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What parents want vs what teens want

Learn how to support your teen to achieve their goals

Mother and daughter sitting with each other with dog.

Listen to recent graduates Ciro, Sai and Jasper discuss the difference between parent goals and teen goals. Try listening to your teen when they express their goals and empower them by giving them a sense of control.

[Introduction music]

Sai: I feel like a lot of high school students, you know, their parents always telling them to excel, you have the A’s, get an ATAR, go to uni, blah, blah, blah. You don’t have to go down that road. But obviously, there is…there are all those parents, you know, with especially like with, you know, cultural backgrounds pushing their kids to go to go to uni or whatever.

Ciro: Yeah

Sai: It’s just like

I think it’s a reflection of themselves.

Ciro: Yeah, it is.   Jasper: Yeah.

Sai: They’re trying to push that onto their own kids because they never got to do that themselves. But it’s like you’re not living your kid’s life, you know what I mean? You should let your kid decide what they want to do in school, like, you know, talk to them about what they want to do. If your child is stuck.

Jasper: Just be supportive.

Sai: Just be supportive and be there for your child. Just talk to them about what their own passions are, what their own, like, goals are in life, not what yours are.

Ciro: Nah, I feel you because like my family, we come from the former country of Yugoslavia, or  we’re Serbian, and I would have been the first one in my family to go to uni.

Jasper: Wow.    Sai: Yeah, I get it man.

Ciro: So my mum’s like, you have to go. It was it was, it was really it took so long for her to kind of accept that I didn’t want to go to uni straight away.

Sai: Same as you took my old man a bit…

Ciro: Yeah.

Sai: …to I guess get around the fact that I wasn’t going to go to uni.

Even though he wanted me to, because I would have been the first one as well.

Ciro: Yeah.

Sai: I just feel like

when it gets tough, man, you just got to talk to your parents.

Jasper and Ciro: Yeah.

Sai: You just got to talk to them, even if they don’t listen. Like, as long as you, like, voice…

Ciro: Communicate.  Jasper: Yeah, definitely.

Sai: …like communicate it to them that it’s it’s hard.

Jasper: Then it’s out there.

Sai: Yeah, that it’s out there. That you don’t want to follow this pathway.

Voiceover: Having conversations, listening and seeing things from your teen’s perspective can help you and your teen with school, learning and life. For more topics for you, search Spark their Future. Or for your teen, they can visit We the Differents.

Last Updated: 08 December 2022