That's Good Parenting
Hello and welcome to "That's Good Parenting". The podcast that searches for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress. Sometimes those days of feeling like a "good parent" can feel few and far between.
And like you, I personally have struggled with parenting frustration, exhaustion, and even guilt. But I also know that there are solutions out there that we could put to use today.
My name is Dori Durbin.
It's my mission to search with you to find simple steps and tools to create confident and resilient kids-- without losing ourselves in the process.
You may be wondering who I am. I'm a former teacher, coach and fitness instructor turned children's book author and illustrator, as well as a book and parenting abundance coach.
More importantly, I'm a Christian wife and mom of two amazing young adults who, have quite uniquely put me through the parenting ringer myself. I've been fortunate enough to have interviewed hundreds of experts, parents and authors who have all created parenting tools that have your family's best interest at heart.
So let's stick together to find fast and effective solutions that fit our particular parenting problems. So that we can end war of our days cheering out: Now "That's Good Parenting!"
That's Good Parenting
How to Guide, Not Push: Raising Kids to Discover Their Own Careers with Karen Summerville
Listen to this episode, "How to Guide, Not Push: Raising Kids to Discover Their Own Careers" as former lawyer, career coach, and the Founder of "The Parent GPS," Karen Summerville joins Dori Durbin.
Could you unknowingly be limiting your child's potentially encouraging them towards predetermined career goal? Listen as former lawyer and counselor, Karen Summerville shares how nurturing your child's" unique constellation of gifts" allows your kids' interests and passions to guide they career choices naturally. Karen shares five key takeaways to help you trust that your kids' unique gifts will prepare them for future jobs that don't even exist yet while without stressing your parent-kid bond.
Then listen as Karen shares more on:
- The Dangers of Holding Career Expectations
- Discovering Your Child's "Constellation of Gifts"
- The 5 Steps to Nurturing Your Child's Talents
- When and How to Support Their Interests
- Teaching Networking Skills for Career Exploration
- Trusting the Process as Careers Evolve
About Karen:
Helping parents uncover their child’s unique constellation of gifts and prepare for unimaginable future careers is my passion. After leaving my role as a litigation partner when my oldest son was a toddler, I became a career counselor, guiding over 1,500 professionals to success while raising my two sons. Through my career counseling, I learned a critical parenting lesson: many clients were led into careers that didn’t fit them due to parental expectations. Determined to break this cycle, I encouraged my boys to pursue their true passion—baseball. Despite not being an athlete, I fully supported their love for the sport. Today, my oldest is a coach and data analyst with the San Diego Padres, a job that didn’t exist when he started college. Understanding that the careers of tomorrow are beyond our imagination, I now write and speak as The Parent GPS, inspiring parents to help their children navigate uncharted paths to success and fulfillment.
Follow Karen:
https://www.karensummerville.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karensummerville
email: kjsummer@icloud.com
Did you love this episode? Discover more here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thats-good-parenting/id1667186115
More about Dori Durbin:
Dori Durbin is a Christian wife, mom, author, illustrator, and a kids’ book coach who after experiencing a life-changing illness, quickly switched gears to follow her dream. She creates kids’ books to provide a fun and safe passageway for kids and parents to dig deeper and experience empowered lives. Dori also coaches non-fiction authors, professionals, and aspiring authors to “kid-size” their content into informational and engaging kids’ books! Find out more here: https://www.doridurbin.com/
Find Dori's Books:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dori-Durbin/author/B087BFC2KZ
Follow Dori:
https://www.instagram.com/dori_durbin.com
https://www.facebook.com/dori.durbin.7
https://www.doridurbin.com
Intro for TDP (version 2)
[00:00:00] Karen Summerville: our children are born with their own constellation of gifts.
[00:00:03] Karen Summerville: And I think of that as their, unique talents and interests that make us who we are. And we need to take those into consideration when we're nurturing our child and trying to guide them. If we're going to guide them, we need to be mindful of who they are, not just who we expect them to be or who we would like them to be. our children are born with their own constellation of gifts.
[00:00:28] Dori Durbin: Today on our show, we have Karen Somerville. Karen is a former lawyer turned career counselor and also the founder of Parent GPS, which helps parents discover their child's constellation of gifts. So thank you for joining us, Karen.
[00:00:44] Karen Summerville: Oh I just appreciate you inviting me to be here because there's nothing that I love doing more than to share what I have learned over the years, both as a career counselor and as a mother.
[00:00:55] Karen Summerville: with other parents because in some ways they don't have to make the same mistakes that [00:01:00] I did. We can all make our own and I just, there's so much that I learned. I just can't not share it. So thank you.
[00:01:07] Dori Durbin: Absolutely. I was really fascinated with the concept of what you're doing in particular because I feel like when we're parents, we're constantly trying to guide and direct our kids.
[00:01:18] Dori Durbin: And we give them goals to achieve, we give them things to aspire to become. And in reality, that might actually be harming them in some ways. I'd love for you to talk just a little bit about that, especially in terms of careers.
[00:01:30] Karen Summerville: Yeah. So that's really such a great question and kind of inquiry because when we set goals and career goals for our kids, we are limiting them so much because our, for one thing, our, Knowledge about what careers exist even currently is pretty limited.
[00:01:48] Karen Summerville: But then when you consider that most of the jobs that will be available when our kids are adults, if that we have a, if we have teens, or even somebody in college right now, the jobs that they're going to be that will be [00:02:00] available, then. Or they don't exist, they haven't been created. And there was a really interesting study that was done in 2017, and it was by the Institute for the future.
[00:02:09] Karen Summerville: And they drew from the expertise of 20, 20 individuals in different fields. And they forecast that by 2030, 85 percent of the jobs would be new. Oh, yeah. Huge number, so 85 percent in 13 years. Now, we're partway into that. That was 2017, but I can't help but think that because of AI, it's only going to get to be more accelerated.
[00:02:37] Karen Summerville: And when we think about new careers, I, the 1 that I love to think about is. The chatbot whisperer. So I've seen out there kind of ads for chatbot whispers who can help guide chat GPT to give them the right answer. It's a prompter. And there, I've seen it advertised for, Six figures, even 300, 000.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Karen Summerville: This is a job that didn't exist really a year ago. Barely a year ago. And so you can see where if we tell our child, you want to be a this, think of all the things that we're precluding them from even imagining and even preparing for. So that's 1 of the reasons, but another reason is that our children are born with their own constellation of gifts.
[00:03:24] Karen Summerville: And I think of that as their, it's the unique talents and interests that make us who we are. And we need to take those into consideration when we're nurturing our child and trying to guide them. If we're going to guide them, we need to be mindful of who they are, not just who we expect them to be or who we would like them to be.
[00:03:44] Karen Summerville: I think sometimes we think of a child almost like it's molding clay, it's like modeling clay and we can make them into our version. Of the perfect human being, but they're already perfect. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about this is I was a career counselor and while I was an [00:04:00] attorney before that, and I gave up my practice so that I could be a career counselor and over the 25 years that I did that.
[00:04:07] Karen Summerville: I worked with over 1500 professionals. And behind those closed doors, so many of my clients shared how unhappy they were, but also how their parents in many cases have chosen that career for them. And I just remember one client in particular, I'll call her Jenny. And she came to me, probably two years into practice, and she was desperately unhappy as a lawyer.
[00:04:32] Karen Summerville: And she said, I knew within two weeks that I'd made a mistake by going to law school. The second time she came in, she brought, she took this tattered box out of her briefcase, and as she was opening it, she was fighting back tears. And there were these exquisite charcoal drawings in there. And she looked at me and she said, I wanted to study art, but my parents told me that unless I went to law school, they wouldn't pay for my education.
[00:04:59] Karen Summerville: And [00:05:00] I just I remember Jenny and just she influenced my parenting in a very big way. And what's also sad about that. And we, I'll talk later about how, yes, I understand. It's, for artists and athletes, it's scary as a parent. To because we worry that our children won't be able to pay for the lifestyle that we might want them to have and probably that they want as well, but there are ways to work through that.
[00:05:25] Karen Summerville: And I think what also what I also saw was how it strained the relationship that Jenny had with her parents. And that's profoundly sad when we think that what we're doing now to navigate their life, which we shouldn't we should be navigating that we should be navigating to help them discover as opposed to us navigating and we're not driving it.
[00:05:47] Karen Summerville: We are guiding them so they can discover. And that's it. So I call myself the parent GPS. I'm not the GPS for the kids you it's more of a parent to help. Help us as parents.
[00:05:59] Dori Durbin: There's so [00:06:00] much in what you just said. And I'm trying to pick out exactly what I want to touch because there's so many good things that you mentioned.
[00:06:06] Dori Durbin: But one of the things that pops out in my mind is how when our kids are so little, even our own parent backgrounds can influence them inadvertently. Into a career that they're not really fit for. I'm just thinking of families. My family has a lot of doctors in the family, and it was never verbalized that I should ever want to be a doctor, but there was this expectation that if you're good at such and such, then that's probably the path that maybe you should go.
[00:06:33] Dori Durbin: And then there's like an unspoken expectation there. And it's just interesting because I don't think that I know my parents never mentioned that verbally, but that I felt that in the, in just being around my family, the extended family. So it just plays off that much more of how you don't realize that you're putting any pressure on your children, even that early on.
[00:06:58] Dori Durbin: I think we talked just a little bit about that. With the [00:07:00] two of us about when they're little, could you talk a little bit about how we could actually form that before they're, if they're, Like, maybe we should think about this before they're even born.
[00:07:08] Karen Summerville: Yeah. Maybe where they're conceived. So what I have like when I do workshops, which if anybody out there would like to have me do a workshop for their parent group, I would love to do it.
[00:07:18] Karen Summerville: But one of the things I talk about is the five steps to discovering your child's constellation of gifts, all of their talents and interests. And the first step is to reflect on your expectations. To think about what it is that you come into being a parent, expecting this child to be, and even before the child is born, you're thinking, Oh, my child, I'm sure they're like, your parents probably were thinking she will be a doctor.
[00:07:46] Karen Summerville: They didn't have to say it. But everything that they would do would feed into that thinking, that narrative. And so we really have to reflect on that. And then we want to think about how our [00:08:00] expectations, whether they're aligned with our kids or not. And I think the best way to do it is to think about how is my child different from me?
[00:08:07] Karen Summerville: I, and I use my son, Peter, the oldest of my two boys is really my inspiration for doing this because when he was in middle school he announced that he didn't read. And of course, this was defied all of my expectations. of what it was to be a smart child, what it was to become a successful adult.
[00:08:27] Karen Summerville: All of those expectations, it just was, and I fretted a lot about Peter because he didn't read books, but he did well, he did for school, anything that was required for school, because he was actually a very good student. But what he did do every day, Just religiously was he would pour himself a bowl of cereal.
[00:08:46] Karen Summerville: He would go to the front door, take the newspaper, take out the sports section, and he would read, study that sports section while he was eating his breakfast. And I would be in the kitchen watching him and thinking, [00:09:00] Why isn't this kid reading a book? Because my expectation would be, was one that he would be like me, and he would like to read literature, he would like to read history, but he didn't.
[00:09:13] Karen Summerville: And the other expectation was that in order to be a successful adult, you need to read books. Sports to me was it was a it would not be a career. It was just, yeah, that's something you do for fun on a Saturday afternoon. It's not what you do for a career. Fast forward. Peter is now the title is major league advanced coordinator for the San Diego Padres.
[00:09:36] Karen Summerville: And so he does what it is. It involves data analytics. It's his love of baseball. He's the bullpen catcher. It's all of his gifts that I can't take credit for discovering them and nurturing them, really, because I didn't see that at the time. And you'd think that as a career counselor, I would be aware of all of that.
[00:09:56] Karen Summerville: But I couldn't see that until I looked at [00:10:00] it. In reverse, it's like a reverse chronological study almost where I can see now what you do then affects what happens when your child is 20, 30, 40 or 50. and we're really we can't see that far ahead, but we want to at least. Think about what we're doing and how that will affect them in the really the very long distant future.
[00:10:23] Dori Durbin: Step 1 was,
[00:10:26] Karen Summerville: yeah, so the 5 steps are the 1st 1 is reflecting on your expectations just and really and once you do that and you realize, I really have this expectation. Unfortunately, that. My child is going to be a doctor and you realize that you want to back off from that. The way to do that, and that's number two,
[00:10:45] Dori Durbin: is
[00:10:46] Karen Summerville: to adopt this mindset of curiosity.
[00:10:49] Karen Summerville: And so with Peter, I would have taken myself aside and thought, okay, you have this expectation, but your son is not like you. [00:11:00] And I would give anything in the world to sit down by Peter at the dining room table and ask him, what, tell me, what is it you find so interesting? But instead, because I had this mindset that was expectation of.
[00:11:18] Karen Summerville: Who he should be, what he should be reading, I didn't do that. And honestly, part of my motivation for doing what I'm doing now as the parent GPS is because I'm a parent. I'm really profoundly sad that I can't pull up a chair next to Peter as a teenager and have this conversation. And so that's the number two is to adopt this mindset of curiosity.
[00:11:42] Karen Summerville: Just really being curious about what our child likes to do. And we want to, in that curiosity, we want to observe. What brings them joy? And I have certain guidelines for that. And it's when they work on something, even to the point of frustration. It's and I know that's a [00:12:00] contradiction, but when they're willing to work on something so hard that they frustrate themselves, that's a key that it's both a talent and an interest.
[00:12:09] Karen Summerville: Yeah, because, yeah, because both of my boys, I have two boys and Peter's 32, Andrew's 28. They both play baseball through high school and college. They both, I'm sure at in their teenage years they dreamed of being major league players. I'm sure many boys do. And the chances of that happening, or maybe a little better than getting hit by lightning, but not much.
[00:12:31] Karen Summerville: And so we want to, and I could tell they would just, they would work on it all day every day. If you read Malcolm Gladwell's outliers and the 10, 000 hours, they had that probably be the day they were 10, because they just, they did it all the time every day. And with that. The intention of getting better and they didn't do it right.
[00:12:49] Karen Summerville: They would and one was a catcher. One was a pitcher. So it was pretty good. They could practice in the backyard. But I also want parents to look at when they're relaxed, when are they, just you can [00:13:00] tell that they feel good about themselves
[00:13:02] Dori Durbin: and
[00:13:04] Karen Summerville: we talk a lot about resilience and we have all these, there are books about resilience, but I think, One of the best ways that we can create that resilience in our children is by allowing them to be who they are, feel good about that, and feel confident that they have something that they are really good at, that they own.
[00:13:22] Karen Summerville: And when they have that, and then the other key, and this is a little bit off the topic, but not really, is someone outside the family who appreciates that and gets them. And for both of my boys, it was pretty easy because they had coaches. We had really wonderful coaches for the most part. And that filled that kind of need.
[00:13:40] Karen Summerville: And the other thing is when they call them for dinner and they say, wait, I'm doing something. You want to know what they're doing. Because that's probably something that is tapping into a talent and interest. They're not willing to put it down yet because they are engaged in it.
[00:13:55] Karen Summerville: And then the fourth one is that we need to support their talents and interests and we can do that [00:14:00] in myriad ways and depending on their age because it's different to support their interests when they're five and we're just trying to help them explore. When they're in middle school, we want to start looking at what the opportunities might be out there.
[00:14:12] Karen Summerville: In school, after school, or maybe summer camps, but really letting them know that we support them. And for us, the baseball was just it took over our lives, honestly it took up every waking hour of their time and our time when we weren't working and they weren't studying. But it was, in retrospect, it was worth it even though neither one of them is playing baseball, and the younger one is actually he's in finance now, but I would I wouldn't do it differently with the, with what I know now, because we need to support what they're interested in.
[00:14:45] Karen Summerville: And we want to really find out what, why they find it interesting. What aspect of it they find interesting, and then talk to parents and teachers about ways that we can further support it. And then the final 1, and this is probably 1 of the hardest. It's [00:15:00] the book ends of this, or, we need to understand our expectations and release them.
[00:15:04] Karen Summerville: And then we have to trust. That their constellation of gifts, if we help nurture them, help them discover them, that they will be enough when that time comes for them to enter the world of work and all of the jobs that are going to be there then, that there will be some, and it's not like only one right career, one right job, because they're going to change anyway, they're going to be, my son who's 28, he's had four careers, not just jobs, but careers, including baseball, because he was a minor league player.
[00:15:35] Karen Summerville: And now he's in finance. And we should expect that of our children. And so this is a little bit, I could talk about it a little bit later, but I think interjecting it here is important. When we talk about preparing them for the future, there, there aren't, are there classes they should take?
[00:15:48] Karen Summerville: Because we don't know. Do they need computer science? Who knows, maybe we won't need that in 20 well, even in 5 or 10 years, because I will do some of that work for us. But 1 skill that I [00:16:00] think they will need is the networking and the ability to gather information and to talk to other people to find to get information advice.
[00:16:12] Karen Summerville: And referrals, and that is something that even my clients who were accomplished attorneys, including some well respected trial attorneys, when they would come to me and I'd say we need to do some networking. We need to information gathering. They would just freeze up and I'm like, this is not that hard.
[00:16:32] Karen Summerville: And it is for people who don't know how to do it. And his parents. I don't think most parents know how to do it, so we can't guide our children. But, and you can tell me maybe, I don't know if your readers would ever be interested in kind of a lesson in, or workshop in how to network and how to teach our children to network and to gather information.
[00:16:55] Dori Durbin: I think that's fascinating. Actually, it's a really great question, Karen, because I, [00:17:00] we were speaking before this, and we have college age students. And they have, they've definitely made some shifts just in the short years in college, but the fear that they have of reaching out to people.
[00:17:12] Dori Durbin: And I think part of it is telling them that they're not doing what they said they were going to do in the beginning of their college career. But the second part of that is that they may be reaching out, trying to get closer to what they think they're supposed to do, not being sure that's the direction they really need to go.
[00:17:29] Dori Durbin: It's like this. Almost like an imposter syndrome slash pleasing that is occurring that, I watched and I'm like, why are you worried? Why are you worried about this? But it's because they themselves aren't sure. And they're still exploring to figure out. So yeah, networking is. I would think it'd be an amazing skill for them to go through and have that
[00:17:48] Karen Summerville: it would be so valuable.
[00:17:50] Karen Summerville: Yeah, because of my 1500 clients, there were maybe, there were some who were good at it. There were maybe dozens who were good at it, but the vast majority, and [00:18:00] these were professional seats were virtually all attorneys and most of them very accomplished attorneys. And it was because unless you do it in a way that is consistent with your personality.
[00:18:10] Karen Summerville: For extroverts, it's pretty easy. And they see it as being easy, but for introverts, they're actually better at it than they know. And as parents, there are ways that we can help them and really provide them with some input in their networking without doing it for them. I think it's very important that we not overstep our bounds in what we do and, but use our connections.
[00:18:34] Karen Summerville: I know when I was a, I was the interim director of career services at the law school at the University of Washington. And one of my, one of the people who came in there, it was a student and she had, she came from a very prominent family with this amazing business. And she said I feel like, I probably can't, my family has all these connections, but I probably shouldn't use them.
[00:18:53] Karen Summerville: And I said no, actually that's not cheating. That's not cheating. That's not cheating. Let's. Let's [00:19:00] talk about this. Let's, take it apart and put it back together. Because no, you should be using them and you should be, asking your parents who else they know and not that your parents are going to line up a job for you, but more you can reach out to the people who are in your life and in your family.
[00:19:15] Karen Summerville: That's obviously that's not only not cheating. That's what you should be doing.
[00:19:21] Dori Durbin: It sounds like as far as reaching out to the shouldn't feel bad that they've made this shift because it's becoming more and more common, right? Of course.
[00:19:28] Karen Summerville: But I think one of the places that one of the reasons this happens is that This all too common question of what do you want to be when you grow up?
[00:19:38] Karen Summerville: We ask kids that when they're five years old. And I think sometimes we're planting this seed in them that they should know. And then if you tell somebody when you're 11 or 12 that you're going to be a doctor, and then you change your mind, you're going to think what they thought it was going to be a So how am I going to [00:20:00] explain that now?
[00:20:01] Karen Summerville: I want to talk to somebody about being a chatbot whisperer, it's going to be daunting to them, but, and that's where we would have to help them script that to say, yeah, I know, I thought that, but now I found this really wonderful thing. And this is what I want to do. And that's in the need to be enthusiastic about it and then share that and just that getting information advice and referrals.
[00:20:24] Karen Summerville: It's a it's really very simple, but I'm doing it and they should do it when the stakes are low. That's why doing it. Now, when they're in college, it's perfect. They can do it either to get the summer job, or if they're already, it's already summer do it during the summer for next year. It's not too early to do that for next year to get the internship.
[00:20:44] Karen Summerville: That's a little bit closer to what they want to do, or they think they want to do. All of this is they should couch this always in terms. So what I think I would like to do when I graduate. It should never be what I want to do, it should be what I think I want to do at that age, and it's going to change.[00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Dori Durbin: Yeah, and it gives them that space and that freedom to do that without promising anything.
[00:21:05] Karen Summerville: And they should, if they think they think of me as wanting to be a doctor they should be upfront about it. Yeah. I did say that, but now I found this other thing that is so much more interesting to me, and I think it's so much better as a fit for me.
[00:21:16] Dori Durbin: So here's a side question. So if we're a parent, and we're trying to encourage our kids to pursue their passions. I know sometimes parents can become overly involved, even that piece of it. So how do we keep track of how much we're pushing versus following them? And then how, once they're actually starting to explore their careers, how do we help them without getting in the way?
[00:21:40] Karen Summerville: Yeah, such a good question. And it's a part of it will depend on the family dynamics and the child that you have, because some children are very self motivated. They we Peter. Even though I'm a career counselor, Peter didn't need much of my help for doing forgetting where he was. He answered a tweet.
[00:21:59] Karen Summerville: I should actually [00:22:00] back up because. He, we told him he needed to do an internship and he needed to go to career services if you want to do to a 5th year of college. And so he came back to me and said he did go to career services and he it's I'm not going to go back there. And then he said I found my internship.
[00:22:19] Karen Summerville: I'm going to be helping this former all star with a lifestyle website. And I am thinking this isn't. An internship here, I wanted to say, no, go back to career services and get a real internship. And this is back, 8 years ago, maybe 10 years ago. And I really wanted, but I couldn't because I knew this is what he wanted.
[00:22:42] Karen Summerville: If I wasn't a career counselor, I think I would have watched this. I would have just said, no, but I let him go ahead with that. And so there's this, it's what we perceive to be the right thing. And we, it's so hard not to project that on our [00:23:00] child. And so he was clearly motivated to do this.
[00:23:03] Karen Summerville: He was clearly excited about it. He called me because he was so excited about it. And I could have very easily have just said, no, that's, but as a result of that, fast forward, years later, that person who had the lifestyle website became the director of the website. Of development for the Dodgers oversaw all of the teams.
[00:23:24] Karen Summerville: He brought Peter in as a research science coach. So these things happen in very strange way. So if you have a child who's already motivated, has the ability to do a lot of this on their own, the main thing we want to do is get out of their way, right? We want to just, it's so easy to get in their way.
[00:23:43] Karen Summerville: Then the other child who might be less motivated. And so I think what we need to do in order to be as inclined to do and be out there in the world the way Peter was, we need to guide them and encourage them and do it in a way that is respectful of their constellation of gifts. And so [00:24:00] maybe, having the conversation with them about some of their interests and is this something that you would like to pursue and there are so many different ways of pursuing an interest.
[00:24:10] Karen Summerville: I think about, the ones that kind of make parents fret, I think, are Artists and athletes, they scare us as parents because we see them is being so hard to ever make a living being an artist or an athlete, and it's true. It's it is hard, but we don't have, they are limited by selling their paintings on the street corner.
[00:24:32] Karen Summerville: They like for this. This is Jenny. She, there are opportunities. Art is a business. And there, if she went to law school, she'd go to, copyright trademark. And for athletes now, there's this whole, Peter was really at the forefront of this, but the data analytics, they teach that in college now.
[00:24:49] Karen Summerville: When Peter did it, there was no such thing as the, that kind of component of sports. Now they, there are college classes and there may even be majors in this. [00:25:00] So things, that's how much things evolve. But the way that we help our kids tap into that is by first suspending our expectations. Being curious about what they want to do and then for the child who's a little bit less inclined to go out there and talk to people, we can warm it up a little bit more and we do it, just, I know somebody who, is involved in that.
[00:25:24] Karen Summerville: Would you like me to call them first? So we and that's. That's very natural. That would you would do that even in a business context. So you would call and just say, would you talk to my son, and you never asked for a job. It's just would you be willing to share some information and advice?
[00:25:37] Karen Summerville: Would you be willing to give my son advice? And if they say yes, then, and then you would prepare them by talking to them about. Here's, you want to come prepared. You want to do all of this research about this person that you're going to be. It probably will be by zoom. We used to do coffee or, lunch.
[00:25:55] Karen Summerville: We don't do that anymore. So it would probably be over zoom, but they want to do the [00:26:00] research about this person. So they learn how to learn about someone else and they want to ask really just it's really an outline of 3 questions. It's like, how did you get started in this? It's like information, just all the information about their career, their path, their industry, what they see as the future in this, and then advice.
[00:26:18] Karen Summerville: So what advice would you give to me? And they will have to, they will want to have shared a resume with this person beforehand, and then get all of that advice. And and then who else should I talk to? Which is probably the most important question of all, and because it's not that person is probably not going to give them a job, but it's out at about 6 layers.
[00:26:39] Karen Summerville: So you go to, that person gives you the name, and it's up. When you get out there partly because we just meet so many more people, but also because we're also focusing more so they, every time you do this, kind of meeting and information gathering, you get closer to expressing yourself and you [00:27:00] become more focused and they know who to send you to in referring you.
[00:27:04] Karen Summerville: So
[00:27:05] Dori Durbin: that's fat. I love that because I think you're right. The initial ones are just contacts that you just know and more generic. And as you deeper, they're more.
[00:27:14] Karen Summerville: Yeah. And the people we know so if we, if we know three or four people and we just, we introduce our children to them, and we warm it up for them.
[00:27:21] Karen Summerville: Which we would do for a colleague's child, or, we would do it for a colleague. It's that's very natural. So it's nothing, that's not overstepping our bounds. That's really being a helpful parent. That's a way we can help guide them, but we want to do it based on their. A choice of, it's their interests that we're trying to, tease out and get information on not we wouldn't sit them down and say I think you want to be a doctor.
[00:27:48] Karen Summerville: So would you like to talk to? I know I have this anesthesiologist friend. So can I set you up? That's not that's like the answer. Exact opposite. It would be more of the conversation about finding [00:28:00] out what their interest is. Something you could ask them, what would be 1 area that you'd like to explore this summer?
[00:28:06] Karen Summerville: For parents out there who have a teenager, what would be 1 area that you would like to explore? What is something you'd like to learn more about? That might potentially we're not talking about actually doing this, but something that you're curious about. That might be a career in the future.
[00:28:19] Karen Summerville: Just a, for instance, kind of thing and what would be 1 area and then you look for contacts that you have that come as close as possible and then say, would it be? All right. If I called my friend or my colleague and ask them if they want to talk to you. And then provide them with guidance as to how to manage that call and I will tell you, but it probably won't go well the 1st time because these network.
[00:28:43] Karen Summerville: It's just we learn and this will prepare them for interviews because it's an informational interview and they'll get so much better as it as they go on. And these are low stakes. The stakes are so low at this point. So we can, and then we can debrief them afterwards and just, if [00:29:00] they will talk.
[00:29:01] Karen Summerville: And maybe they will, maybe they won't, but just, how did it go? And what would be things that you would change next time? And then ask them, who are the names that you got? Because those people they want to follow up on and they want to, and hopefully the friend, the parent's friend will offer to make a call or even just saying, yeah you send them an email and use my name.
[00:29:21] Karen Summerville: You can say that I recommended that you call them. That's fine too, but you want to have some way of connecting that.
[00:29:29] Dori Durbin: That's I just love this advice. I think it's simple and it just makes more sense because I think a lot of kids are afraid to reach out and parents are afraid to give too much. But if you're exploring in the way of finding out more information, most people are really willing to talk to people about what they do and give them information, just basic information.
[00:29:53] Dori Durbin: So yeah, that's great advice for sure.
[00:29:56] Karen Summerville: Yeah 1 of the problems is that we, as parents don't know [00:30:00] how to do this. I know how to do this because I coached 1500 attorneys. Basically, so I learned and I, it took me a couple of years before I came up with this model of just it's very simple.
[00:30:10] Karen Summerville: You ask for information, advice and referrals and they're like, oh, I got that. But it took a long time for me to understand that. And I love that. Interviews. I love informational interviews. Most people don't. So we have to, as parents, we have to be comfortable with it first, and then we can nurture our children to do it.
[00:30:29] Karen Summerville: Yeah,
[00:30:29] Dori Durbin: that's great. And then just out of curiosity, if I was a parent listening right now, Karen, and I was thinking, okay, I have a two year old, or I have a first grader, or I have a middle schooler, They feel like maybe they're already behind in helping their child explore. Are they? And then second thing would be, what are some steps they can take as soon as they get done listening to us today?
[00:30:53] Karen Summerville: Okay, great question. And no, you're not behind we, you learned about it today. So now is the [00:31:00] best time to start, but start by being curious. There's no there's no substitute for being curious because approaching it with expectation, whether your child is two years old, 12 years old, or 22 years old, there's no substitute for you adopting this mindset of curiosity.
[00:31:20] Karen Summerville: And observing, what brings them joy and you can, a two year old exhibits that you don't want to go wild and crazy about that, because, I can tell a story about, my son's digging in the dirt and I thought, oh, archaeologist, I think I need to find a summer camp.
[00:31:32] Karen Summerville: And I go a little crazy because I was a career counselor and I realized now that's not what we want to do. But by the time that they get to be, late elementary into middle school, then our curiosity should. Also be to I think in elementary school, we want to encourage them to explore a myriad different, some sports some art, some music, some, just but not too many, but just to sample enough so that you can [00:32:00] see what sparks choice.
[00:32:03] Karen Summerville: And then you want to start thinking about what they can do outside of school to, to help them further that interest and their that talent and interest. And then in high school in middle school and in grade school, you don't want them doing so much that they are part of the family. This is your last time to have them to cherish them.
[00:32:25] Karen Summerville: And when they get to high school and they start driving they're not with you as much and you will miss them. And when they are in high school, it will become more focused and they will, they'll hopefully be driving this because if you can instill in them this curiosity about themselves.
[00:32:42] Karen Summerville: You're being curious to inspire them to be curious, to ask themselves, enjoying this. Wow. I want to do more of this. Then we want to guide them to have some activities, not so it takes up every weeknight and deprives them of having a family dinner, at least once in a while.
[00:32:58] Karen Summerville: Baseball did [00:33:00] consume our lives. We, I drove 5 or 6 hours a day, honestly. For years and it consumed our lives, but we did it intentionally and the boys were so driven. I think this is the other thing you don't, you can't be driving this as a parent. I had some moms ask me when my boys, they both were recruited for college and they say, how did you get your boys to do this?
[00:33:21] Karen Summerville: And it's you don't, you never, you aren't driving this. They. They take the reins in this and some kids, not every child is going to be that driven. So it's going to, it's going to be different with each child. But no, it's not too late. Start with curiosity and then watch and observe. Just really be noticing when they're working on something is even, at five or six years of age, they can Start to show you that they're willing to put some time and energy into really improving themselves on something and maybe even to the point of frustration.
[00:33:55] Karen Summerville: That's. It's important to observe that and then giving [00:34:00] them more exposure and then as they as they grow and at the different stages will be more focused and they will be too. That's great.
[00:34:10] Dori Durbin: That's great. I know you have your own program that can help parents. Yeah. So tell them a little bit about your GPS.
[00:34:18] Karen Summerville: Yeah the name parent GPS, I actually had some help in choosing that name. And it was someone I met on LinkedIn, and we had a lot of fun kind of playing with it. And I said, because she's very creative. And so when I was talking to her, and I said it's something with navigation and she's, she lives in Germany and she's.
[00:34:35] Karen Summerville: She's Indonesian. She was like sat nav and it's no. So we landed on parent GPS. And what it is it, what I love is the idea of parent GPS, helping us navigate our children to discover their constellation of gifts. And I really love the metaphor of constellation of gifts because the ancient mariners use the constellations in the heavens, the stars in the heavens to guide them through [00:35:00] uncharted waters.
[00:35:00] Karen Summerville: And if ever there were uncharted waters for the future, we're living in them now. And what better way than to use these, the stars in our child's constellation to guide us. And when I think about my son, Peter, he has this, we can't just nurture those gifts that are most obvious. It's not just the brightest stars.
[00:35:21] Karen Summerville: Our children have this, if you imagine the constellation, they have some bright stars and they have some dark stars. I don't like to call them dim stars, but less bright stars, and it's really all of those stars that are going to play into their future careers. And I think of Peter now as using a cluster of stars in his constellation.
[00:35:40] Karen Summerville: I think of him using his love of baseball and his athletic ability, his his really intense interest in statistics and data analysis and his ability to read people. He didn't read books, but he read people. And so I see him using this cluster now, but in future years, I could see [00:36:00] him using a different cluster within the constellation.
[00:36:02] Karen Summerville: So this idea of being the parent GPS, it's really about helping our children discover their gifts. Helping them nurture them and for them to be curious about themselves. So you're not never, you're not you're not driving their future, but you're helping them as the parent to understand. And you're navigating them to navigate themselves.
[00:36:25] Dori Durbin: That's beautiful. I love that. So Karen, where can people find out more information about your parenting GPS and then also just get ahold of you if they want to find out more about you and How you can help them.
[00:36:39] Karen Summerville: Yeah. So well, thank you.
[00:36:40] Karen Summerville: And so I'm not actually a parent coach in the traditional sense because I've had two careers where I advised clients and one was as an attorney within as a career counselor, but I would actually welcome people to, to email me and to set up a time to talk and just I do want to know what aspects of this are really helpful and [00:37:00] what things they would like to know more about and the two ways that I am Putting this message out there and sharing what I hope is my wisdom that's been gained over all of these years, some of them very hard.
[00:37:13] Karen Summerville: These, some of this is very hard earned and hard learned lessons that I'm really wanting to share with parents. And so I'm doing it in a couple of different ways. One is writing and one is speaking. And so with my writing, I do intend to write a book at some point, and there I'm in the process of really developing that.
[00:37:31] Karen Summerville: But right now I'm doing it through newsletters and my the parent GPS newsletter is it's very sporadic. It's when I'm inspired. They're more like chapters in a book. They don't come out every week. It might be five or six weeks even because I'm just, it's what I'm inspired. And the one that is currently out there and you'd get if you sign up for it now is about perfection and it's, do you expect Your child to be perfect, or do [00:38:00] they think that you expect them to be perfect?
[00:38:03] Karen Summerville: And that's probably more important than you may or may not expect them to be perfect. But if they think you do, it's going to it's going to be. Lead to a lot of issues, both as they, go through life and it will affect your relationship with your child as when they're an adult.
[00:38:23] Karen Summerville: And that's something that I really can't overemphasize. If you're parenting a 2 year old or a 5 year old now, you probably don't really think about how you're going to have a relationship with this child later, but that's. So important and you're laying the groundwork for that. So the parent GPS newsletter and the ways to access that are through my website, which you have.
[00:38:43] Karen Summerville: It's just Karen Somerville dot com. I'm also out there and I'm not as active on Facebook and Instagram, which I know many of you probably are. I'm active on LinkedIn. I'm also active on TikTok. And so that's the parent DBS on TikTok. And I'm having a lot of fun with that. [00:39:00] But LinkedIn is probably where I'm probably most prominent or, where I've developed the greatest kind of audience.
[00:39:07] Karen Summerville: But I would love also for any of you, I speak and that is through mostly through workshops and I give them these workshops to students. P. T. A. S. To parent groups of also debted to for a church group, just parents. And there's 1 that I'm working on now. It will be for a neighborhood group of parents.
[00:39:27] Karen Summerville: They've organized as a neighborhood parent group, and I think it's mostly younger kids, but any anyone who would like to know more about my workshop, I'm really, I would be delighted to share because I can do what we've done now. But as an interactive workshop and have parents actually. Doing some of these exercises while they're, in this space where we're really concentrating and thinking about so they can, leave the workshop and immediately go to a place of implementing some of this.
[00:39:55] Dori Durbin: That's fabulous that Karen I've enjoyed our conversation [00:40:00] so much, and I think I'm going to go outside and tell my kids to do whatever they want. That was really good parenting today. There we go. But you really opened my eyes and I'm sure our listeners eyes is to letting our kids just be. Who they are and not putting that pressure on them.
[00:40:19] Dori Durbin: So thank you so much for that.
[00:40:21] Karen Summerville: Yeah, you're welcome. And I'm also toying with the idea of doing a workshop specifically on information gathering. I really was inspired by our conversation today. And so I'm really interested in parents getting in touch with me personally to tell me what would be something that they would like to bring to their child's children's school.
[00:40:38] Karen Summerville: And I can provide that. I'm looking forward to hearing from your readers or listeners, I should say.
[00:40:44] Dori Durbin: Thank you, Karen. Thank you so much for your time today.
[00:40:47] Karen Summerville: You're welcome. Thank you.
