.

Well, it's the same thing with young people and it's just that they're having to deal with it so much earlier without having the benefit of years of experience or training on how to deal with this. So I think sharing a news story or a clip or something or anything, it's definitely just do a quick search on a topic that you think your teen would be most interested in, whether it's actors or actresses, CEOs of major corporations. That happens a lot.

Plus the teacher. Plus, if there's something that you think will speak mostly to them, then definitely search for and pick that example so that you can bring that up in conversation and it can really lend itself to dialogue versus a monologue.

Andy: I love that approach. It's always just great to be able to tie things to things that are currently relevant and things that are happening right now. And so I think that's smart and you can do that with a lot of other topics as well.

Tamara: Absolutely.

Andy: One thing that you talk about in this book that I think is pretty important, anytime a teenager is going to be applying to things like a job or an internship or academic programs, they're going to need references. And building up people that will give them these and then going about getting them in the right way is super important. So what do you need to be aware of as a parent to coach your teenager to do that and to get really, really good references from adults?

Tamara: The first hurdle is to actually ask. It can be a little intimidating to go up to adults that you know and ask them to be a reference. Whether it's in some cases write a reference letter or in the case of job hunting, speaks to somebody on your behalf. And not only is it a big ask but then you might come across a no. And that could definitely have an impact on a person's self-esteem and their courage.

But just to remind them that it's okay to ask and it's okay if someone says no. And actually it's a good thing if they do, because you don't want somebody who's really busy or who can't speak to something speaking on your behalf, say, they don't get back to the employer and they have that mean something completely different. It's okay to step forward and to ask for those references. And it's okay for people to say no and it's not personal.

It could just be that they have their own reasons. It could just be busy or they themselves might not feel comfortable. They might not feel comfortable because they've never been a reference for someone before. You don't know what the situation is.

So just stay supportive and keep encouraging them. And it's the same with applying to things like internships and jobs. There's sometimes you'll get a yes, and that sometimes you'll get a no. And it could just be a fit. It doesn't mean anything about you as a person. And that's something that we all need reminders on sometimes. I know I have.

Andy: Yeah, that's good advice.

Tamara: Yeah, just be willing to be there and to listen. Be that cheerleader that they need you to be in those moments when you get those no's or whatever the situation may be. Or you could get a yes, but yes isn't what you expect, meaning somebody might be willing to be a reference but their method of communication might be a little different from someone else's.

So I had a professor who wrote me what he thought was a glowing reference once upon a time. And I happened to know him. I know his personality and from him, the things he said were great, but he's somewhat reserved. So for him, glowing might not have seemed particularly glowing because he was a little more reserved.

So whereas another professor I didn't know as well, she just completely gushed in her letter of recommendation. And it was like, "What?" And it's just really funny to take a step back, from this person, this is a phenomenal review. Not everybody reading that recommendation or that reference is going to know him and know that from him, that's a glowing review.

So definitely once you ask more than one person, so they can have a different perspective. So having those two probably balanced out versus if I just had what I considered, and I know he considered a glowing recommendation from that one professor. But again, he was very stoic, very reserved. So somebody else just randomly reading that would have no idea that that was supposed to be a glowing review.

Andy: And just so choosing the right people to begin with, probably you can get a feeling for which people are going to be more of those reserve type of people and which ones are going to maybe write more glowing things.

You talk about how there are differences in the opportunities based on the disciplines that teenagers are interested in. And some disciplines have more unpaid internships, arts and theater and fashion. Compared to technology and the sciences, more often you'll get paid for working there.

Tamara: Yes, that is very true. And something to look into, you can actually apply for scholarships, for internships, sometimes it's high school, but definitely when you get to college. So they give scholarships for you to then go and have an internship.

So say, and I know someone who came across this, one of my students, she had an interest in chemistry and there was this lab that she really wanted to work with over the summer, but they didn't have the funding. So what she did, luckily, because she started applying early, she was aware that there were other things such as scholarships for internships. And because she applied, her teachers knew she was interested in doing something like that.

So one of them actually recommended, "Hey, I know about this scholarship. If you're interested, you could apply. And then that will open up your opportunity." So she was able to apply, got this scholarship, and then when she approached the lab and they said, "Hey, we have no funding," she's like, "It's okay. You don't have to pay me. That's no problem." So she got the experience and got paid as well. So definitely be willing and open to think outside the box.

Andy: Wow. That's cool because it's a big difference to be getting paid versus not getting paid. And it makes it a lot harder to get started in the arts and these types of disciplines than in ones where you're going to get paid, I guess.

Tamara: Yeah. You have the potential to make a lot of money over the summer, whatever you want to pay for during the year. Some students contribute to their toys or whether it's games or what have you, or it could be contributing to their book fund, whatever your roles and responsibilities are during the school year.

If you know that you need to make money so you can do what you need to do, then it requires a little more research looking for those opportunities that are paid and being sure to apply early, which is one of the benefits of starting the whole process early on. You get to see what companies within the particular industry, so there might be various organizations or institutions in the arts that do pay. And chances are they're highly sought after-

Andy: Yeah, everyone wants those ones.

Tamara: Exactly, right? I know I will.

Andy: Exactly.

Tamara: So then you get a chance to start applying early and then …

Andy: Okay, so it still exists. But you just need to be a lot more on it if you want to get those.

Tamara: And maybe reach out, if it's not that time yet, but you're aware. Maybe reach out to people who've done the program or people in the program, the institution themselves, and they might be able to connect you to someone. And you might get the inside scope, right? There are some advantages to starting.

Andy: Well, that's what is … I mean, if you can connect with people there and have conversations and stuff, people who work there and stuff like that over the course of some time, then yeah, that's huge to be able to name drop people you know within that organization and everything.

Tamara: And it'll give you some insight into that particular organization or something you might be able to add to your application. Especially when you ask the question, "Oh, is there something you wish you had known? Or is there something particular you're looking for?" Looking for would be somebody who's involved in the process somehow. Or if you're speaking to a student or someone who has had the internship, what do you wish you had known going in or what insight can you give somebody who's about to start?

It could be a particular track that you might be willing to explore or you're really, really interested in but only if you can work with this one person or what have you. And by submitting a particular portfolio or expressing an interest early on, you can get that opportunity.

So it's really great. Just start exploring and asking questions and trying things, it's okay. Wherever you are in the process, it's okay. Have fun with it.