They Don’t Have to Get It Right at 18: Helping Kids Launch with Wisdom
One of the strange things about raising children is eventually realizing that the people who look so much like us may not actually want to become us. This can be surprising. You spend years looking across the dinner table and seeing your spouse’s smile and maybe, unfortunately, your tendency to leave shoes in the middle of the floor, and, somewhere along the way, you assume there will be other similarities, too. Then one child wants to do exactly what you do, while another looks at your career and thinks, “That seems terrible.” That is not necessarily a parenting problem. It may simply mean we have finally discovered that our children are people.
A recent Gallup survey discussed on the podcast found that about three fourths of parents wanted young people to pursue education after high school, with 40 percent preferring a four year university. I understand that instinct. Education after high school is valuable, and most young adults will need additional training, skill development, apprenticeships, certifications, college, or other forms of preparation. But Dr. Kathy made an important distinction: the purpose of education is not to prepare children for more education. It is to prepare them for life.
Start With the Life, Not the Degree
That changes the first question. Instead of beginning with, “Where are you going to college?” we might ask, “What kind of life do you believe God may be preparing you to live?” Does your teenager hope to marry? Do they want children? Are they entrepreneurial? Do they want flexibility? Do they love working with their hands? Do they want to serve people directly? Do they thrive in a structured environment or need independence? Career and education matter, but they fit inside a larger life. A prestigious path that constantly fights against the life a young adult believes they are called to build may not actually be the best path.
Parents can help by exposing children to more possibilities than the ones inside our own homes. Invite people over. Ask friends about their careers. Let the teenager who has talked about firefighting since kindergarten meet an actual firefighter and learn about the physical and written requirements. Let the child considering plumbing talk to a plumber about apprenticeship, licensing, income, scheduling, and what the work is really like. Our kids cannot discern options they do not know exist.
Your Kids Are Created in God’s Image, Not Yours
This may be one of the hardest parts of launching children well. We have preferences and naturally recognize certain gifts because we have them ourselves. We may unknowingly celebrate the child who likes academics, ministry, business, athletics, or whatever feels familiar to us. Meanwhile, another child possesses strengths that nobody in the family quite understands. We need to resist turning familiarity into calling. Our children bear God’s image, not ours. They may inherit our DNA without inheriting our vocational direction.
Knowing the child becomes critical. One sibling may be eager to launch and energized by possibility. Another may process change slowly and need more time to imagine what leaving home will actually mean. One may want a large university. Another may flourish in a two year program, trade school, apprenticeship, gap year, mission experience, or job that pays for additional training. Different is not lesser. Parenting differently does not necessarily mean parenting unfairly. Sometimes wisdom requires different guidance because the children themselves are different.
Respect Every Honest Kind of Work
Parents also teach children what careers are worthy long before career conversations become serious. They notice how we talk after the electrician leaves. They know when we imply that people who did not attend college somehow missed the better path. That attitude can quietly close doors God may have designed a child to walk through. A skilled plumber, carpenter, electrician, technician, mechanic, or tradesperson may be highly competent, deeply satisfied, well compensated, and meeting real human needs every day.
We should also be careful not to attach careers to gender stereotypes. A girl who enjoys mechanics, insects, construction, engineering, or other fields people may associate with men does not need us to narrow her possibilities. A boy drawn toward teaching young children, music, nursing, design, or another field some may stereotype differently deserves the same freedom. Our job is not to make children conform to our picture of what someone like them should do. Our job is to help them steward how God actually made them.
Use the 8 Great Smarts to Widen the Possibilities
This is one place where the 8 Great Smarts can become remarkably practical. Children often imagine careers through the narrow list they see around them. Understanding their combination of smarts expands the picture. A music smart and logic smart child might someday thrive in sound engineering. A music smart and body smart child may flourish as a drummer or performer. A picture smart and logic smart child may discover architecture or design. People smart and word smart strengths may combine in teaching, counseling, leadership, or communication. The smarts do not prescribe a career, but they give children the language to recognize how God has equipped them.
That language matters because teenagers may have more options than ever while knowing themselves less clearly. The internet can make every life seem possible. A student in Minnesota can watch someone build a business in Singapore, backpack across Europe, study medicine, work remotely from a beach, or launch a nonprofit before breakfast. Possibility feels endless. But children are not infinitely adaptable. They still have real strengths, limitations, responsibilities, interests, and temperaments. Freedom is not pretending they can become anything. Freedom is discovering more clearly who they are and faithfully stewarding what God has given.
The First Choice Does Not Have to Be the Final Choice
Perhaps one of the most freeing things we can tell teenagers is this: you do not have to get your entire life right at 18. Dr. Kathy taught second grade and thought she would do it forever. Then she became a professor and believed that was her long term calling. That changed too. Decades later, those earlier experiences were not wasted. The skills and insights from one season proved useful in another.
Young adults need permission to adapt without believing every change means they failed. A first job can teach something valuable without becoming a lifelong career. A path that once seemed right may become the preparation God uses for something we could not have anticipated. Discernment is not the same as perfectly predicting the future. Faithfulness often means making the wisest decision we can with what we know and remaining willing to listen when God redirects.
Parents Are Guides, Not Scriptwriters
First Samuel 3 offers a beautiful picture for parents of teenagers approaching adulthood. Samuel hears his name and assumes Eli is calling him. Three times he goes to Eli before Eli finally realizes what is happening: God is speaking to the boy. Eli cannot answer the call for Samuel. He does something more humble and ultimately more useful. He teaches Samuel how to respond: “Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.”
There is something powerful there for parents. Sometimes God may be stirring something in our children that we did not anticipate. Their calling may not fit our family history, our preferred university, our career, or the future we quietly imagined while they were still small. Our responsibility is not to script the call. It is to help children recognize the One who calls. We teach them Scripture. We cultivate prayer. We help them know their strengths and limitations. We introduce them to wise people. We let them try things. We ask questions. And then we remind them to listen.
That may be the healthiest definition of launching well. Not a child who has every answer, the perfect major, the ideal internship, and a five year plan color coded by graduation. A young adult launches well when they increasingly know who God made them to be, understand that work is service rather than status, respect many faithful paths, can make a thoughtful decision without panic, and know what to do when the path changes. They can say, like Samuel, “Speak, Lord. I’m listening.” Our kids do not need us to hand them the entire map. They need us to keep pointing them toward the One who sees the whole road.
Engaging the Future Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Encourage interviews with people in different careers, reading biographies, journaling about future hopes, or writing down the qualities they want their adult life to reflect.
Logic Smart: Compare training requirements, costs, schedules, income possibilities, and lifestyle tradeoffs. Help them analyze options without pretending the highest salary automatically means the best choice.
Picture Smart: Invite them to visualize an ordinary Tuesday in different possible futures. Where are they working? Who is around them? What are they making, solving, or contributing?
Music Smart: Explore careers connected to performance, production, sound, teaching, worship, composition, or other ways musical intelligence combines with additional strengths.
Body Smart: Give them opportunities to work, build, repair, coach, serve, apprentice, shadow, and experience careers where physical engagement matters.
Nature Smart: Consider careers involving animals, agriculture, environmental work, outdoor education, science, conservation, landscaping, or other ways of noticing and stewarding creation.
People Smart: Arrange job shadowing, mentoring, informational interviews, and opportunities to work alongside adults. People-smart kids often understand a future best by meeting someone living it.
Self Smart: Give them time to process without requiring an immediate declaration of a major or career. Ask what kinds of work give energy, drain energy, produce satisfaction, or feel meaningful.
Remember: Whatever their smarts, remind them: the first step does not have to reveal the whole journey. Faithfulness means listening, moving wisely, and trusting God enough to be redirected.