Your kid wants to major in something you can't seem them doing in a million years!

Parents Forum
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<p>For majors that require a certain level of skill – creative writing, journalism, music, theater, engineering – talking courses in the major itself and interacting with students and professors in that major will show students who lack the skills, etc. that they would be happier and more successful in another major. </p>

<p>S-- who hadn’t taken any music lessons for years because, while talented, he refused to practice – considered being a music major in college. I didn’t say anything against his doing that. He took a couple of music courses in college and enjoyed them and did fine, but the courses also told him that due to his lack of music background and interest in practicing, that wasn’t the major for him.</p>

<p>He’s having an excellent experience in a major that he had never considered before going to college. He has found that he is very talented in that area, and thoroughly enjoys doing the work that major requires.</p>

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<p>Dad’o’2, the futuristics folks are making these predictions based on the CHANGES in job demographics they have seen, and are forecasting for the future. The reality is that there are going to be many jobs in the future that don’t even EXIST right now. Folks could choose the PERFECT major now, but find themselves interested in a new career that doesn’t currently exist. OR their current profession might be phased out as something new comes along. </p>

<p>I still say…let the kid major in what he wants to major in…and he will see whether it’s the right job for him…eventually.</p>

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<p>Really absurd; why are you a parent if you let child learn from his mistakes. You want to avoid that. You want to provide the knowledge you have acquired from your life experinece to be of use to your children.</p>

<p>It is like a manager at a company say let me make my team learn from their mistakes. Manager/Leader work to ensure that team doesn’t fail.</p>

<p>Similarly it is parent task to make sure that their children doesn’t fail otherwise let us all put our children in a separte place and let them learn from their mistakes.</p>

<p>That is the first rule of being a good parent to make sure your children learn to avoid mistakes from your life experiences.</p>

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<p>Yes, I see the point on changing demographics, and it wold be great if a kid finds a passion and excels in it after exploring a little bit. Sadly, I’ve seen others who never found that passion, earned a nebulous degree after seven years, and are selling appliaces at Sears ten years later. </p>

<p>It’s just that the right-brained Spock in me would have trouble shelling out $200K for my kid to major in what would be a wonderful hobby but a lousy career.</p>

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<p>POIH…MY life’s experience are important for some things. However, neither of my kids shares the same passions or career interests that I have. I would have been ill advised to make them learn from “my life’s experiences” because they were unrelated to what they wanted to study in college and do in life.</p>

<p>PLUS…my life’s experiences can be shared with my kids…but my kids are not ME. I hope that they will learn good values, and those sorts of things. BUT I never expected that MY life’s experience would influence either of them in their college major choices.</p>

<p>Sorry…but I think you are off base on this one. Give your kids a good background, and expose them to the things that your family views as important…but then realize that they just MIGHT grow in a different direction than one that you might choose.</p>

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<p>"Similarly it is parent task to make sure that their children doesn’t fail.</p>

<p>That is the first rule of being a good parent."</p>

<p>No, that’s not the first rule of being a good parent. People learn a lot by failing. They learn about themselves and they learn that failing at an objective doesn’t mean that one’s life is ruined.</p>

<p>"Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has tracked and compared the brain waves of subjects with growth and fixed mind-sets. (see “Make Up Your Mind to Succeed”). When those with growth mind-sets fail at a task, she detects them entering a more focused mental state as they try to figure out their mistake. And in subsequent trials, they improve. In effect, they’ve learned, and their brains have “grown.” Those with fixed mind-sets, however, never enter this focused state of learning and show little, if any, advancement. "
[How</a> Failure Makes Us Stronger | Success Stories | Reader’s Digest](<a href=“http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/how-failure-makes-us-stronger/article126731.html]How”>http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/how-failure-makes-us-stronger/article126731.html)</p>

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<p>“It’s just that the right-brained Spock in me would have trouble shelling out $200K for my kid to major in what would be a wonderful hobby but a lousy career.”</p>

<p>Realize that the world changes a great deal. What appears to be something that will just be a hobby could end up being something vital to the next Microsoft. It’s next to impossible to predict what major will lead to a person’s being guaranteed a very comfortable lifestyle over the next several decades.</p>

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<p>^ What NSM said. </p>

<p>My son is not growing up in the environment in which I grew up. He is a different person and though he might be able to learn some things from my failures, he will not learn everything he needs to know from them. He needs to have failures of his own from which to learn. </p>

<p>My job didn’t exist when I went to college. In fact, I’ve never had a job since college which existed when I went to college. I majored in something completely unrelated to what I have done since I graduated.</p>

<p>Let your kid major in what he/she wants to major in; they all find their way eventually.</p>

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<p>thumper1:

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<p>It is the attitude I’ve a problem with. Leave it, let the child fail. Why?, even if my child doesn’t share the same passions ,I still is in a much better situation to provide a more logistic opinion of what is right or wrong with the child obsession to follow a major at a college.</p>

<p>You need to provide the guidance and let them find out the right path. But the attitude let them fail and learn from mistake is absurd. </p>

<p>It is the attitude of parent who don’t want to take responsibility. Why would you want to let the child fail and learn from mistakes. Most of the time the oppertunity only knocks once at the door. If you miss the train you have missed it.</p>

<p>Again coming back to real life: A good manager need not be technically up to date with the group work but they are good at spotting mistakes/pit falls and making the team realize that it is a mistake. Teams come with a solution on its own.</p>

<p>Similarly OP need to make the S realize that it is a mistake and show the pit falls by extrapolating his life 4 years, 10 years from now and let him find a better path/major. That is what a good parenting skill is.</p>

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<p>Who is paying for his education?</p>

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<p>“It is the attitude of parent who doesn’t want to take responsibility. Why would you want to let the child fail and learn from mistakes. Most of the time the oppertunity only knocks once at the door. If you miss the train you have missed it.”</p>

<p>There are many opportunities in life. I “let” my kid fail when he didn’t get around to applying to college, so ended up taking a gap year. As a high school senior, he also almost didn’t graduate because he got severe senioritis and fell far behind in his classes.</p>

<p>Through his gap year experiences as an Americorps volunteer, he gained maturity and gained a lot of knowledge about the world and his skills, talents and interests. He also learned how in the real world, people are expected to make deadlines and show up on time.</p>

<p>He went to college with far more maturity and self knowledge than most students have as college freshmen, and consequently, he excelled, including handling well having a roommate that was difficult to live with.</p>

<p>He also was far more appreciative of the various opportunities – academic and in terms of other opportunities – that college offers, and he took fuller advantage of them than most college students do. This included his having the courage to take the risks of trying some subjects that he was interested in, but lacked previous experience with.</p>

<p>As a result, S is flourishing in a major that he hadn’t considered before entering college. He also is being far more successful in college than he probably would have been if I had prevented his high school failure by making sure that he got applications in and stayed on top of his schoolwork.</p>

<p>So, I don’t see it as my job to prevent my kids from failing. Certainly, it’s important to try to help our kids avoid failures that could lead to things like their losing their lives. Most failures, however, are things that they can learn from and bounce back from.</p>

<p>Selecting the wrong major isn’t going to cause irreparable damage.</p>

<p>I’m helping to pay for S’s education, but it’s not my life. S also knows that once he finishes college, H and I don’t plan to keep helping to support him except for possibly a few months while he job hunts. Consequently, S has been researching career options related to his major, and has been getting the experience that will help him get an enjoyable job related to his major. </p>

<p>I didn’t have to select his major for him to do these things. I simply had to teach him how the world works, which included allowing him to gain some experience through the school of hard knocks.</p>

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<p>I just wanna say that I really don’t like when my parents disapprove of what I want to major in. Having your parents support makes things much easier for us, and even if my parents don’t like my major they should still be supportive of me and tell me that I can do whatever I want as long as I try my best.</p>

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<p>NSM:

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<p>There is something that is termed as “Simulating environment”. No one is telling that you don’t make children realize their mistakes. But you can make children consquences of their mistakes without actually making the mistakes.</p>

<p>You don’t want your child to be kidnaped and assulted in order to teach them the problem with talking to/ trusting strangers. You can provide simulating environment by showing what happens to other in a similar situation.</p>

<p>You can make children realize their mistakes by simulating environments instead of actual failures.</p>

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<p>“my major they should still be supportive of me and tell me that I can do whatever I want as long as I try my best.”</p>

<p>In many cases, this wouldn’t be true, so I don’t think parents should give a fairytale view of life.</p>

<p>They can, though, direct the student to the campus career office and other places where the student can learn what s/he can do to have the best chances of obtaining a fulfilling job related to their major.</p>

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<p>"There is something that is termed as “Simulating environment”. No one is telling that you don’t make children realize their mistakes. But you can make children consquences of their mistakes without actually making the mistakes.</p>

<p>You don’t want your child to be kidnaped and assulted in order to teach them the problem with talking to/ trusting strangers. You can provide simulating environment by showing what happens to other in a similar situation.
"</p>

<p>Allowing a young adult to take the risk of choosing their own major isn’t the same as allowing the child to, for instance, wander alone around a dangerous environment.</p>

<p>One also teaches kids to make decisions by allowing them to make decisions with one’s help. For instance, the first major decision my son made was choosing what high school to go to – whether to go to the neighborhood public or to the magnet IB public school.</p>

<p>I let my son make the decision, but my input was to make sure that he got all of the facts by researching and visiting both schools and by my helping him consider what the long and short-term implications would be of each choice.</p>

<p>When S went to college and was considering what to major in, he asked me for advice, and I helped him consider pros and cons, but I didn’t make up his mind for him. When he decided to switch from his original major, I asked him some questions including what kind of careers he’d be prepared for, but I didn’t choose the major for him.</p>

<p>If he had decided to choose something without having done the research, I wouldn’t have forbidden his majoring in that, but would have directed him to some place where he could learn more about the major and the implications of making that selection.</p>

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<p>“I see nothing wrong in talking it through with the student (in as positive way as possible).”</p>

<p>I agree with this. If my mom had expressed <em>surprise</em> about my planned major, and asked me why it appealed to me and what I hoped to achieve in that field, I wouldn’t view that as unsupportive. In fact, if it looks to you like the kid is about to walk off a cliff academically, I think there’s an obligation to talk it through. The important thing is that the parent listens to the student, takes his perspective seriously, and concludes with “I believe in you.”</p>

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<p>““I see nothing wrong in talking it through with the student (in as positive way as possible).””</p>

<p>I agree. At the same time, however, at most schools, one can switch majors several times without penalty. What most students enter college planning to major in isn’t what they eventually major in, so in many cases, if a student initially decides on a major that the parent thinks is unwise, the student will find another major whether or not the parent gets involved.</p>

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<p>Don’t you think this could have been avoided. Your S could have learned the lesson if you have put him through summer as Americorps volunteer. If you have paid more attention to his excessive senioritis.</p>

<p>What were you doing when he was failing in this regard. How do you know he won’t be better off if he has gone to college right after high school?</p>

<p>It is good that your son got a second chance, not every one son/daughter will. You failed to forsee this and that give you less marks for parenting. It is as simple as that.</p>

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<p>POIH, you are out of line, completely. You, who contemplated moving across the country to be near your daughter’s college, have the nerve to tell someone else she gets fewer “marks for parenting?” What hubris! I’ve read a lot of ridiculous posts from you, but this, this! Too much!</p>

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<p>So - ParentOfIvyHope is telling Northstarmom that she has “less marks for parenting”. </p>

<p>Am I sensing a little Thanksgiving stress here?</p>