Thank you all for these really helpful responses.
My teenagers that I refer to aren’t my own children, but students I coach as part of an entrepreneur program.
I find that as I’m teaching my students about how to find and take advantage of real world opportunities I get push-back. Both parents and students are very afraid of anything that detracts from studying and/or standard extracurricular activities.
From what I can see, most after school programs are pre-structured and adult-supervised. I teach students to follow their own interests without outside direction, and I get them networking with professionals, and I help them strategize projects that help build their resumes for the long-long term.
In my experience as a business owner and an entrepreneur coach, I feel it is critical for me to be teaching these kids how to take action based on their passions, independently, in ways above and beyond merely joining pre-structured programs (even if they are “exclusive” and “application-only” programs.) – It seems obvious that in order to stand out you have to do something very different. But with all of the outside pressure and competition, my students (and their parents) feel like the students are never doing enough, which compels them to be doing more and more and more of the same. More clubs, more sports, more application-only programs.
Up until recently I’ve been insisting that students should focus instead on building success skills because in the long run those pay off more than having a fancy degree (at least for my generation.)
But maybe it is different for this generation? All the fear coming from my clients makes me even start to doubt my own mission.
So that’s why I’ve asked for this feedback. Because I don’t want to give my teenagers any advice that will result in closed doors. My only intention is to open doors. So if I serve them best by backing off for their own good, then I shall.
If, on the other hand, their fears are unfounded (as it seems logically to me that they are) then how do I communicate this in a clear, empowering way to them? And how do I reassure the parents of my mission without letting their fear be the driver?