Career counseling for teens emerging

Kids who do single out careers early can come out ahead, though, she said, citing studies that found that students who enter college with a career in mind are much likelier to graduate.

But Annie Fox, an educator, online adviser for teens and author of a book about teenage stress, thinks kids are being pushed too early to focus on careers when they should be taught life skills instead.

“Does anyone in their reasoned mind actually believe that it benefits a seventh-grader to be stressing about medical school or a job or providing for a family?” she asked, citing an instance from her work in the San Francisco Bay area.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about what you’re going to do until you’re 18,” she said. “But it’s got to be balanced — that’s really the key to managing stress.”

Christen, who co-wrote the teen-oriented “What Color is Your Parachute” book with Richard Nelson Bolles, author of the best-selling original version, contends it’s the absence of career planning that will ultimately cause problems.

“I don’t want any young person to think ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to choose it now,”’ she said. “The Department of Labor says the average worker will change jobs 10 times, and have three or four careers.”

But everybody needs an interesting job, she said, and that takes some advance preparation.

“Twenty years ago you could tumble out of college and find a profession, a good job that took almost no training,” she said. “That is not true today. Jobs for college grads are shrinking. That’s the reason we have to start teaching strategic thinking.”

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