Love this article!

It’s so important that we switch from merely asking our kids “Who do you want to want to be when you grow up?” and providing them with a menu from which they can choose to talking with them about the jobs that don’t exist yet and encouraging them to dump the menu and use their imagination.

It’s about time we change the way our parents used to talk with us about our future careers. We should start asking new questions.

What professions are new in today’s world?

We have been offering our children a very basic list of professions for far too long. Usually, we don’t try hard enough: a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, a firefighter, a scientist — I bet these professions are at the top of most of those lists. It is exactly how we limit the choice for our children.

This, for example, contributed to the fact that lawyers continue to flood the marketplace in some countries and can’t find a job once they obtain the law degree (after years of studying).

If we really want to help our children and initiate discussions about this topic, we should put some effort into this activity.

We should come up with an extended list of professions that evolved from other activities over the previous years and still continue to evolve.

Has anybody heard of an online teacher, an app developer, a data miner, a cloud computing technologist, a social media manager, a user experience designer, a virtual assistant?

That’s much more valuable than elaborating on the basic professions — our kids already know who a doctor is, or a policeman or a teacher.

What professions are missing in this day and age?

Apart from providing our kids with an extended list of new professions, we can also talk with them about missing professions.

What is missing today in terms of service providers?

Why limit our thinking to the existing jobs? Every year new jobs emerge because the world changes. When we talk only about the existing jobs, we miss out on a great opportunity to boost our children’s creativity.

Ask them to do the following exercise:
Think about your skills and try to come up with a new job. What need are you going to address?

What professions will emerge in the future?

Most of the jobs in the next ten years haven’t been invented yet.

Sparks & Honey, a New York trend-spotting firm, has a wall in its office where staff can post imaginative next-generation jobs. Why not do the same at home or school?

When we ask our children what will they be when they grow up, we can turn this discussion into a very creative exercise and at the same time have a lot of fun.

To boost the state of creative flow, you and your kid can start by searching the internet. Futurists offer plenty of ideas of what the future jobs will be. Some of them may seem crazy today, but in 10 or 20 years they may make a lot of sense. Then try to come up with your ideas.

What professions are dying out in this day and age?

It’s equally important to talk about professions that, like endangered species, are on the soon-to-be-extinct lists. The technology is taking over in many areas, and we should pay close attention right now, when our kids are still in school.

A year from now / five years / ten years from now — will we still need this person (a typist, a translator, for example)?

The children will have a better sense of what the future holds for them.

We should be constantly asking ourselves what are the “endangered species” among current professions, what professions will emerge in the years to come.

Apart from that we may try to think of ways to “save” some of these endangered jobs by asking, for example,

“Under which circumstances jobs that are doomed to vanish in the near future might actually be saved or even thrive?”

While discussing the possible jobs for our children, we should put the greatest emphasis on the skills that will be needed in the future and the value which can be delivered to others by pursuing a particular career path.

These are the ways to take to the next level the discussions adults always had, have and will have in the future with their children.

And that’s only my list. I encourage you to keep asking questions and trying to find other ways upon which to improve.