Don’t Predict Their Failure: Help Them Discover Their Purpose
There is something unsettling about imagining a five year old being evaluated to determine whether he might someday become unemployed. He is still trying to determine whether puddles are for walking around or jumping directly into. She wants to know why ice melts and why worms come out after it rains. Yet a policy discussion in the United Kingdom has raised exactly this question. With more than one million young people aged sixteen to twenty four reportedly outside employment or education, some policymakers argue that warning signs should be identified as early as primary school. I understand the urgency. A million disconnected young adults should concern us. But I think there is a significant difference between identifying a child as a future problem and noticing what that child needs today.
The warning signs policymakers point toward, poverty, chronic absence, foster care involvement, mental health struggles, and poor school readiness are real risk factors, but most of them are not fundamentally employment problems. They are life problems showing up early. A five year old is not demonstrating that he will be a bad employee someday. He may be demonstrating that he does not feel safe, does not experience a sense of belonging, has not discovered competence, or has not yet encountered learning that feels meaningful. Those are very different diagnoses.
Look at the Core Needs Before the Résumé
Dr. Kathy’s Five Core Needs gives us a much better way to look at a child. Security asks, “Who can I trust?” Identity asks, “Who am I?” Belonging asks, “Who wants me?” Purpose asks, “Why am I alive?” Competence asks, “What do I do well?” If those needs remain chronically unanswered, it should not surprise us when a teenager eventually asks, “Why should I bother?” Apathy can be the end of a long story.
A five year old with thin security may stop taking healthy risks. A child without a sense of belonging may see school as something that happens around them rather than as a community they participate in. A child who rarely experiences competence may stop trying because failure has become predictable. And a child who never discovers that their interests and gifts matter may reach adolescence with very little sense of purpose. We do not have to wait until sixteen to notice those things, but noticing should lead us toward support rather than labeling.
Learning Has to Matter to the Learner
Dr. Kathy brought up Proverbs 4:13: “Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.” Learning is supposed to become part of life, not simply preparation for the next test. Yet we can take young children and give them learning experiences that have almost nothing to do with what naturally awakens their curiosity. Then we become concerned when they disengage.
A preschooler does not necessarily need another worksheet. He may need to know how deep the puddle is. A five year old can learn measurement while cooking, cause and effect while building, language while listening to stories, and science while digging around the backyard. If early education continually teaches children that learning means sitting still and answering questions adults care about, some kids will conclude surprisingly early that learning is not for them.
Curiosity Is Not a Distraction From Education
Curiosity may actually be one of the strongest protections against apathy. A curious child asks another question. They want to know how something works. They discover that ignorance is not embarrassing because it gives them somewhere to go next.
That matters later. Adults who continue learning can adapt when industries change, jobs disappear, technology advances, or their first career does not work out. If we want children prepared for employment twenty years from now, cultivating curiosity may matter more than predicting their occupation at five.
Parents Need Support Too
It is easy to turn every discussion about struggling children into another list of things parents have failed to do. That is not especially useful. Parenting is difficult work, and nobody receives a newborn with complete knowledge of child development, nutrition, sleep, discipline, technology, education, and emotional regulation conveniently downloaded into their brain.
Parent education matters. Teach parents why sleep matters. Help them understand healthy nutrition and hydration. Give them practical ways to create routines. Teach discipline that forms character instead of merely producing compliance. Help them understand developmental stages and the difference between progress and perfection. Then give them permission to reset when something is not working.
The firstborn really is the family guinea pig. Parents learn while parenting. Grace allows us to say, “We did not know then what we know now. So what is the next faithful thing?”
Schools Cannot Carry the Whole Culture
One of the strongest parts of the podcast conversation was the reminder that schools cannot solve every factor contributing to childhood disengagement. Teachers matter enormously, but a teacher cannot repair poverty, family instability, sleep deprivation, community isolation, and every unmet core need before teaching reading at nine o’clock.
This is where the institutions surrounding families become essential. Churches can teach and mentor parents rather than waiting until families are in crisis. Libraries can help parents choose books and show them how to make reading delightful. Community organizations can create meaningful places for children to serve and belong. Employers with large numbers of young parents can offer lunchtime mentoring where experienced moms and dads share what they have learned. Even businesses can help strengthen family life instead of pretending that the employee who walks through the door is disconnected from everything happening at home.
Children Need More Trustworthy Adults
Security begins with trustworthy people. Children need adults who remember them, apologize, forgive, follow through, teach rather than merely yell, and believe that growth is possible. A child whose home life is unstable may encounter that adult at church, at school, in a community program, at a neighbor’s house, or somewhere else entirely.
One trustworthy adult cannot erase every hardship. But adults can become part of the environment that communicates, “You matter here. We expect something from you because we believe there is something in you.” That is very different from, “We have identified you as being at risk of failure.”
Purpose Grows When Gifts Have Somewhere to Go
The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 gives us an important picture. The master entrusts resources to his servants. Two invest what they have received. One buries his portion out of fear. Whatever else Jesus is teaching through the parable, fear clearly produces hiding.
I think we sometimes see a version of that in children. A child who has experienced enough rejection or disappointment may learn that investing themselves is dangerous. Trying creates the possibility of failure. Offering a gift creates the possibility that nobody wants it. Speaking up creates the possibility of embarrassment. So they bury what they have.
That child may still possess enormous ability. What is missing is not necessarily talent. It may be the safe conditions in which talent can be risked.
Help Kids Spend What They Have Been Given
Purpose, the question “Why am I alive?”, begins to strengthen when children recognize that they have something useful to offer and that somebody wants what they bring. The child who is good with younger kids gets an opportunity to help. The body smart teenager is trusted with physical work. The mechanically curious child gets to repair something rather than being told not to touch it. The people smart student welcomes someone new. The artistic child creates something the community actually uses.
Competence grows: “I can do something.” Belonging grows: “They want me here.” Purpose begins whispering: “Maybe what I have matters.”
The Goal Is Not to Make Five Year Olds Employable
If we are worried about a generation disengaging from education and training, the answer cannot simply be to push career preparation ever younger. A five year old does not need an employability intervention. They need childhood.
They need play, curiosity, dependable adults, stories, movement, healthy challenge, opportunities to help, and the experience of becoming competent at something that matters to them. Those are not distractions from future readiness. They are some of its foundations.
Identify the Gift, Not Just the Risk
There is wisdom in noticing warning signs early. We should not ignore chronic absence, family instability, deep disengagement, or a child who appears to have stopped caring. But our questions should move beyond “What is wrong?” toward “What is missing?” and then further toward “What is here that needs room to grow?”
What makes this child come alive? What does she notice? What responsibility does he handle surprisingly well? Who does she trust? Where does he contribute? What does this child need in order to risk trying again? Those questions change intervention from prediction into formation.
We may never be able to guarantee that every child will follow a smooth educational or career path. That is not ours to control. But we can work together to build communities where children are safer, better known, more curious, increasingly competent, and given real opportunities to contribute. Instead of telling a child at five what statistics predict they might lack at twenty, let us begin showing them what God has already placed in their hands.
Engaging Purpose Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Let children explain interests, tell stories, ask questions, interview adults about their work, and use language to explore what matters to them.
Logic Smart: Give them real problems to solve. Let them measure, organize, compare, experiment, and discover that their reasoning produces useful outcomes.
Picture Smart: Invite them to design, draw, build, map, decorate, photograph, or visualize something that will actually be used by the family, church, or community.
Music Smart: Give musical children places to contribute, not merely perform. Let them help lead, create, teach younger children, or use music to serve others.
Body Smart: Let them work. Carry, build, cook, repair, garden, coach, move, and experience the satisfaction of completing something tangible.
Nature Smart: Give them responsibility for plants, animals, gardens, outdoor projects, or environmental observation so their attention becomes useful to others.
People Smart: Invite them to welcome, serve, lead, encourage, mentor, and participate in community. People-smart kids often discover purpose by recognizing their impact on someone else.
Self Smart: Give them time to reflect on what brings energy, satisfaction, curiosity, and meaning. Do not force purpose to emerge publicly before they have processed it internally.
Remember: However your child is smart, do not begin by asking whether they look successful enough. Ask instead: What has God put in this child, and where can we give it a safe place to grow?