Teen son has absolutely no idea what he wants to do

[Kvec1507]

Hi all
My son is in year 12 and just had his mocks. They went really badly. We're trying to get him to focus on an end goal so he knows what to aim for for achievement. The thing is he has absolutely no idea what he wants to do after a levels. I completely understand this as I'm 41 and still don't know what I want to do with my life lol.
I think he's getting overwhelmed with all the options between unis, apprenticeships, travelling, work. I don't know how to help him.
I imagine lots of kids feel like this.
I want him to visit some unis but he doesn't know if he wants to move away or stay home.
All he says is that he wants to earn well. He has an interest in sport, biology and weirdly sales.
How can I help him? He's at a complete loss. I don't want to travel up and down the country looking at unis when deep down I don't think that's for him
He's a very stubborn person but I am getting frustrated with 'i don't know' as his answer for everything.
The school doesn't have careers guidance.
He's done tests online to see where his interests might be but it always comes up as police or teacher, neither of which he wants to do.
How did you help your teens navigate this time in their lives when they didn't have a focus?

Oops sorry to post again. Also most leisure centres run courses to train as a lifeguard - not a bad rate of pay and a transferable skill if you move elsewhere. Also might fit with his interests - or refereeing course if he likes football? Just thinking of jobs that might get him started. waitingfordoggo your DD’s year sounds much like my DS’s. My mum thinks he’s ‘wasted’ the year because he’s not been travelling etc but actually I think it’s really helped him sort his ideas out and get some life skills.

My DS's school spent their whole time there telling them 'the job you'll do probably hasn't even been invented yet' l. That certainly demotivated them.

My DS had careers advice at his state school. I was invited to go to and when I turned up found that they had started early and had advised him to be a garage mechanic. He’d never had any interest in this and had no practical skills in the area.
He now has a good degree and works as a project manager in television, still no interest in car mechanics!
I don’t know if the advisor he saw was trained but it was a useless service in our experience.
My DD on the other hand (private school) had professional guidance with psychometric testing and they summed her up perfectly.

He wants money and interested in Sales? Perfect. Sounds like a winning combination. Plus, if he learns to sell well, it is a great transferable skill. Get him onto something Udemy for a quick course to see if he likes/hates it and/or get him to any job where he is selling, or supporting sales. They are usually in demand roles as so many people don't want to do it.

I think the advice I'd give to any parents of kids getting to the school leaver age is to study the jobs market as it has been really tough lately, I was made redundant in September with years of experience and qualifications and it was beginning of Feb before I started a new role. You need to look at what work is plentiful because gone are the days of walking into a job young and being there for life.

Some people on here with good intentions are suggesting some very niche job roles but the reality is you need to know what roles are out there that would a) give someone a foot in the door and if b) they ever got made redundant, how easy would it be to find a similar role, if there's not many roles of that ilk, they could up against 100's of other applicants for any available role!

I'm on LinkedIn and redundancy is rife and it can take professionals many months to find an alternative role so it's best not to be in a line of work that comes up only once in a blue moon.

Also I would say it's not so easy to say "try something and if they don't like it they can just change careers" - my experience of the jobs market is being completely ghosted for anything that isn't exactly what I currently do! People are not open minded to training people from scratch to do something different especially as they'll get candidates that have the right experience already.

I know a recruitment consultant that told me the jobs market has been the toughest he's seen it for 20 years.

If he likes sport then maybe a gap year working with one of the sports based travel companies might interest him? Places like Club La Santa, Neilsons, Mark Warner, or something like Camp America although he's probably missed applying for this year? I agree with the PP about lifeguarding, there seems to have been a shortage ever since a year of training upcoming 16-18 year olds got missed during lockdown. A few of my friends teenagers do it and they're never short of shifts.
Has he considered the armed forces?

A proper, practical apprenticeship is better than uni these days.

This may be a bit left field but try putting all the information you have about his subjects, interests and ideas intro ChatGpt. It came up with some interesting ideas for my son to think about when we put his proposed A level subjects in he is year 11). I specifically said he is not interested in uni so what other education and training options exist. You can then refine it further with more detailed questions.

Please don’t do this. Chat GPT works by predicting what the next word in a sentence is statistically likely to be, it doesn’t analyse the information it’s drawing on or check that any of it is correct.

You’re better off doing your own research and then for fun asking Chat GPT to rewrite it in the style of Dr Seuss.

How would he feel about learning a trade? Lots of money in plumbing/ gas boilers/ electrics.

Not my experience at all. I left the first question vague and it provided very specific jobs, industries, courses and companies to look into. Why wouldn’t you use it as additional research?

If he likes the idea of sales in theory and with confidence he could get into that without higher education. Recruitment, estate agent? Those type jobs he could probably start at the bottom and move up swiftly if he really is good at selling and money motivated.
If he likes biology he could work in recruitment for biotech or healthcare?

@Namefortodayandtomorrow Because I have had to assess LLM accuracy as part of my work and it’s made me very cautious about using them as research tools at all. They do state things very convincingly, though!

My DD has decided to take a gap year and make a decision then. She has a tendency to get overwhelmed and I didn't want her to stress about predicted grades and clearing and so forth. She's going to take a pause and then apply to uni with her actual grades as well as.apply for degree apprenticeships. It's been the right move for her.

I love that she realised this and that you didn't push her. It's not seen as cool to be unambitious in life - but what is ambition for? To help us try and feel happy and good about our lives. If she already has this and is earning well enough not to stress then she is ahead of the game.

No, we didn't push her although we did make sure that she knew what she was doing. I believe that she was the only child from her selective, very academic private school who chose not to go to university.
I'm very proud of her, she's got a good full-time job, fosters teenagers and has adopted two siblings as a single parent. She has a very full life and could not have done this had she gone down a more traditional middle-class career route.

I’m so glad I came across this thread. I have a Year 12 son in a very similar position. I’m definitely of the opinion that a year out would be best for him, and he can apply to uni already having got his grades. School are freaking me out though - got a very long email really pushing uni open days, when he really can’t think that far ahead. This thread is very reassuring.