Are you truly tuned in to your child's unique interests, values, and dreams? This question is pivotal as we uncover the vital role of self-discovery in your child's college and career preparation. Join me on this enlightening journey as we delve into methods to better understand and guide your child towards their future.
We'll not only talk about your child's journey, but also your role in it – as a parent and as a vital part of their support system. Opening up the communication lines, setting realistic expectations, and instilling a sense of personal responsibility within your child can pave the way for a successful college experience. We'll discuss how to arm them with the right tools and resources they need, and how to create a supportive community for their college adventure. Tune in to this episode packed with insightful tips, and let's take this transformative journey together.
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🚀 I'll help you rediscover who you truly are, provide clarity towards your future and be your personalized coach with Multiple Service Package options. Your Coach Sonia is ready to help you!
"Stay well, be present, and enjoy the journey"
Are you truly tuned in to your child's unique interests, values, and dreams? This question is pivotal as we uncover the vital role of self-discovery in your child's college and career preparation. Join me on this enlightening journey as we delve into methods to better understand and guide your child towards their future.
We'll not only talk about your child's journey, but also your role in it – as a parent and as a vital part of their support system. Opening up the communication lines, setting realistic expectations, and instilling a sense of personal responsibility within your child can pave the way for a successful college experience. We'll discuss how to arm them with the right tools and resources they need, and how to create a supportive community for their college adventure. Tune in to this episode packed with insightful tips, and let's take this transformative journey together.
Connect with Sonia Cacique
LinkedIn
Instagram
JOIN OUR CAREER NEWSLETTER here.
🚀 I'll help you rediscover who you truly are, provide clarity towards your future and be your personalized coach with Multiple Service Package options. Your Coach Sonia is ready to help you!
"Stay well, be present, and enjoy the journey"
Welcome to the College and Career Ready podcast, your go-to resource for all things related to preparing our students for success in their college and career journey. My name is Sonia.
Speaker 2:Casique and I will be your host and guide on this exciting journey toward the bright future. Our mission is simple to empower our parents and students by elevating their confidence and resourcefulness. We believe that you deserve all the tools and support necessary to open the doors to endless possibilities of success and, with our community you don't have to do this alone, so come with me and let's get started.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of the College and Career Ready podcast. I'm your host, sonia Casique. Let me ask you, a friend, a question. How many times have you wondered where and how to start preparing your child for college? You stay up at night wondering how you're even going to get your child through college. How many of you would just like to know where to start? Well, I'm excited about today's episode. My friend, today we are going to talk about a first step.
Speaker 1:Most parents are missing in the college and career ready journey. I know you're probably thinking wait, I thought this was going to be a step by step on how to get my kids into college, but I have seen so many parents make this mistake and we are going to talk about it today. So let me give you a little bit of backstory. One of our listeners, crystal Prophet. She is the host of the profit podcast. A big shout out to Crystal. She was sharing with me that she has a freshman and she would love to help and support him in his college and career readiness. But really she doesn't know where to start or what the timeline should look like when they should be doing what. And one thing she did mention was that she really wants to help and support her child through this process, but without adding too much pressure or packing their schedule with more quote unquote stuff, right? Do you guys resonate with this? Well, I thought this is the perfect time for us to have the conversation on what not to do and instead, what we should be doing. So let's get started.
Speaker 1:The number one thing you don't want to do is jump straight into college exploration, college admissions I mean honestly. If you Google or look at advertisements out there for college and career readiness, you'll find checklists and applications, college admission guides and how to get into X, y and Z college and setting goals, etc. The list can go on and, trust me, we will need some or all of this at some point. However, we cannot start any of this without helping our child, our teen or even sometimes our adult children, with the number one item that's overlooked and that, my friend, is self discovery. Boom, there you go, two words Self discovery, self discovery, self discovery, yes, self discovery. I know you're probably thinking like what? Yes, self discovery, and we're going to touch on this today and, friend, I will continue to help you throughout this journey with all the other items just mentioned. That's why we're the College and Community Podcast, but my first priority is for you to get to know your child Really.
Speaker 1:Personal self discovery is me, and I can really talk on and on about this. As a matter of fact, I have family coaching sessions in my Discover you College and Career Coaching program where we dive into my four step framework, and that framework starts with self discovery. So how can we dive into the college admissions process when we have not even discovered yet who our child is, what their specific core interests are, their values, their inner core dreams, their skills? These are important questions that we need to be answering as parents and helping our child self discover. Parents, you play a key role in creating an environment conducive to self reflection. So today I'm going to talk about the top three tips for you as a parent that you can help your child with self discovery.
Speaker 1:The first one and honestly this is one of the biggest ones for all of us parents out there and it's asking the right questions and learning to listen. Ouch, learning to listen is probably the hardest one, even for me. So how can we start asking more questions and building that connection and that communication with our teenager. We need to be curious. We need to ask more open-ended questions. Open communication such as how do you feel about what do you see in the future? Describe to me. You can even ask questions that are more along their lines of interest what do you love? What interests you? What makes you happy? What do you dislike? And then not just asking the question of what or how, but why. Why do you like that so much? Why are you so determined to finish that one particular project yet the other one you don't even want to get started on? All of these are very good questions that will allow for self-discovery and self exploration.
Speaker 1:Try to spend some alone time with your teen or your child. One on one time is essential, honestly, on a weekly basis. If it's more often, even better. Just time when y'all can connect, and this will depend on your child too. When is it that they are most open to talking? Maybe they're uncomfortable with looking at you in the eye, so find a fun activity that maybe y'all can do together and still have a conversation. Maybe it's a sport, maybe it's playing tennis or volleyball or going for a walk. There are many different opportunities you can find to build communication with your child, so find the time that's best for them, even while driving in the car, it can also be a great time.
Speaker 1:Have conversations without judgment and listen. I do this a lot, I'm not going to lie. It doesn't come naturally easy to me to quickly want to put in my two cents or add my personal opinion. So try to have more opportunities when you are actually just listening without judgment, and learn to be okay with silence or a no response. I know as parents, we want to quickly give an answer and quickly give a solution, but sometimes we just need to sit and listen. One of the top mistakes that we make as parents we want to tell them what they should do, and that honestly creates a dependency of our children really expecting us to tell them what they should do today, tomorrow and eventually, even when they leave our home. They're expecting for us to just tell them what they should be doing, and the best gift that you can give your child is to do a lot of the critical thinking on their own. Of course, you're right there alongside with them, but they're going to be leaving high school from a handheld experience and moving into college where they're going to have to show their self-advocacy, have a voice, find resources, speak up when they have questions. All of these skills are necessary to be successful in college, and you can start that today in your home. Whether your child is a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, it doesn't matter. You can start teaching these essential skills today.
Speaker 1:So the second tip I'm going to give to you is explore together, find out answers together. Don't feel like you have to have all the answers. Listen, I don't even have all the answers myself, and I've been in education for 17 plus years. But what I do know what to do is how to ask questions. I know how to be resourceful and I know how to tap into my network and my community. So tell them if you don't have the answer, but let them know and reaffirm that you can explore and find the answers together. That is another great skill that you can teach your child Not finding the answers for them, but helping them find their own answers. Or, if you are going to find the answers for them, bring them with you. Tell them how you're doing it, tell them how you are trying to find the answer to their question, and do it together. Going back to the earlier comment about them expecting us just to tell them. You need to change that mindset. You need to change the mindset of them expecting us to just have all the answers. We will always be learning, my friend. No matter how young or old you are, you will always be learning and you will always have to tap into other people who might be just slight more knowledgeable in an area than you so they can help you with your own journey or your child's journey.
Speaker 1:Research findings have shown that the difficulties in adjusting to the academic and social aspects of college life can affect students' persistence and success. High school graduates may struggle with the transition to a more independent and self-directed learning environment. We talk about that all the time on this podcast. My friend, it is important for us to be walking with our child alongside, not in front of them, but with them, help them and guide them in making their own decisions. This is a great way to help them transition into college, to learn how to be resourceful and independent. It's also about offering guidance based on your knowledge, while giving your child the autonomy to explore yes, share your experiences, but emphasize that their journey is unique. Let them learn from both successes and setbacks.
Speaker 1:The third tip that I want to give to you today, my friend, is explore now, not tomorrow. Explore today. This is especially important for our parents of freshmen and sophomore. When you ask me what you can do today, this is exactly what you can do today these three tips that I'm mentioning. And if you are a parent of a junior or a senior, or even a college student, these tips still apply and can help your child and or college and career readiness. Never stop exploring, never stop learning and never stop leaning onto others for support, find resources, help them, build their network and teach them how to lean into their community during their exploration journey. They already have a huge community with their school, with their teachers, their counselors. There are many people within the school already that can help them in their career exploration journey.
Speaker 1:High school is the best years for exploration. Listen, I'm totally fine if you want to invest all your money into the house to get into the college of your child's choice or dream, but what good does that do to them if they later have to completely pivot and change degrees because they're following a degree that is not where their heart is any longer or that's just not aligned with who they are. Maybe they followed that degree plan for the wrong reasons or because they just heard someone say that they should pursue that career for X, y and Z reasons, or, even worse, they dropped out or stopped going to college because they feel they need a quote unquote gap year, because they don't really know what they want. This is how we can help as parents, early on in the process, in the exploration phase, and helping them tap into their community and their network so they can start identifying careers that they're interested in, exploring them and possibly even having some first hand experience seeing someone in the field.
Speaker 1:High school should be the best years to explore rather than define. Yes, as we get closer to senior year, defining can be important, but more than anything is really getting the students to know who they really are and how that can play a huge role in their decision-making process. I have heard plenty of success stories, my friends, where even college students going into their first year of college had one career in mind and then completely switched within the first year, and that's completely fine. But imagine if we could save these steps earlier on in a process. Now we are talking about saving money and really creating a little bit less of a stressful environment because your child is now more defined into who they are, what skill sets they have and what career they want to pursue. Listen, I'd rather than do the weeding out earlier rather than later. This self-awareness is the compass that guides students towards the right college and career choices, not the other way around that so many of us are led to believe, focusing on picking a college because we just want our kids to go to the particular college, paying high tuition rates when the child has not even done self-exploration of who they are, what skill sets they have and what careers they could possibly pursue.
Speaker 1:So what can you do today? Start open-ended conversations with your child. Meet them where they're at so you can know where you are both starting from. Then explore together. Find them that you may not have all the answers, but you are willing to come on the journey together with them and find the answers together. Once you have determined some areas of interest, guide your child in seeking out resources, mentors and opportunities for them to tap into that particular career interest or interests. Right, because they may have more than one, and that's totally fine. Teach them how to network and I promise that is a life lesson that will not only help them today but in the many years to come. And, friend, if you need any help in this process, I will be more than happy to walk one-on-one with you and your child on this journey.
Speaker 1:With my Signature Discover you College and Career Coaching program. So if you want to check that out, you can go to my website, collegecareerreadyorg. Forward slash discover you and that's with the letter you. I would love for you to try some of what we talked about today, because nothing, nothing brings me greater joy than you using some of what we talk about and working with your child, building that relationship with them. Implement it and, when it works, tell me about it. That would be the greatest gift I could get for having this podcast. Remember, we can listen to all the podcast episodes we want, but if we are not taking action, it's really doing us no service at all. Please share this episode and my podcast with your family, friends and community. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me. I hope that you have learned something new today and if you have any questions, you know how to reach me. Thank you for joining us, sweet friend, and, as always, stay well, be present and enjoy the journey.
Speaker 2:I'll talk to you next week. Hi friend, thank you for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, you would mean so much to me. If you share it with a friend, share it with them right now or, even better, tag me so I can personally thank you for helping us build our community. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you. Let's keep in touch and I'll talk to you soon. Adios.