My Teen Can't Decide What Comes After High School. How Much Should I Steer?

Everyone seems to be asking your teen what's next. One week it's college; the next it's a gap year or work. You have opinions, too, and you're not sure how much to share without taking over.

When parents make the decision, teens may feel less invested in it. If things get hard, like a difficult roommate or a bad grade, they may resent having had so little say. When the choice is theirs, even one you wouldn't have made, they're more likely to own it and keep working at it.

Deciding is also a skill, and teens build it by making real decisions: weighing the pros and cons, choosing, and living with how it turns out. Good grades don't show whether a young person is ready to run their own life. That readiness comes from practice, and a decision like this one is real practice, made while you're still close by to help.

You can speak up when you're worried about a choice, and say why. But college, work and gap-year plans often involve several reasonable paths. Your job is to help your teen think them through, not make every decision for them.

It can help to think of yourself as a consultant rather than a manager. A consultant offers help and information, and asks before giving an opinion. Pushing an opinion hard tends to backfire. A teen who feels cornered may reject a perfectly good option just because it was pushed, and the college you keep mentioning can become the one they refuse to consider.

Questions often do more than answers here. Ask what draws them to each option, what might get in the way, and which of those obstacles are within their control. Lists of pros and cons help, but people often decide by starting with what they want and then working out how to get there. So it's worth asking what your teen actually wants, even if the answer is vague.

It also helps to contain the topic. Agree on a regular time, say an hour on Sunday afternoon, to talk about next year: what's due, what they're weighing, where they want help. Outside that time, let it rest. Your teen is often thinking about it more than it looks, and a steady drip of questions adds pressure without adding progress.

Many parents carry a picture of one path on one timeline: finish high school, start college in the fall, graduate in four years. Real lives often don't run that straight. There are many routes to a good, meaningful life, and plenty of them include a change of course along the way. Keeping that in mind makes it easier to help your teen weigh every option on its merits.

A gap year can be worth exploring, especially for a teen who is worn out by school or who could use more time to grow up before college. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some teens resist the idea because it isn't what their friends are doing, which is worth talking through rather than deciding for them.

If college is the plan, talk less about reputation and more about where your teen would be stretched without feeling swamped, and where they could find people, including teachers, they connect with. What a young person does once they're there can matter as much as the name of the place.

It also helps to look at readiness, not just the choice. Can your teen get themselves up in the morning, keep track of deadlines, and make and keep their own appointments? Going through what they can already do, and what they can't yet, can become a project for the months before they leave, or a sign that more time first makes sense.

Earlier in high school, plenty of practice with smaller decisions is good preparation. Closer to the end, when the choices are real, stepping back gets harder for parents, even though by then your teen is nearly an adult.

A teen who avoids the subject isn't necessarily ignoring it. When a decision feels huge, putting it off is a common response, and so is grabbing any answer just to make the questions stop. Both tend to ease when the stakes feel smaller.

Two things often help. One is a plan B. When a teen knows there's a workable next step if the first choice doesn't pan out, choosing feels less final, and it's easier to go after what they really want. The other is a shift from "I have to" to "I want to." A teen who believes they have to get this exactly right is under more pressure than one choosing something they want.

Changing their mind along the way is part of working it out. Tiredness and stress make any decision harder, for teens and adults alike, so a choice made late at night in the middle of a hard week may not be the final word.

• Ask Before Offering Your View: "I have some thoughts about next year. Would it help to hear them now, or would you rather think it through first?"

  If your teen says not now, take them at their word and wait for your regular time: "Okay. I'm around whenever you want to talk it through."

• Keep the Decision Theirs: "This is your call. I'll help however I can, and I'll be honest if something worries me."

  If they hand it back with "just tell me what to do," help them think rather than deciding for them: "What draws you to each one? And what would get in the way?"

• Take the Panic Out: "Whatever you choose, there's a plan B. If it doesn't work out, you'll figure out the next step, and I'll help."

  If they still insist it has to be perfect, acknowledge the pressure first: "I can see how much this is weighing on you. I have every confidence you'll make a good decision, even if it isn't a perfect one."

"If you don't get into a good college, you'll regret it for the rest of your life." Fear about the future adds pressure, and pressure makes good decisions harder. It also suggests that one choice decides a whole life, which isn't how lives tend to go.

"Fine, it's your decision. Just don't come to me when it goes wrong." Owning a decision isn't the same as facing it alone. The consultant's line is "it's your call, and how can I help?", including when things go badly, and without "I told you so."

Most of the fear parents carry here is about the future: that one wrong choice now will send your teen somewhere you can't bear to picture. Some of it can be about how things look, like where your friends' kids are headed or what other parents will think. Those feelings are normal. But stress is contagious, and so is calm. Reminding yourself that there's more than one way for things to work out can make it easier to be the calm person in the room. And during a stretch when every conversation can turn into college talk, make time together that has nothing to do with it. It helps your teen to know you enjoy their company, whatever they decide.

What talking it through looks like

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Parent: My daughter is a senior and keeps saying she'll figure it out later. Every time I bring up next year she leaves the room. How hard should I push?

Leaving the room doesn't necessarily mean she isn't thinking about it. A decision this big is easy to put off, and more reminders tend to add pressure. You could ask her to pick one time each week to talk about next year, and leave it alone the rest of the week. When she says she'll figure it out later, has she ever hinted at what she's hoping for?

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Bring the plans your teen keeps changing and the worries you haven't said out loud. You'll get help with what to say, what to leave for your teen to decide and what to try if the conversation stalls, built on Ned Johnson's authorized content.

• "My son is a junior and says he has no idea what he wants to do after graduation. Where do I even start?"
• "We agreed on a weekly time to talk about college, and my daughter has skipped it twice. Now what?"
• "My 17-year-old wants a gap year and I'm scared she won't go back to school. What do I say without shutting her down?"

What if your teen picks the one option you're most worried about?

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