cHow do you help children chart their own path? Which approach to combine effectiveness and respect? Five answers from five different professional points of view.
“Avoid being one step ahead of the children”
Elena Buday Adolescent psychotherapist at the Minotaur Institute in Milan
“I feel intense concern among parents about their children’s future. Kids breathe this anxiety and often make it their own: they feel they have to make the right choices. In this widespread apprehension, it may happen that there is a risk of precocising the vocational path of the children: the a parent who sees certain aptitudes or abilities mentioned in the child can even read a sort of vocational drawing, involuntarily creating expectations. On the other hand, the child himself may feel pressure to comply with parental expectations. In short, the risk is that the path of experimentation which, on the contrary, must be growth, is saturated too soon, which is also made up of spaces of uncertainty, of mistakes, of achievements that must be continually put to the test.
It is also important to remember that every path, even the most disastrous, can contain incredible growth points. The writer Daniel Pennac says it well in his school diary: look at what your children “are still becoming”. Pennac says that as a student he was “a dunce” and that his mother was convinced that his failure at school was a prediction of his future as an adult, which turned out very differently. Here, putting yourself on the sidelines of the path of raising children by giving upwhich is very difficult, to predict future developmentslistening and instilling trust, even when their ideas do not correspond to ours: it is the task of parents, faced with the need of children to experiment, because only in this way will they be able to get to know each other and possibly correct themselves».
“A place ‘immediately’ is not the only criterion”
Roberto Pancaldi Managing Director of Mylia, a brand of the Adecco Group that deals with training and development for individuals and companies
«From my experience I see that there are scholastic and academic paths that enjoy immediate professional marketability: they are those, now established, in the technical and technological area. A son who expresses interest in it can only be encouraged, even knowing that he will have to realign his skills to the impressive, continuous changes to which the professions are exposed. In the same way, there are skills which, if they don’t help you get into companies, help you stay there: for example, some humanistic profiles, such as philosophy or literature, or mathematicians, themselves to be continuously reinterpreted and updated. In any case, it must be It’s clear that no one walks out of high school or college with a job in hand anymore. Also for this, I recommend supporting children in following their basic inclinations, without worrying too much about their marketability within a few years: the market will evolve in now unpredictable scenarios.
I would also advise parents – so am I – to do not project their vision of work onto children: that of earnings as an absolute parameter or of sacrifice in the name of a career is a finite model. A new idea of work is establishing itself among young people: the economic and growth stimulus is important for them too, but they condition it on a company that implements values in which they believe or that ensures a balance between professional and personal times» .
It seems impossible and instead it is exactly what happens in Italian schools. And the data that emerged from the OECD report are really worrying (Getty)
“Math is for girls”
Lorella Carimali Mathematics teacher at the Liceo Vittorio Veneto in Milan, writer, among the 50 best teachers in the world for the Global Teacher Prize 2018
«By counting on helping our children identify educational paths, we often transfer our unconscious stereotypes to them. I think first of all belief, denied by neuroscience, that we are born with a given intellectual heritage: the researches of Carol Dweck, psychologist and professor at Stanford, reveal to us, rather, that individuals are bearers of incremental intelligence, or intellectual abilities that educational experiences and cognitive stimulation can enhance. This is to say that there are no kids who are innately inclined for the technical institute instead of for high school, for Letters but not for Mathematicsbut guys who, with the right stimuli, can approach many areas.
We need to be aware of these biases when trying to help our children, but even more the daughters, to choose the direction of study. In fact, we load our stereotypes onto girls when we don’t consider them as capable as males to realize themselves in STEM subjects and, in particular, in mathematicsperhaps because we consider it a complex subject and therefore for a few or a pure application technique and not that adventure of the mind, that access key to possible worlds that mathematics is».
“Giving depth to the choice of university”
Claudia Manzi Professor of Social Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan
«Covid and distance learning have conditioned the perception of training in many students and their families, distorting it in a run-up to just the qualification: efforts are strictly aimed at obtaining a degree, aiming to acquire it with the least possible effort and time investment. Today more than ever we forget that studying at university also means taking the time to feed on high-level meetings in addition to the classroom, building meaningful relationships, doing valuable activities: this is the right spirit with which to live the university experience, aware of the fact that a degree is no longer enough for a job market that requires, precisely, depth and articulated preparation. On this aspect parents can exert a relevant stimulus.
A parent who, in the family, is called to offer support in orientation courses should, in my opinion, also reflect on the risk of projecting parts of oneself onto the future of one’s children: in fact, one may be tempted to want to achieve in the life of one’s children what one has not managed to achieve in one’s own or unknowingly wish to shine in the reflected light of their successes. Parents need to be aware of these risks, lucidly recognize children as other than themselves and legitimize the process of differentiation. In psychology we talk about support for autonomy. Support and autonomy are only apparently in opposition: they indicate being there without invading the children’s field, advising, if requested, but allow the choice to be theirs alone and fully accept their decisions, even when they cause frustration and pain because they disappoint expectations».
“Training the ability to visualize the future”
Massimo Ravasi Orienteur, counselor, coach and founder of the organization Orientare Oggi
«Today, for a parent, helping their children to choose means supporting them in developing critical thinking, i.e. the ability to research, analyze and evaluate. Research is fundamental: in complex situations the brain tends to consider that what exists is only what the eyes see, leaving out of its consideration a multitude of opportunities.
The parent, on the contrary, can stimulate curiosity, avoiding shortcuts and, indeed, broadening the scope of investigation. To reduce the risk of error, it is also necessary to bring into play the “slow thoughts” mentioned by the Nobel Prize for Economics Daniel Kahneman, as opposed to fast thoughts: the latter are spontaneous, immediate, emotional, as opposed to the slow ones, which require application, because they flow from analysis, evaluation, awareness.
Finally, orientation means answering the questions: who am I today? What person do I want to become? Where do I want to go to feel fulfilled? Helping your children to express desires, dreams, goals about themselves is the requirement to encourage them to feel protagonists of the choices and, at the same time, train the imagination, the ability that has always allowed us to give shape to what does not yet exist ».
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