Before We Give Them a Map, Find Out Where They're Going

There's a moment that comes for every parent of an older kid, and it sneaks up on you faster than it should.

You're at the dinner table, or in the car, or maybe just walking past their bedroom door, and it hits you: this is ending. Not in a bad way. In the way that all good things that were always supposed to be temporary eventually end. Your child is becoming someone who is going to walk out of this house and into their own life, and the window you have to help them figure out who they are is smaller than you thought.

Some of you are already there, staring at a senior year, a diploma, a summer that feels like a countdown. Some of you have a few years left, but you've started to feel the pressure building, the questions getting louder: college or not? Which school? What major? What if they don't know? What if you don't know? And some of you have a child who is nowhere near that stage, but you already sense that the path from here to there is going to require more of you than you originally planned for.

The Number That Changed How I See This

I went into this conversation with Dr. Kathy Koch thinking I knew roughly what she'd say. Choose wisely. Consider your child's gifts. Don't just default to the four-year path. Good stuff. Helpful stuff.

And then she mentioned a number that stopped me.

Fifty percent. That's the current college dropout rate, and not after one difficult semester. After five years. Half of the students who enroll in college today will not graduate, even if given half a decade. Dr. Kathy said it plainly: it's because so many of them don't know who they are. They're there to please a parent, to follow the expected script, to check a box they were handed without ever being asked whether it fit. They end up, as she put it, "swimming in quicksand" — burning through time and money and emotional energy on a path that was never actually theirs.

That number, fifty percent, isn't an indictment of those kids. It's an indictment of a conversation that wasn't happening at home.

Former college professor Rachel Garlinghouse wrote about this in Business Insider. She watched student after student arrive at college, weighed down, not excited, weighed down by pressure they hadn't agreed to, by a path chosen more by parental expectation than genuine calling. She noticed that parents often struggle to actually listen when their kids are trying to work through this. We hear the question should I go to college? And we answer before we understand what's underneath it.

Dr. Kathy's response to all of this was not what I expected. It wasn't a defense of college or an argument against it. It was something more useful than either: Stop answering their questions. Start asking better ones.

The Conversation We're Not Having (But Should Be)

Here's the thing Dr. Kathy said that I keep coming back to: our kids today are multipassionate, multi-interested, and multi-able. They have more options than any generation before them, which sounds like a gift, and it is, but it also means the question of who am I and what am I for is harder to answer than it used to be. Research suggests they'll have seven careers over the course of their lives. Seven. They're not going to find their one thing at eighteen, and we need to stop designing conversations as if they should.

What they need from us is not a plan. It's better questions.

Dr. Kathy gave me some that I think are worth writing down. What's going to matter to you ten years from now: relationships, creativity, community, impact? If culture matters deeply to a kid, they're probably not going to thrive in a small town, no matter how good the school is. If family is everything to them, long distance might cost more than they realize. What's the evidence that you've been created for this? Not whether they feel excited about it, feelings come and go, but what has actually shown up consistently. When do they come alive? When do they shut down and leave the room?

She offered me a picture: a parent sitting with a child and saying, I've been watching you since you were eleven. Every time we talk about this kind of thing, your face does something. And every time we talk about that kind of thing, you go somewhere else entirely. Help me understand why you think one of those paths is right for you.‍ ‍

That's not a lecture. That's not pressure. That's a parent who has been paying attention — and is finally saying so out loud.

The goal of the conversation isn't to steer them onto the right path. It's to help them see themselves clearly enough to find it.

College Isn't the Only Road And Some Kids Know It

Dr. Kathy said something I want to say clearly, because it doesn't get said enough in Christian parenting spaces: not every kid should go to college. Some kids are designed for paths that don't require a four-year degree, and pretending otherwise doesn't serve them. It sets them up to fail an expensive test they were never meant to take.

She's especially direct about kids who are Logic Smart and Body Smart, kids who think in cause and effect, in systems and sequences, and who also need to work with their hands, to build and fix and move through problems physically. Contractors. Electricians. Plumbers. Truck drivers. These are careers that pay well, that require real skill and real character, that cannot be outsourced overseas, and that our culture increasingly needs. A Logic Smart, Body Smart kid who becomes a master electrician is not a kid who settled. They're a kid whose parents knew them well enough to say: this path was made for you.

And then there's the gap year, which Dr. Kathy is a genuine advocate for, but with one important condition: it has to be purposeful. It is not twelve months on the couch. It's a young person going somewhere and doing something, a program like Summit Ministries' gap year, or Lamplighter's program for Christian creatives, or a mission field where they're serving alongside people their family's church supports in Thailand or Guatemala or somewhere else entirely. The goal is discovery. By the end of it, the hope is that this kid has a clearer sense of what the future holds and a greater chance of success when they step into it.

There's also a phrase Dr. Kathy used that I want to stay with for a moment. She said she hopes every high school graduate is college worthy — meaning they have the character, the discipline, and the independence to handle what college requires — even if they don't go. That's a meaningful distinction. College worthiness isn't about grades or test scores. It's about maturity. It's about whether a kid can handle freedom without falling apart, can study without someone standing over them, can make choices about their own time and take responsibility for the consequences. That's character. That's what we're building toward. And a kid who has that is ready for whatever comes next, college or otherwise.

David in the Fields

As Dr. Kathy and I were talking, I kept thinking about a passage in 1 Samuel 17 that I don't think gets read often enough through this lens.

When we meet David in that chapter, the older brothers have already gone to war. That was the path. That was what young men did. David, the youngest, isn't on that path yet. He's going back and forth between the army camp and Bethlehem, tending his father's sheep. He doesn't have a title. He doesn't have a rank. By every external measure, he's not doing the impressive thing.

But something is being built in him out in those fields that his brothers, who are on the expected path, doing the expected thing, don't have yet. He's developing courage out there, fighting off lions and bears when no one is watching. He's developing trust in God in a setting that doesn't offer much else to lean on. He's developing the interior life, the psalms, the songs, the conversations with God, that will sustain him through everything that comes next. He's becoming someone. And it's happening quietly, in a context that looks, from the outside, like he's just watching sheep.

When Goliath shows up, David is the only one ready. Not because he had the best credentials. Because he had the right character.

I wonder if we spend too much time helping our kids find the right path and not enough time helping them become the right kind of person for whatever path they're on. The career can change, and it probably will, seven times over. But the courage, the trust, the interior steadiness that David built in the fields? That goes with you everywhere.

Meeting Your Child Where They’re Smart

Word Smart: The question of who they are and where they're going is one they are already writing in their head, probably in more detail than they've shared with you. Give them language to work with: read about people who found unconventional paths and became remarkable, talk about your own story honestly, let them see that the narrative of a life doesn't have to follow the standard outline to be meaningful. And then ask them to write something, write a letter to themselves at thirty, a list of what they hope is true about their life in ten years. Word Smart kids often know more than they realize. The writing is how they find out what it is.

Logic Smart: Your Logic Smart child will not commit to a direction until they understand the reasoning behind it. They are asking questions you may not be hearing: why does this path make sense for me specifically, and what's the evidence? They need data, not pressure. Walk them through what you actually know about who they are: the patterns you've observed, the things that consistently energize or drain them, the moments when their thinking has been at its sharpest. Then let them reason their way to a conclusion. They are fully capable of it, but they need the raw material of honest observation, not a predetermined answer dressed up as a question. A Logic Smart kid who chooses their own path with clear reasoning behind it will commit to it. One who is steered there without understanding why will drift.

Picture Smart: Your Picture Smart child needs to be able to see the future before it will feel real enough to move toward. Abstract conversations about options and majors and career trajectories won't land; they need a vivid, specific image. Take them somewhere. Let them shadow someone doing work that might fit them. Drive through the neighborhood of a life they're imagining. Find people who are living out different versions of possible futures and let your child stand close enough to see what it actually looks like on a Tuesday. Before a Picture Smart child can commit, they have to be able to see themselves in the frame. Help them build that picture with real experiences, not brochures.

Music Smart: Your Music Smart child is already reading the emotional tone of this entire conversation, and they know whether the pressure underneath your questions is anxiety or trust. They feel the rhythm of the household when college season arrives, the tension, the expectation, the subtle comparisons to other families' kids. What they need from you is not just content but tone. When you talk about their future, does it feel like an open door or a narrowing corridor? Do your questions carry curiosity or urgency? A Music Smart child will respond to how you hold the conversation as much as what you say in it. Slow down. Let there be silence. Ask one thing and then wait, really wait, for what comes back. The space you create is as important as the words you choose.

Body Smart: Your Body Smart child is going to figure out who they are by doing things, not by sitting in a room talking about what they might someday do. The most useful thing you can put in front of this child right now is experience, an internship, a job, a service project, a trade program, a hands-on gap year. Let them build something, fix something, make something. Let them discover competence in a physical domain before you ask them to commit to a direction. Dr. Kathy talks about Body Smart kids who become contractors and electricians and plumbers not as kids who couldn't handle college, but as kids who are doing exactly what they were designed to do, thinking with their hands, solving real problems, building things that last. That is not a lesser path. It is a different one, and for your child, it might be exactly right.

Nature Smart: Your Nature Smart child sees patterns and systems that other people miss. They are likely already noticing things about themselves, what environments make them thrive, what kinds of problems draw them in, what feels alive versus what feels dead, long before they have language for it. They notice the ecosystem of a room, a school, a workplace, before anyone else does. The best thing you can do for this child in the college conversation is to take those observations seriously. Don't override what they're sensing with what you're hoping. Ask them what they notice. Ask what feels right and wrong about each option and why. A Nature Smart child who is given room to read the patterns of their own life will often arrive at a remarkably clear answer. The problem is usually that nobody asked.

People Smart: Your People Smart child processes their sense of direction through relationships. They need to talk through this with people they trust, hear what those people observe in them, and feel the warmth of being genuinely known before they can move confidently forward. A college fair or a career aptitude test will not do much for this child. But a conversation with someone they admire who chose an unexpected path? A mentor who has watched them over time and can say here is what I see in you? That will do everything. Create those conversations. Introduce them to people across a range of life paths. And have the conversation yourself , not as the parent with an agenda, but as someone who genuinely wants to know what they're thinking and feeling. For a People Smart child, being truly heard is the beginning of knowing what comes next.

Self Smart: Your Self Smart child has been thinking about this longer than you know. They have a rich interior life and they've been quietly processing the future, its possibilities, its weight, its uncertainties, without necessarily saying any of it out loud. The worst thing you can do is push them toward a decision before they're ready. The best thing you can do is create the conditions in which they feel safe enough to share what's been going on inside. That means not reacting too strongly when they float an unexpected idea. It means being someone they trust with the unfinished version of their thinking. A self-smart child who feels pressured will go deeper inward and further from you. One who feels safe will eventually come out and show you what they've been building, and it will almost certainly surprise you with how far along it already is.