YOUR CHILD DOES HAVE A FUTURE WAITING FOR THEM

This is for all the parents who think their kids will NEVER find their place in the world. 

The careers work I do with school and university leavers is very close to my heart for two reasons. Firstly, I wish I had had the opportunity to do really proper career guidance at school. And secondly, I wish my kids had had proper guidance too.

For me, having done everything I have done on the way to where I am now, has given my Now the knowledge, experience, meaning and purpose needed to be a life and career coach. So I wouldn’t change any of it. Which is easy to say in hindsight, but it didn’t always feel easy or well signposted at the time. 

But for my kids, it’s different. We would have all been spared the years of stress and worry, and the financial caning that goes with not knowing where you belong and ending up thinking you aren’t good at anything because you try every hopeful avenue, which turns into disappointment and despair.

I wasn´t a coach when my daughter left school, I was a university lecturer in Chile teaching kids who were just older than her, but she wasn´t listening to any input from her parents cos what did we know anyway?

So off she went to one of Chile´s best universities to do psychology. Which we told her was NOT the right thing. We got the call in May that year to say exactly that. As it turned out, that started a ball rolling that ended up with us coming back to SA the next year. She did a major career pivot in the meantime and started her second first-year was a BComm in strategic brand management at advertising school in Cape Town. But that was too easy. So she got some advice from an industry expert who said if you want to be taken seriously, do business science with marketing honours at UCT. So back to first year # 3. This was not funny any more. But it was third time lucky. She got the challenge she wanted and the degree she needed and she made fantastic friends who will be there forever. And she now has a brilliant job and a life she loves as a result. Sadly for us parents, it’s in the Netherlands, cos that’s where the work is. 

My son matriculated when I was a coach but that didn´t count cos I was his mother. And having been brought up on a boat, all he wanted was to do sailing courses. Nothing wrong with that, but he didn’t want the reality check of what it’s all about these days. So, he is now a superbly qualified skipper with all the courses needed for super yacht work, but the problem was he didn´t want to polish brass and serve rich people. He wanted to SAIL. That was gap year #1 and he had wasted a lot of his education fund. 

Gap year #2 was waitering, trying his hand at modelling and movie extras, surfing and searching his soul for the right thing. Then came boat building. Eureka! He got accepted for a boat building course for the next year, collective sighs all round. In late January last year, just after all other avenues for study had closed, the course got cancelled and we were facing a bleak gap year #3 with crushed dreams and a slapped around self-esteem. 

Unbeknown to us this fired him up and he spent hours chatting with his girlfriend and friends about careers. And one morning he asked if I could meet him in his bedroom at 12.00 the next day. In I walked at exactly midday and there he was applying to do computer science at Varsity College for the following year (2026). What the even??? Where did this come from? But I slipped into coach mode and didn’t actually say that out loud. I helped him where he needed help while he sent in his own application, collected his own documents for download and phoned his dad for the admission fee. All done and dusted. I was still processing this dramatic new shift when the phone rang and the admissions officer said they had just received his application and they still had a place for 2025, and did he want it? Long story short, he started the very next day and is now in second year, happy that he has found his place in the world. And thinking that maybe he can use his qualification on boats somehow. If AI leaves anyone with a job. The life-learning curve that came next is another long story for another day. 

Why am I telling you that as a career coach I couldn´t help my kids? 

Because I am a parent first and a coach second. And when kids are floundering and fearful, they don’t really want their parents´ advice. And sometimes parents shouldn’t be giving advice, because we may not have the full picture of who our kids are when they are out in the world or what possible careers are out there. In the end, it was an outside source that gave both our kids their tickets to ride. They still turned to us to help them get there, but they wanted advice from people whose job it is to know these things. It just is what it is.

BUT MOSTLY … if, like my kids, your kid is facing a future blank page, some proper career coaching in matric or in their gap year, will save you all years of stress, uncertainty and a financial battering. Chances are they will take advice from someone else anyway. So just do it right first time. My kids definitely wish they had had that opportunity at school. But if the help isn’t provided, find someone independent who can guide them to what really matters to them and to what would fulfil them. Just know that there IS a place for them in the world but some kids need help finding it. And it is that simple. 

 Vanessa

Bye for now,

Have a good week, Love Vanessa

If you are looking for your career path or want to create meaningful change in your life, contact me at  076 778 2787 for a free 30-minute exploratory session.