Counselling resource: sessions for South Asian parents

In my practice, I have encountered a problem that I feel is specific to South Asian cultures. Parents, extended family and society play a major role in deciding students’ careers – with professions such as engineering, medicine, law and civil services the highest valued.

The primary reason for this level of parental involvement is the often collectivistic culture and power hierarchy in Indian families. Many parents assume that they know better than their children what is best for them. This limits the extent to which the child explores careers or is able to find their best fit.

Often, I have found that the following are broadly evinced by parents:

• Social comparison within children in the extended family affects their decision-making.
• There is very little awareness about non-STEM careers, offbeat careers or skills-based careers.
• There is a lot of social pressure on students to pursue certain careers, eventually leading to low self-esteem, anxiety, depression or burnout.
• Parents are not aware of changes in the workforce and make decisions based on what was best 20 or 30 years ago.

Working with just the students has never been helpful for me. Instead, a lot of my practice focuses on parent counselling. Unless the parents feel respected and involved, they will not trust their child’s opinions – or the counsellor’s.

One programme for students – and another for parents

In India, career guidance modules formally begin in grade 9 (year 9). Students have grades 9 and 10 (years 9 and 10) to decide which stream they will choose for grades 11 and 12. Therefore in grade 9 and 10, we run two parallel programmes. The first is for student guidance; the second is for parents.

The purpose of these programmes is to help families make informed decisions. The student programme aims to identify their interests and aptitude and blend it with a life-design approach. This is supplemented by activities that promote self-awareness, build resilience and teach some career-related work skills.

I started engaging parents more intentionally – not just through one-off workshops but through a structured, year-long engagement model. The aim was not to educate parents in a top-down way but to prepare them to have more informed, realistic and emotionally supportive career conversations with their children.

The following are the parent interventions that I plan for the grade 9 group. 

Session 1. The time machine

The first session runs offline. This is usually planned around April, after students have settled into grade 9. The goal of the session is to bridge the generational gap through self-awareness and empathy.

The session begins with a group activity, such as career mapping. Parents work in groups and reflect on their college and career journeys – what they did and why. They then present their journey to the group.

The facilitator then looks at then versus now: how has the world changed between 1996 and 2026? Parents are helped to reflect on the goals they have in mind for their children, along with their children’s abilities. By the end of the session, they have insight into current career realities.

Session 2. The career landscape

This session is held online so that as many parents as possible are able to attend. It is run in May, before the school breaks for summer. The goal is to clarify the breakdown of exam board streams for grade 11 (science, commerce, humanities and interdisciplinary). We also discuss the latest policy and frameworks.

We acquaint parents with careers that did not exist five or 10 years ago, such as UI/UX, climate tech and data ethics. We also discuss the common myths and misconceptions regarding careers and streams – for example, that the science stream is superior to other streams.

At the end of the session, we share resources containing basic information about each stream and its associated career paths.

3. Parent-child start-up

After the first two sessions, parents and students are likely to harbour a lot of curiosity – and confusion – regarding career choices. The aim of this third session is to address that and create a sense of team spirit between parents and child.

This is an offline session, held in August, involving parents and children. The aim is to foster entrepreneurial thinking and team-building within the family.

Families work in pairs. They are asked to think of a local problem that bothers them and come up with ideas for how they would solve it. Students lead that pitch, while parents act as the CFO or COO. The team is then asked to monetise the solution to create economically sustainable and practical solutions.

This exercise helps families come up with ideas and identify problems they can solve. Students are able to build entrepreneurial and soft skills. Parents are also able to see the skills their child has, beyond marks and grades.

4. Going global or staying local?

This session is held online in October. We use it to demystify the concept of profile-building for parents.

We discuss important facets of international education with parents, as well as looking at leading Indian universities and popular degree programmes. We include a segment on the relative return on investment of foreign and Indian education – including tuition fees, scholarships and financial planning.

Parents are given a timeline for popular entrance exams, along with the prerequisites, such as SAT, TOEFL, JEE, CLAT or CUET. And we look at resumé-building.

We encourage grade 9 students to engage in social work, volunteering or internships. And we help parents prepare a concrete checklist for the next three years.

5. A manifesto for life

The final session in the series is usually held offline, in January. The goal is to formalise the family’s commitment to the child’s journey.

During this session, we discuss important terms in career planning, such as interest, aptitude and personality. We let the parents know about the aptitude and interest profiling that we do in grade 10.

Parents work with the students to write a manifesto regarding the child’s career future. We invite along a panel of alumni to discuss their career journeys and answer questions. This last session addresses parents’ and students’ fears, and orients them towards working together in a harmonious way.

Potential challenges

Most of the concerns that students bring to the counselling room – especially around subject choices, careers and performance anxiety – do not develop in isolation. They are deeply influenced by conversations happening at home. Although individual sessions with students are helpful, the progress often feels fragile without parents’ involvement. Therefore, these additional sessions really help to reinforce the separate work done with students.

However, there are challenges. Attendance can vary. Some parents attend consistently and participate enthusiastically. Often, however, those parents who are fixated on the more popular careers do not attend the sessions regularly.

To overcome this, I share the session content and handouts on the school portal. And parents are encouraged to seek individual appointments to assuage any fears or doubts. 

Counsellors might also choose to launch the parent programme by delivering only the more technical, fact-based sessions. Then, as they begin to gain parents’ trust, they can offer the full programme detailed above. Counsellors can also create an email address that parents can use to share concerns freely.

Overall, the sessions have helped me tremendously with parental engagement. I have been able to shatter stereotypes regarding careers and help neurodivergent students. And the sessions have reinforced an important lesson for me: career decisions are not made by students alone – they are shaped by family systems. If we only work with the child, we might be looking at only part of the picture.