If you have a high school senior you know that this time of year is fraught with stress. Stress of exams. Stress of college applications. Stress of what happens after graduation. There is an inherent pressure that, as they wrap up their high school career, our teenage boys should have everything figured out. How to be an adult. What to pursue as a career path for the rest of his life. As a society, we tend to focus on education of our youth and after high school typically comes a plan for either college or trade school in order to obtain employment on a linear path based on decisions made at age 18.
Leading up to senior year and weighing heavily on the teenage boy brain is the focus on finding your passion. If you just find your passion, you will love your job and make lots of money and be successful and happy and everything will fall into place. We say the famous quote to our sons, “Find a job you enjoy doing and you’ll never work a day in your life.” But how can we do that? How can we help our teenage sons find their passion? If we are asking them to choose a life path when they are 18, not just a specific college or location in the country but also a major, or committing to the military, or an apprenticeship or trade program, then how can we help them figure out what it is that truly suits their interests, strengths, and desires? The short answer to this question is: Sorry, parents, but you can’t. We like to micromanage our kids and choose activities that our younger sons might enjoy or that we want them to try. But as they get older and into the teenage years, it is up to us to release that control to allow our sons to pursue their own interests. If we want to assist in helping them develop ideas for their future, we can’t find their passion for them but there are some things we can do to help our teenage sons along the way:
1-Allow him to try lots of different activities.
When your son approaches you because he wants to try out for the school play as a senior, but he’s never acted in his life and you had no idea this was a thought, embrace it. Support his interest even though you may be shocked by it. In their book, Passion Paradox, Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness discuss finding passion in adults and how it is often elusive. They offer, “You must resist the temptation to pigeonhole yourself into any one box, regardless of your prior experiences” (p. 42). Teenage boys need to be allowed to try lots of different activities, even through high school, to see what piques their interest and this exploration is often not supported by adults in their lives. So be okay with changing interests in sports, school subjects, extracurricular activities, and hobbies. It may not stick and that’s okay but allow him to try in case something does and becomes a passion.
2-Encourage failure.
This sounds counterintuitive to all things parenting, but when you want your teenage son to find something he loves it means you need to encourage failure. We spend so much time as parents expecting positive results and encouraging success but if we want to help our sons grow and explore interests that might lead to passion we need to allow them to fail. He needs to know it is okay to try an activity that he runs the risk of not being any good at doing. If we are okay with failure it sends the message to our sons that it is okay to try a bunch of different things to see what is a good fit and what could be a potential passion.
3-Reinforce practice and routine.
With any new interest in pursuit of passion, your son will learn the importance of practice and devoting time to developing his new pursuit. Whether it is hours spent shooting free throws in driveway or watching YouTube videos on how to quickly solve a Rubix Cube, your son will devote time and energy to anything he is interested in. You can help your son acknowledge the practice he is putting in as well as the time management necessary in order to grow in a skill area. Even if he gives up the pursuit, he will learn the importance of practice and routine and the hard work that is involved in pursuing any passion.
4-Set up realistic expectations.
To develop passion and use it for a career path and life goals seems to take a level of maturity and cognitive development that teenage boys may not yet possess. In fact, many of us, as adults, are still trying to find our passion. Or we found our passion only to discover it was not what we expected in terms of providing the life we wanted. But many of us did not have our paths laid out at the age of 18 and our sons need to remember this. Be honest with your son about realistic expectations regarding passion because he is likely being inundated with messages that it is crucial to do so. He needs to know it is okay to not have a passion at this point in his life and many adults continue to seek a passion.
5-Only focus on the immediate next step.
If your son is like mine and about to graduate from high school, rather than talking about passion and future career goals and life plan, have a conversation with your son about what he enjoys and how he wants to earn an income but keep it specific to what will happen at the end of high school. Think about the short term. Acknowledge that paths other than high school to college do exist and are quite beneficial. We, as parents, are the first line to emphasize to our teenage sons that he can become successful in numerous ways that fit with his skill set, resources, drive, and expectations. At 18, none of us had our futures figured out and it is unrealistic to expect our teenage sons to. Help him find a mentor, set up meetings with people in his field of interest, encourage him to make an actionable plan for what he thinks is his best step after high school.