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Indian parents make these mistakes while choosing career for kids

Updated on: 09 April,2019 02:28 PM IST  |  Mumbai
mid-day online correspondent |

Here are some common mistakes made by parents while choosing a career path for their wards

Indian parents make these mistakes while choosing career for kids

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There is a saying, 'the love of parents towards their wards is incomparable'. Often parents sacrifice most of their money, time and other resources on the well-being of their wards. Even children, often look forward to their parental guidance on issues beyond their understanding. And this extra concern of the parent often leads to deciding the career path for their wards. This is good, but it has its own pitfalls!


Here are some common mistakes made by parents while choosing a career path for their wards.


I know better attitude: Many parents display this attitude of knowing world better due to their age and experience of worldly matters. This may be true in many areas, but for career choice, one should avoid dominating attitude and give a careful listening to the child as well.


Ignorance about latest trends: One can safely assume that, Bill Gate's parent could not have envisaged potential of computer programming, as computers were not so much in use in year 1975, when Gates established Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen! Imagine what would have happened to Gate's career, if his father would have influenced or pushed his choice of career on him!

Knowledge about limited sectors: The widespread emergence of mobiles and internet is drastically changing the ways, people live their lives, items are bought and sold as well as how businesses are conducted. Earlier days, choices of careers were limited to two or three options; Engineering, Medicine and perhaps Law as high potential career options. But, today careers choices are so wide that most of the parents are not even aware of it e.g. robotics, fashion designing, IT and so many.

The question arises, what best parents should do to help their wards, who they think is immature to make their own decisions! Author Vasant Kallola gives some tips parents can follow to help their wards:

Talk to their wards: It has been proven scientifically that, children tend to do best in areas of their liking. Talking to your ward what interests him/her could be an ideal way to decide what career path would suit them the most! One can adopt a more scientific approach by opting for aptitude tests, which can help aptitude of your wards towards particular subjects and help you decide which areas they would do well.

Seek guidance: When I confronted career choice for my son in the year 2014 and he said that, he wanted to pursue Architecture, I had no much idea about career potential for architects, at that particular time. So I sought guidance from my friends and people associated with the construction industry. Their guidance helped me to support my son for his career of choice. Today, my son is in the final year of architecture. He is happy being in the field of choice and I am happy for taking the right decision of seeking the guidance!

Be a Support: Show genuine concern for the well-being of your ward for their future. Provide them with the environment that, they can share with you all their secrets, confusions, questions and fears. Don’t be judgmental due to some of their actions or mistakes. It is possible that they may have chosen a completely different field for career progression. They may come up with something you may not get convinced for its potential then, in that case, it would be better to allow open communication between you. It has been a proven fact that, take any field people with mastery in their subject matter have done well in their careers.

Think Positive: As a nation and society, we have come a long way from days of struggles and scarcities. India is emerging as the fastest growing economies in the world, which is attracting billions of dollars of investment; thereby huge new opportunities will be created for our youth. So gone are the days when Medicine or Engineering were only two available choices for a career.

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