How I Told My Parents I Want To Learn Something New
Written by O. Hadgie who believes difficult experiences become good stories.
5 min read
Can I Learn Something New?
Picking new subjects is a decision worthy of the Herculean labours. There are so many to choose from! It can be enough stress by itself, let alone with all the anxiety causing questions running through your head:
- What if I pick the wrong thing?
- What if it’s completely different to what I thought?
- What if I end up hating it?
- What if it doesn’t end up giving me good career prospects?
It doesn’t help, then, when these questions aren’t just bouncing around your own skull, but also coming from the people who are supposed to care the most about your life outcome: your parents.
How To Convince My Parents To Let Me Study Something New
Parents, am I right? Your biggest strength and biggest stress. They want the best for you, but sometimes the ‘best’ overshadows the ‘you’.
As you come to this fork in your journey through education and life – whether you’re in year eight and picking a new language to learn, or in sixth form thinking about university – you can sometimes find that you and your parents are at odds with each other.
You don’t want to let them down, but you also know you need to do what makes you happy at the end of the day.
So, how do you go about breaking the news that your parents’ perfect plan for your life isn’t working out the way they hoped?
Here’s a step by step process:
Build An Argument
You’ve heard the same schtick: your parents are older and wiser and therefore better at making decisions than you.
While this may have been true when you were six and thought the feral racoon at the back of the garden was the perfect pet, it doesn’t help when you’re a young adult trying to build the foundations of your own life.
This is why you need to prove to them that you can do this.
Learning Something New Can Be a Good Thing
Subjects can be a large factor in how your education turns out. It can unlock options and close the doors to others. Therefore, you need to really think about what you want and why you want it, and start putting a plan in motion. For example:
- I don’t think you can apply to drama school if the last acting you did was in your year six production.
- You probably can’t decide you want to become a doctor on a whim; you definitely need to study the specifics for that!
- If you’re thinking that your future might be abroad, it’s probably a good idea to learn the language sooner rather than later!
Make It Personal
Just because your friends happen to be taking a subject, or you like the teacher who runs it, doesn’t necessarily mean you should run to pick it. Make sure you know what you want for you and you alone, before you convince your parents that it’s the subject for you.
If you’re sure of yourself, then your parents will be ready to trust you too. But if they can see you wobbling, they might hesitate and stop you from wanting to learn something new.
Build A Support Network
Trying to explain things to your parents that they might not necessarily want to hear can be difficult. They’re some of the most important people in your life and their opinion matters.
However, they’re not the only people in your life. In other words:
Reaching out to others can help you feel confident in your decisions. And when it comes to subjects, your teachers and careers advisors are perfect people to turn to.
Why?
- They have decades of experience
- They’ve likely seen cases such as yours where your wishes and your parents’ differ
- They will have resources which can help build your confidence and argument
- They want to help and support you!
Remember You’re Not Alone
When your parents take up such a huge part of your life, it can feel a little overwhelming to try and disagree with them but you just have to remember that you’re not alone. Just because it’s your life and your decision doesn’t mean it can’t happen without advice and support.
Build A Bridge
When it comes to something as important as education, it can be easy for emotions to complicate matters even further.
In other words, you can feel frustrated that your parents aren’t understanding your perspective, while they might be tearing their hair out because you won’t take their well-meaning advice. You’re all stuck in a cycle of ‘WHY WON’T THEY JUST LISTEN?’
It can be easy to consider just bulldozing through the issue, breaking away from your parents’ grip and doing your own thing regardless.
It’s your life, anyway, right? They don’t know anything.
But here’s the kicker:
It’s Time For Everyone To Learn Something New
It’s never actually about ‘you versus your parents’!
These issues usually just come down to a matter of misunderstanding. You and your family are a team and you’ll always be one, whether it feels like that right now or not. So sometimes, it just takes that extra bit of patience to break through.
At the end of the day, your parents want to love and support you and they want you to be happy. If this subject will make you happy, more often than not, they’ll back you on it.
All you need to do is make sure your foundations are sturdy enough that they won’t be frightened you’ll fall.
Want to learn something new, meet some new mates and find out what you’re made of? Go on an NCS experience! Don’t miss out, grab your place today…
