May 14, 2025 • 33 mins
Is college really the only path to success? Not even close.
In this episode, I sit down with Hannah Maruyama, co-founder of Degree Free, to challenge the outdated idea that college is the ultimate goal for every kid — especially for neurodivergent kids who may thrive outside traditional systems. We get deep into how redefining success, focusing on real-world needs, and shifting the career conversation can change everything. Learn why starting with your child's unique lifestyle goals leads to a far more satisfying and successful future, and why the old "college = success" formula just doesn't add up anymore.
Ready to rethink what your child’s future can look like? Listen now and empower your family to build a life by design, not by default.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/312
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
In this episode, I sit down with Hannah Maruyama, co-founder of Degree Free, to challenge the outdated idea that college is the ultimate goal for every kid — especially for neurodivergent kids who may thrive outside traditional systems. We get deep into how redefining success, focusing on real-world needs, and shifting the career conversation can change everything. Learn why starting with your child's unique lifestyle goals leads to a far more satisfying and successful future, and why the old "college = success" formula just doesn't add up anymore.
Ready to rethink what your child’s future can look like? Listen now and empower your family to build a life by design, not by default.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/312
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Success is your child getting what they want out of
their life. It does not matter if that is a
homestead with chickens in rural Montana. It does not matter
if that is a paid off brownstone in Manhattan. It
doesn't matter if that is being able to work as
a freelance painter. Success is them getting what they want
(00:24):
out of their life. And that is the easiest definition
and also one that's attainable for everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights
and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches.
I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author
and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey
of raising your a typical kid. Let's get started. Welcome
(00:54):
back everybody to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled today we
have a Hannah with me of degree free to talk
about why college isn't the only way, how kids can
find success in adulthood in alternative ways, and what that
(01:15):
sort of mechanism looks like to help our kids figure
that out. Will you start, Hannahed by introducing yourself. Let
everybody know who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I would absolutely love to Penny, thank you so much
for having me on. I really appreciate you sharing your
platform and inviting me on. I am thrilled today to
go over a bunch of questions parents have, but a
little bit about my background and degree Free. So I
run a business called degree Free. We are an educational
design company. We are the bridge because right now there's
(01:46):
this massive disconnect between school, education and career. Nobody can
quite figure out which ones which, how they connect and
if they even should or shouldn't and then how And
we have solved that problem. And the solution to the
problem problem is to customize education based on the needs
of the individual, which sounds overly simplistic, but unfortunately that's
(02:07):
not the way that we actually prep young adults to
go into the workforce and to leave high school. And
we definitely don't talk about these things before we send
them off to college and put them in one hundred
thousand dollars worth of student loan debt. And so this
is something that I feel very strongly about. My background
is an AI and machine learning. As it's somebody who
is degree Free, it was very by opening to see
(02:29):
how working with large companies and how they're hiring policies
were changing on the inside, and then seeing this wave
before it hit. And so that's a lot of the
experience and expertise that I have used in order to
build out the resources that we have and the process
that we have for helping parents and their young adults
make successful transitions into jobs that they actually love that
(02:52):
help them live the way they want.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Help them find purpose too. I think right now the
world is hard and feel scary, and finding that purpose
can feel a little more daunting. This conversation is so
important for our parents of neurodivergent kids because they often
struggle in school. They often struggle with that traditional learning
(03:15):
and career path, and we often need permission to say
it's okay, if my kid doesn't go to college, they
can be successful. They might even be more successful than
if they happen to go to college and get a degree.
And it's a conversation I feel like we need to
be having so much more. But I want to find
(03:35):
out from you, Hannah, where do we start with our kids,
Where does the conversation start. How do we get them
engaged in thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
There's almost pre work that needs to get done before that,
and you said quite a few things just now that
I feel like deserve unpacking as well. So the first
is success. What is success right at the core of it.
There's always a simpler question to answer, there's always another
root point of something, and one of the biggest things
is success. So parents, for many of us, especially for
(04:09):
I would say Generation X, it's really hard to separate
college and the definition of success because those things were
always taught as gospel truth. You must get a degree
to be successful, and really that's residual because what happened
was we a lot of us don't realize what happened
that caused this change in our society. Because it's interesting
(04:30):
too to refer to college as traditional. And I always
find this so fascinating because actually most of the employed
US workforce has not bought college degrees. Sixty percent of
the employed US workforce does not have a degree. And
not only that, but even Harvard Business for You found
that sixty three percent of mid to high skill managers
that are in roles that say they require degrees actually
a degree free. And so the way that employers behave
(04:52):
has a complete disconnect from what a lot of people
perceive to be true about degree requirements, and then whether
or not those things make people successful. So first we
have to define what is success, and this is really
hard for parents, I think, but if we can get
this definition right, it makes everything else so much easier.
Success is your child getting what they want out of
(05:13):
their life. It does not matter if that is a
homestead with chickens in rural Montana. It does not matter.
If that is a paid off brownstone in Manhattan. It
doesn't matter. If that is being able to work as
a freelance painter, It doesn't matter if that is a
career as a software developer at a fortune and fifty company.
(05:34):
Success is them getting what they want out of their life.
And that is the easiest definition and also one that's
attainable for everybody. And that's something that I'm really really
passionate about redefining, because what you want out of your
life and if you don't get it, then you feel unsuccessful.
But there's no one size fits all definition, which is
a huge problem with the way that we currently teach
(05:54):
people to have these conversations. So say, that's really the
core of it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, And we talk so much here on the podcast
about redefining success. For the individual kid that we have,
because they don't often fit those traditional paths what I
think of traditional. You know, at my age, when I
was a kid, we were pushed towards college right college
was everything, and even you know, another kid that I
(06:20):
have who has gone to college feels sort of dooped
despite the fact that we said you don't have to
do this, and we're okay if you don't do this,
all that messaging all those years in K through twelve
stuck and motivated that path and it's difficult. It's difficult
to override that. But we talk so much about with
(06:42):
our nerudiversion kids. We have to figure out what the
path looks like for them. And I love your term
that they're going to have the life that they want
or they're going to get what they want of their life,
because that really broadens it to be anything.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And when you look at success that way, it becomes
so much ea easier to figure out what you need
to do in order to be successful because when you
put an actual, quantifiable, measurable thing on that, when you
have a measurable goal. Now, so if your child's goal
is to have a lot more time to spend with
family or to hike or what have you. Then helping
(07:18):
your child find a career where there's a four day
work week is going to become something that's easily successful.
And now we go, okay, what career paths serve that need,
and then which ones are the most interesting to them,
and then which ones are within our time and budget,
And now it becomes much easier to pick work. And
picking work in that way is a lot more common sense,
(07:39):
is a lot more strategic then the way that we're
having young adults do it now, which is kind of insane.
If you think about the way that we teach them
to pick their careers, it's really crazy. And we do
that because the school system is designed to push them
into college, even though for most of them it's not
going to serve them. Most people who enroll in college
do not end up finish, which means that we have
(08:01):
far too many people going to college that do not
need to be there. And that's just a measurement of statistics.
So sixty two percent of graduating high school seniors end
up going to college, but only seven point seven percent
of all of the jobs in our entire country legally
require college degrees, and only fourteen point five percent of
job listings even say degree preferred on the listings. That's
where we are right now in the market. And people
(08:23):
just don't realize that this has shifted so rapidly in
the last ten years, because it started really in twenty fourteen.
The mc burning glass Institute has been studying this and
has analyzed fifty one million job listings over that time,
and there's been a steady trend of down credentialing, and
parents just don't realize that the shift has happened so quickly.
But the colleges have just doubled down on their marketing
(08:43):
because that's all they have, So that is their path,
right and so for parents, the way that they can
really approach these discussions. What's nice about this is it's
so simple and so accessible to everybody. Four key things
the degree free Four. They need to figure out where
their child wants to live and do life, because you're
aware of happiness is very important. The second thing is
(09:04):
going to be the schedule that they work, and that
is how much time they're spending on their work. Some
kids are going to be way more willing to invest
eighty hours a week. Some that's just really not going
to work for them, and they're more concerned about the
amount of time they have that's not at work than
they are with actually spending eighty hours a week, even
if it's something they enjoy, but they enjoy their life
or their free time more than they enjoy their work.
(09:26):
And so this is why the beautiful thing about this
is that everybody has a place, everybody has a fit,
and there's so many more options when you look at
it this way. And then the third thing they're going
to have to figure out is they're going to have
to figure out income. How much do they need to
make to live the way that they want. That's different
for everybody. That's different for everybody. You will have some
kids that will be so content and a studio apartment
(09:48):
that you know, with a thousand dollars rent and a cat,
they're going to be so content with that. That's the
life that they're okay with as long as they're able
to do the things that they care about and you know,
play there, like go to their dungeons and Dry Dragons
meet ups and be able to go and you know,
just go to their work and not be stressed out
and have a nice commute home and a paid off
car and they're happy with that, whereas others, you know,
(10:10):
they have other they have other goals they have you know,
I'm going to travel the world. I want to build
my own house. And they've got all these things that
by nature are going to cost them more money. And
so because of that, they need to earn more to
be able to live the way that they want because
those are the things that to them are their goals.
And then the fourth thing is going to be work environment.
This one's a little harder to nail down. And I
(10:30):
want to clarify for parents listening, this is not industry
or job title. That's not how we're picking. The reason
we don't pick that way is because most of your
kids can only name about six state jobs. They don't
know what the job titles are. Schools teach them from
a college menu. So the jobs that they're going to
be aware of. If everything's nail, you only got a hammer, right, Yeah,
(10:52):
that's just how it works. And so if you think
about work this way and you only choose from what
college or from what high schools will teach your kids,
your kids are going to be nurses, psychologists, therapists. They're
going to be occasionally you'll get an athlete, doctors, lawyers, cops, firefighters, teachers,
that's pretty much all they're going to teach them. That's
(11:12):
because the teachers themselves often have a very limited view
of what's available because of the way the career that
they went into is very structured and has a very
very regimented path that's very well laid out that they
have to follow legally in order to get licensures. So
they're actually teachers fall into that seven point seven percent
figure I was talking about because they must get degrees
in order to get licensed in order to teach, and
(11:34):
so they just don't really have a good concept of
what's out there. And many teachers when they leave the workforce,
when they leave teaching, you'll find that they actually go
into careers that they'll say, I had no idea this existed,
which is a lot of the really indicates the huge problem.
The same thing is true of your guidance counselors and
your career counselors, sometimes even more so because they spend
(11:55):
more time on a college campus than your regular teachers do,
and so they even have a limited view and the
resources they use are designed to fit kids into specific funnels,
and typically the funnels are going to be four year college,
the military trades. That's it. That's all they got, and
the trades is relatively new. The thing I want to
(12:15):
drive home to parents, though, is that trades are still college.
Trade school debt is still student loan debt. And just
because your child's not going to a four year college
does not mean that a trade is the right option
unless they've gone through those four things, those four degree
freeform criteria, and the trade fits what your child wants
out of their life. If they have a goal of
(12:36):
wanting to go out and not be behind a desk,
you know, work environment and be able to go out
and do projects and come home, but they're okay with
being on call, then running a trade based business that
allows them to build out and eventually higher makes a
ton of sense. Check that with them first, though, because
I see this really unsuccessful a lot of the time.
I'll see kids that go into a four year college
(12:56):
and then that doesn't work and they hate it, and
so then they transfer to community call and oh, we
hate that too, And then the next thing that they
do is they go to trade school. Because that's a
big talking point right now, everybody's real keen on the trades.
And while there are a lot of open jobs, it
doesn't mean that it's the right fit for your child
just because it's there. And that is also going to
have a bad result still bankruptcy except student loan debt,
(13:18):
and now your child just keeps continually feeling like a
failure when really what you just need is to have
those conversations and what might be a better fit is
like a sterilizing tech at a hospital, three day work week,
twelve hour shifts, good pay, sometimes even six figures on
the job. Training at a hospital fits their needs a
lot better than going to be a plumber or an
h back tech, right, And it's just a matter of
(13:39):
thinking through what they really need and narrowing that down.
Don't let them limit by job or industry. That's a
huge thing. That's because that's how we're taught to do
it now, and it just doesn't make any sense because
they don't know, they don't know what those things are.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, and I was going to ask you about the
testing that our kids are often given, like towards the
end of high school, they take these tests. What's your APPTITU? Right?
What jobs would fit you, and both of my kids
were always so shocked by the things that would come up.
Like my daughter had train conductor and she's like, where
(14:10):
did that come from? And that sounds like a nightmare? Right,
And it didn't really fit from these other standpoints, right,
it fit maybe logically from like one answer that she
gave to something. So how do we maybe break the
mold of testing like that? Like how do we figure
(14:31):
out what to dig into? You know, because you're saying
we know like six or eight jobs, right, yeah, how
do we figure out all these other ones? How do
we find them? How do we sort of figure out
what that might be like for a kid? Right, Like
my kid is thinking surgical technician. Now it's a two
year training program. He's really into science. He thinks surgery
(14:55):
is cool. It's you know, a shorter maybe work week,
but it also gives him money for electronics and gaming
and things that he really likes to spend money, huh
and right. And so it's taken us years to sort
of figure that out. And it was never like on
all of these aptitude tests you took, never did that
come up or anything close to that. And I find
(15:16):
that really interesting, And we didn't even know it was
a job until we just started pouring through lists of jobs,
right what might be available around us?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You've laid out such a good question and also an
exact use case for exactly how this is used. Because
the way he's picking now is going to work because
it's based on what he needs and it needs first
availability after that's the thing that's the key right there,
And that's why the answer to this is not one
that most parents are going to like. It's a ton
(15:47):
of research, yes so much or answer at work. And
the reason I know that is because that's exactly what
we do in the Degree relaunch program. And it takes
hours to find these things based on your zip code,
based on what's available, measure in grants, work programs, all
these different things and just finding oh there's pay training
for this, Oh this small business has this open, you know,
and you just have to look. But what becomes much
(16:10):
easier because the reason it feels so overwhelming to look
now is because you don't know what you're looking for.
But once you figure out what schedule is going to work,
and you figure out how much around about how much
money they're going to need, and then what tide of
training they're willing to do. Then looking becomes much simpler
because you know what shape you're likely, you know what
animal you're hunting. Now you go, okay, well this looks
(16:32):
this looks right. And so the way to do this
is to prioritize those things, so those degree free for
it's overwhelming to look for all four of them. What
you want to do is find one priority that And
the way that I explain this to parents is if
your child does not get this out of work, they
do not want that job. So if they don't earn
what they want to earn, that's a negative. If they
don't live or they want to live, no, right, If
they want to stay in their hometown and that type
(16:54):
of work is not available there, then that's a no.
Because we want to live near family, we want to
live near the cousins. That's important to us, and so
that's not going to be something that we're interesting. We're
not moving to the big city. We don't want to
do that, and so that would be something that then
you would cut off. You say, well, this job's not
really good option because it'll require me to leave and
fundamentally for my life to be successful. In my life,
I want to be near my family, so that's not
(17:15):
something I'm going to do, or it makes them work
too much and they just don't want to do Then
they just don't want to work that many hours because
they just don't want to work an eighty hour week. Also,
that's where for health needs and different stuff like that,
this becomes a very useful framework. So this is something
that I've seen. It's universal because it doesn't matter if
your child has cerebral palsy, if they're autistic, if they
are an amputee. You can change these things around based
(17:38):
on what they need. Right because a location may be
more important to someone who needs to stay near a
certain area versus income to somebody. You know. I worked
with the young lady who had a really chronic health condition,
and one of the things that she needed was she's like,
I just need to work from home. I can't go
out to work, but I do want to work. And
so now we're looking at different options because for her
(17:58):
work environment was priority. Not always, but now you just
stack these things differently and then you look and see
what's available. And you do that by going out to
the wilds of the internet and hunting.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Hunting for sure, so it sounds like we're taking those
huge list and we're sort of funneling it out based
on our kids' answers to these four criteria, right, and so,
like I can give another example. For a long time,
(18:30):
my son talked about eldercare. He's very interested in helping
the elderly, which is amazing that he at his age
has the patience and the interest in that. But you know,
in our area it tops out at like fourteen bucks
an hour, and you can't live here on fourteen bucks
an hour, Like, it's not possible, and it definitely wasn't
(18:51):
going to provide the life that he wanted. So we
had to think, Okay, well, what other uses for this
interest could there be? What other jobs there be? But
we did have to get rid of that one, sadly
because it just wasn't practical at all. From that standpoint.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It's so frustrating to me to see what a disservice
that mentality has done to young people too. That whole
interest first thing, This is something that I have personal
experience with. I was a good writer, I would say,
an average average high student. I wasn't anywhere I was
doing great, largely though, because I have my own diagnoses,
(19:29):
and I have a hard time concentrating. I was incredibly
bored by anything that I didn't see the purpose of,
which you'll find with a lot of ADC and autistic
kids actually, because I find that they can really if
you give them something that they understand the why behind
it unbelievable. It's like a superpower. I've never seen anything
quite like it, and it's so frustrating to me to
(19:49):
see because I do work with quite a few folks
that fall into that neurodivergic community, and I would say
that it's so frustrating and disappointing to see that the
way the school system really just does not serve that.
And when it's channeled, and when I say channeled, I
mean the individual is channeling it, not they're being forced
to because that's unsuccessful always. But when they see the
why and they know what, they're going to get unbelievable motivation.
(20:11):
I have never studied like I studied when I was
starting to get into tech and I was studying for
tech certifications, I was so unbelievably focused. I was able
to retain everything because I knew I had a clear
why of what I was learning. The application and then
what it was going to get me at the end,
because that's a question you'll find a lot of your
kids if they fall into this category, they would ask
(20:32):
why do I need this? And no one I was
ever able to answer it for them, And that's very
frustrating as somebody who has the ability for intense focus
if something holds their attention. I think that the interest
based thing at that age, in that high school range
is a real, like I said, kind of a crazy
way to pick work. And you'll see it. It has
basically two real downsides one and I have seen this
(20:56):
with Zello, which is the current software that they're using.
I've had somebody walk me through the back end of
that and show me what her son's profile looked like
and then how it was suggesting things to him, and
it was just insane, like, oh, you like to work
with your hands, it should be a plumber. What they're
software developers that like to would work in their spare time.
(21:17):
That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be software developers. That's
an insane Yeah, that's an insane way to kneecap somebody's
career choices at this age when they're so uninformed about
what's out there. And I especially see these affect girls
where they have a much steeper hill here. But oh,
my goodness, heaven forbid, you have a child, a female child,
a girl that says, oh, I like to I want
(21:39):
to help people, or I like listening to people, or
I like children. My goodness, teacher, nurse, psychologists, they'll do it.
See them all day, social work immediately and they pinpoint
them into these pink collar jobs is what I'll call them.
But they're high cost degrees. Often because the degrees are expensive,
you need them to get a license to do those jobs.
(22:00):
Then you get at the other end and you're not
able to even you're barely able to service the debt
that you have, and it traps people. And it's really
horrible because I work with people all the time, especially,
like I said, very passionate about this, with young women.
But someone clearly should have sat them down and listened
to what they actually wanted out of their future and gone, oh, okay, Actually,
(22:21):
what you're saying now is that you would like to
get married, and you want to have three kids, and
you want to be home with your kids, not that
you want to work with other people's small children for
the rest of your days. That's not the same thing.
And again needs because some people do need that that
is what they want. But for a lot of people,
they'll talk through this and you go, oh, okay, so
what you need is you need. I worked with the
(22:42):
young lady in California who's five. She had five sisters,
all of them were nurses, all of them all five
of them crazy right, But she wasn't sure she wanted
to go into nursing, but her dad wanted to make
sure that that was the right fit for her, so
he put her through the Launch program. So she comes
through with me and we go through okay, and I
found all these different specialties that she had no idea existed,
(23:03):
and she found one that she really was super interested
in that really fit. And then we were able to
through that research find okay, like, here's a way that
you can turn this into telehealth during this later period
of your life. Because one of the things that's really
a big deal to her she wants to be home
with her kids at some point and when her children
are little, and it's finding these levers of what they
(23:23):
need and then shifting them in so they're able to
get what they want. And that is just a completely
different way to pick work. But really it's the way
that people used to pick work. Does this fit my needs?
If it does, then I worry about interest, and then
I worry about all of that stuff. And the college
first sales process, which is what i'll call what we
currently have, doesn't do that because the goal is to
(23:46):
get them to sign the loans. That's it, because it's
bankruptcy exempt debt. So the whole system is designed to
just sell these loans. Every single young adult that comes
out of an American high school has one hundred and
four thousand to one hundred and fifty six dollar price
tag on their head. And when you realize the motivation
is so big and the college industrial complex is eight
(24:07):
hundred and forty eight billion dollars, to start to go,
oh okay, I see why we're just pre making our
customers here. It's a very clear incentive. There's a very
clear incentive to do that. And so the way that
we teach through K through twelve is very much self feeding. Right,
We just teach them to this is how you pick work,
even though many of them you'll find so many college students,
so when I work with eighteen to twenty year olds.
(24:27):
They've never they don't know, they've never thought about these
things stones ever. Ask them, they'll they'll be in college
and have no idea what they're going for. What are
you doing here spending twenty six thousand dollars that you're
not knowing what you're doing. That's so insane.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So many of them at the end of their sophomore
year are like, I have to pick a major.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
I don't know what to pick. You already invested two years.
Or you ask them what they're going to make yeah,
and they don't know. Or you ask them what the
schedule of that type of work looks like, and they
don't know, and they're going to be horribly unhappy because
they didn't think these things through.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. I think we need to give kids so much
more time before we if they want to go to
college that what is determined to be their path, they
should not Most of them be starting that at eighteen,
right out of high school. I don't think you just
don't know enough about what you want.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Think the bare minimum is twenty two Yeah, Yeah, I
think they have to work first. I personally don't believe
we should be issuing student loan debt before age of
twenty five, your brain is not fully formed. Your prefrontal
cortex is not fully formed. The vast majority of people,
I believe, would find that if they worked for that
period of time instead of being funneled directly into the
student loan system, they would find one they don't need
(25:31):
a degree to. If they did need one, they would
be absolutely positively sure. And then when they go back,
the loans are no longer attached to their parents' income
on the fast but and so the cost drops through
the floor all of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, oh, I didn't think of that.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
My daughter calls it soul crushing debt. That's what she causes,
soil crushing debt. I'm like, I'm so sorry, Kew, Like,
we gave you options, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And it's so hard because they're in this period where
as you said, I'm sure you guys even hold her.
You said, you said, you don't have to do that.
But the pressure, it's like a wave, and it just
pushed it. I call it the college cliff. And really
it's just shoving them off the edge of this cliff.
And and and it's just the social pressure that does that,
it just goes and even parents, you know, parents, even
(26:15):
if they by the time it gets to that decision point,
they go, hey, I don't know if that's I don't
you don't have to do that. It's almost too late.
It's just this avalanche and they just fall over the edge.
And it's such a bummer because it's like, it's so
much harder. I used to work with adult job seekers,
and it's so much more difficult for them to find
what they need later because the pressure is more, especially
(26:38):
if they have student loans. Now all of a sudden,
it's so it's and I just there's a couple of
people who when I talk about this, I can just
picture their faces and just the stress of the money
and they have. Now they want to get married, and
they want to have grow you know, they're growing families,
and it's so much more difficult for them to just
pick their careers correctly because they have to undo the
(26:59):
sunk cost of what they already spent in college, let
go of whatever that is, relearn everything with less time,
with less money, and it's just so it's just such
a bummer because all they needed at the beginning was
a little bit more guidance and clarity about what the
end result was going to get them in the way
that they wanted to live, and so thinking about it
differently just changes everything. Also, the side effect of that
(27:21):
is if you start thinking like this in high school,
it changes everything. It changes everything. The amount of stress
that just evaporates because it's completely unnecessary. It's all fake.
It's all fake. And that's the thing for parents. You know,
as long as your child is graduating with the diploma,
that's all they gotta do. That's it. Diploma ged they
will be okay. The rest of it is you helping
(27:43):
them figure out. They do need for momentum and they
do need a plan, but who cares about their GPA?
Literally who cares? As soon as they leave, it doesn't
matter anymore. And so you don't have to fight them
and there can be peace in your home, and what
a feeling that is to have that unity And also
a time when your child really needs an ally in
your home because they are about to go out and
(28:04):
they're kind of an adult, but they're kind of not.
And we have this really gray financial area of responsible
adult responsibility area that's for better or worse in our society.
In the US is very gray and they need your help.
But when there's this clashing where you guys have just
been fighting for the last two years trying to get
them to oh, your tests, your homework, you're this, you're that.
But what if you didn't have to do that and
(28:25):
you don't amazing right, and you don't, you don't it's
all fakes.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Just releasing that pressure. And I would even say starting
having these conversations earlier than high school, yes, because if
you can catch your kid younger and help them believe
that that isn't the only path that you know, doing
their best is important, but a three point you know,
nine to eight gpa is not the be all, end all.
(28:52):
Then you're relieving a lot of the pressure. You're making
learning more enjoyable for them, and you're setting that foundation
for them to really be able to choose in the
way that you're laying out here, Yes, to really find
the fit for them, not just a fit, which is important.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
One of the best ways to practice that, and I
completely agree that earlier you teach this, the less likely
they already get pushed off the cliff. But anything everything,
and this is kind of like you've probably seen that
sell me this pen a video before. Right. But one
of the best things you can do is something an
exercise that my husband I invented called vocational creativity. And
(29:32):
this is the phrase that we came up with to
describe the lack of understanding about jobs, but also how
parents can teach it. So you're driving past a billboard,
who did work in order to put that billboard there? Right?
Not only the physical labor. There's a copy on there.
There was a copywriter. Somebody sold the space on the billboard.
Somebody is doing the accounts, payables, accounts, receivables as a
(29:54):
bookkeeper for that company. Somebody is doing external marketing for
that company online. They have digital marketers, they have website designers,
they have procurement and going at you know, go to
lamar dot com and you look and see, oh, like
what jobs do they have open? But when you see
somebody doing work, especially the visual jobs are easy. Right.
When you see somebody putting cones out on the side
of the road, Oh that's and you know you can
(30:15):
just do that to kids and just say, oh, that's
a job. Did you know that that's their work. That's
how they get the things that they want in their life.
You know, somebody running a roadside coffee stand and just saying, oh,
you know, that's a business owner. This is somebody's job.
They choose this as their job of it they order
stuff and they make drinks and they post on their
Facebook page to get people to come out to their
coffee shop. And just thinking through and showing them defining
(30:36):
for them what work is outside of this traditional like
you have to go to college and get this paper
and then get this license and then clock in every
day for the next thirty years. Because that's also just
not how work is anymore. And that's something that that's
where my background in AI really you know, this is
something that I am a huge, huge fan of. But
just parents can change this entire conversation by just talking
(30:58):
and visualizing to their kids. And it's going to be uncomfortable.
At first. It feels really uncomfortable. It feels fake, and
then you feel silly because you don't know and you're
just kinda like, I don't know. Maybe you know, you
pick up something, you pick up a package in the
grocery store, you're like, oh, a product designer, you know,
looked at this. And then they had a nutrition specialist
who did this, and then they had you know, a
package designer, and then somebody drove it here on a truck,
(31:20):
and then there's visual merchandisers who put it on the
shelves where it's supposed to go. And you just think
through all the different types of work that touch the
things that you see every day. Services or you know,
you go to the nail salon, you you just say, hey,
you know, this is a this is the job. This
is a job that they do, and you just help
them understand that there's work everywhere they look, there's opportunity,
there's options everywhere they look, and that just opens their
(31:42):
world like crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah yeah, Hannah tell us where people can find you
online and be able to maybe work with you or
learn more about your process.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Sure degree free dot com. Forward Slash podcast is going
to be the podcast We have been running a podcast
for going on four years now where we just talk
about current events, trends that we see, stories, write ins
from parents, and where my husband and I, my husband
Ryan and I answer questions if you are interested, if
your kid is about to graduate, which is coming up
for a lot of people. This is a very stressful
(32:18):
time of year for a lot of people. We do
a one on one service called the Degree Free Launch
Program where we actually do all of that work I described,
all of that research that I just described. We go
through that process with your child so it's guided and
the end result is a custom career plan that tells
them what three jobs are going to work for them,
and the learning options, how much they'll cost, how long
(32:38):
they'll take, where you need to apply, if there's any
grant money, if there's any work program, if there's any
paid on the job training, and then helping your child
create a checklist that says all right, I'm going to
apply here, I'm going to do this, I'm going to
put this on my resume, and then having them creating
a clear plan of action so that you know exactly
what they're going to do, exactly what they're going to
get out of their work, and then the type of
work that's going to work for them.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
All of that up too in the show notes for
the episode, which are at PARENTINGADHD Autism dot com slash
three one two for episode three hundred and twelve, so
that you guys can jump over and access that quickly
and learn more. Thank you so much, Hannah for being here.
For sharing some of your time and your wisdom and
(33:20):
permission to do it differently, to help our kids do
it differently. It's so important in our community and I
just appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Take good care everybody else, See you next time. Thanks
for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you
enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget
to check out my online courses and parent coaching at
PARENTINGADHD and Autism dot com and at Thebehavior Revolution dot
(33:50):
com
Success is your child getting what they want out of
their life. It does not matter if that is a
homestead with chickens in rural Montana. It does not matter
if that is a paid off brownstone in Manhattan. It
doesn't matter if that is being able to work as
a freelance painter. Success is them getting what they want
(00:24):
out of their life. And that is the easiest definition
and also one that's attainable for everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights
and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches.
I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author
and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey
of raising your a typical kid. Let's get started. Welcome
(00:54):
back everybody to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled today we
have a Hannah with me of degree free to talk
about why college isn't the only way, how kids can
find success in adulthood in alternative ways, and what that
(01:15):
sort of mechanism looks like to help our kids figure
that out. Will you start, Hannahed by introducing yourself. Let
everybody know who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I would absolutely love to Penny, thank you so much
for having me on. I really appreciate you sharing your
platform and inviting me on. I am thrilled today to
go over a bunch of questions parents have, but a
little bit about my background and degree Free. So I
run a business called degree Free. We are an educational
design company. We are the bridge because right now there's
(01:46):
this massive disconnect between school, education and career. Nobody can
quite figure out which ones which, how they connect and
if they even should or shouldn't and then how And
we have solved that problem. And the solution to the
problem problem is to customize education based on the needs
of the individual, which sounds overly simplistic, but unfortunately that's
(02:07):
not the way that we actually prep young adults to
go into the workforce and to leave high school. And
we definitely don't talk about these things before we send
them off to college and put them in one hundred
thousand dollars worth of student loan debt. And so this
is something that I feel very strongly about. My background
is an AI and machine learning. As it's somebody who
is degree Free, it was very by opening to see
(02:29):
how working with large companies and how they're hiring policies
were changing on the inside, and then seeing this wave
before it hit. And so that's a lot of the
experience and expertise that I have used in order to
build out the resources that we have and the process
that we have for helping parents and their young adults
make successful transitions into jobs that they actually love that
(02:52):
help them live the way they want.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Help them find purpose too. I think right now the
world is hard and feel scary, and finding that purpose
can feel a little more daunting. This conversation is so
important for our parents of neurodivergent kids because they often
struggle in school. They often struggle with that traditional learning
(03:15):
and career path, and we often need permission to say
it's okay, if my kid doesn't go to college, they
can be successful. They might even be more successful than
if they happen to go to college and get a degree.
And it's a conversation I feel like we need to
be having so much more. But I want to find
(03:35):
out from you, Hannah, where do we start with our kids,
Where does the conversation start. How do we get them
engaged in thinking about this.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
There's almost pre work that needs to get done before that,
and you said quite a few things just now that
I feel like deserve unpacking as well. So the first
is success. What is success right at the core of it.
There's always a simpler question to answer, there's always another
root point of something, and one of the biggest things
is success. So parents, for many of us, especially for
(04:09):
I would say Generation X, it's really hard to separate
college and the definition of success because those things were
always taught as gospel truth. You must get a degree
to be successful, and really that's residual because what happened
was we a lot of us don't realize what happened
that caused this change in our society. Because it's interesting
(04:30):
too to refer to college as traditional. And I always
find this so fascinating because actually most of the employed
US workforce has not bought college degrees. Sixty percent of
the employed US workforce does not have a degree. And
not only that, but even Harvard Business for You found
that sixty three percent of mid to high skill managers
that are in roles that say they require degrees actually
a degree free. And so the way that employers behave
(04:52):
has a complete disconnect from what a lot of people
perceive to be true about degree requirements, and then whether
or not those things make people successful. So first we
have to define what is success, and this is really
hard for parents, I think, but if we can get
this definition right, it makes everything else so much easier.
Success is your child getting what they want out of
(05:13):
their life. It does not matter if that is a
homestead with chickens in rural Montana. It does not matter.
If that is a paid off brownstone in Manhattan. It
doesn't matter. If that is being able to work as
a freelance painter, It doesn't matter if that is a
career as a software developer at a fortune and fifty company.
(05:34):
Success is them getting what they want out of their life.
And that is the easiest definition and also one that's
attainable for everybody. And that's something that I'm really really
passionate about redefining, because what you want out of your
life and if you don't get it, then you feel unsuccessful.
But there's no one size fits all definition, which is
a huge problem with the way that we currently teach
(05:54):
people to have these conversations. So say, that's really the
core of it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, And we talk so much here on the podcast
about redefining success. For the individual kid that we have,
because they don't often fit those traditional paths what I
think of traditional. You know, at my age, when I
was a kid, we were pushed towards college right college
was everything, and even you know, another kid that I
(06:20):
have who has gone to college feels sort of dooped
despite the fact that we said you don't have to
do this, and we're okay if you don't do this,
all that messaging all those years in K through twelve
stuck and motivated that path and it's difficult. It's difficult
to override that. But we talk so much about with
(06:42):
our nerudiversion kids. We have to figure out what the
path looks like for them. And I love your term
that they're going to have the life that they want
or they're going to get what they want of their life,
because that really broadens it to be anything.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And when you look at success that way, it becomes
so much ea easier to figure out what you need
to do in order to be successful because when you
put an actual, quantifiable, measurable thing on that, when you
have a measurable goal. Now, so if your child's goal
is to have a lot more time to spend with
family or to hike or what have you. Then helping
(07:18):
your child find a career where there's a four day
work week is going to become something that's easily successful.
And now we go, okay, what career paths serve that need,
and then which ones are the most interesting to them,
and then which ones are within our time and budget,
And now it becomes much easier to pick work. And
picking work in that way is a lot more common sense,
(07:39):
is a lot more strategic then the way that we're
having young adults do it now, which is kind of insane.
If you think about the way that we teach them
to pick their careers, it's really crazy. And we do
that because the school system is designed to push them
into college, even though for most of them it's not
going to serve them. Most people who enroll in college
do not end up finish, which means that we have
(08:01):
far too many people going to college that do not
need to be there. And that's just a measurement of statistics.
So sixty two percent of graduating high school seniors end
up going to college, but only seven point seven percent
of all of the jobs in our entire country legally
require college degrees, and only fourteen point five percent of
job listings even say degree preferred on the listings. That's
where we are right now in the market. And people
(08:23):
just don't realize that this has shifted so rapidly in
the last ten years, because it started really in twenty fourteen.
The mc burning glass Institute has been studying this and
has analyzed fifty one million job listings over that time,
and there's been a steady trend of down credentialing, and
parents just don't realize that the shift has happened so quickly.
But the colleges have just doubled down on their marketing
(08:43):
because that's all they have, So that is their path,
right and so for parents, the way that they can
really approach these discussions. What's nice about this is it's
so simple and so accessible to everybody. Four key things
the degree free Four. They need to figure out where
their child wants to live and do life, because you're
aware of happiness is very important. The second thing is
(09:04):
going to be the schedule that they work, and that
is how much time they're spending on their work. Some
kids are going to be way more willing to invest
eighty hours a week. Some that's just really not going
to work for them, and they're more concerned about the
amount of time they have that's not at work than
they are with actually spending eighty hours a week, even
if it's something they enjoy, but they enjoy their life
or their free time more than they enjoy their work.
(09:26):
And so this is why the beautiful thing about this
is that everybody has a place, everybody has a fit,
and there's so many more options when you look at
it this way. And then the third thing they're going
to have to figure out is they're going to have
to figure out income. How much do they need to
make to live the way that they want. That's different
for everybody. That's different for everybody. You will have some
kids that will be so content and a studio apartment
(09:48):
that you know, with a thousand dollars rent and a cat,
they're going to be so content with that. That's the
life that they're okay with as long as they're able
to do the things that they care about and you know,
play there, like go to their dungeons and Dry Dragons
meet ups and be able to go and you know,
just go to their work and not be stressed out
and have a nice commute home and a paid off
car and they're happy with that, whereas others, you know,
(10:10):
they have other they have other goals they have you know,
I'm going to travel the world. I want to build
my own house. And they've got all these things that
by nature are going to cost them more money. And
so because of that, they need to earn more to
be able to live the way that they want because
those are the things that to them are their goals.
And then the fourth thing is going to be work environment.
This one's a little harder to nail down. And I
(10:30):
want to clarify for parents listening, this is not industry
or job title. That's not how we're picking. The reason
we don't pick that way is because most of your
kids can only name about six state jobs. They don't
know what the job titles are. Schools teach them from
a college menu. So the jobs that they're going to
be aware of. If everything's nail, you only got a hammer, right, Yeah,
(10:52):
that's just how it works. And so if you think
about work this way and you only choose from what
college or from what high schools will teach your kids,
your kids are going to be nurses, psychologists, therapists. They're
going to be occasionally you'll get an athlete, doctors, lawyers, cops, firefighters, teachers,
that's pretty much all they're going to teach them. That's
(11:12):
because the teachers themselves often have a very limited view
of what's available because of the way the career that
they went into is very structured and has a very
very regimented path that's very well laid out that they
have to follow legally in order to get licensures. So
they're actually teachers fall into that seven point seven percent
figure I was talking about because they must get degrees
in order to get licensed in order to teach, and
(11:34):
so they just don't really have a good concept of
what's out there. And many teachers when they leave the workforce,
when they leave teaching, you'll find that they actually go
into careers that they'll say, I had no idea this existed,
which is a lot of the really indicates the huge problem.
The same thing is true of your guidance counselors and
your career counselors, sometimes even more so because they spend
(11:55):
more time on a college campus than your regular teachers do,
and so they even have a limited view and the
resources they use are designed to fit kids into specific funnels,
and typically the funnels are going to be four year college,
the military trades. That's it. That's all they got, and
the trades is relatively new. The thing I want to
(12:15):
drive home to parents, though, is that trades are still college.
Trade school debt is still student loan debt. And just
because your child's not going to a four year college
does not mean that a trade is the right option
unless they've gone through those four things, those four degree
freeform criteria, and the trade fits what your child wants
out of their life. If they have a goal of
(12:36):
wanting to go out and not be behind a desk,
you know, work environment and be able to go out
and do projects and come home, but they're okay with
being on call, then running a trade based business that
allows them to build out and eventually higher makes a
ton of sense. Check that with them first, though, because
I see this really unsuccessful a lot of the time.
I'll see kids that go into a four year college
(12:56):
and then that doesn't work and they hate it, and
so then they transfer to community call and oh, we
hate that too, And then the next thing that they
do is they go to trade school. Because that's a
big talking point right now, everybody's real keen on the trades.
And while there are a lot of open jobs, it
doesn't mean that it's the right fit for your child
just because it's there. And that is also going to
have a bad result still bankruptcy except student loan debt,
(13:18):
and now your child just keeps continually feeling like a
failure when really what you just need is to have
those conversations and what might be a better fit is
like a sterilizing tech at a hospital, three day work week,
twelve hour shifts, good pay, sometimes even six figures on
the job. Training at a hospital fits their needs a
lot better than going to be a plumber or an
h back tech, right, And it's just a matter of
(13:39):
thinking through what they really need and narrowing that down.
Don't let them limit by job or industry. That's a
huge thing. That's because that's how we're taught to do
it now, and it just doesn't make any sense because
they don't know, they don't know what those things are.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, and I was going to ask you about the
testing that our kids are often given, like towards the
end of high school, they take these tests. What's your APPTITU? Right?
What jobs would fit you, and both of my kids
were always so shocked by the things that would come up.
Like my daughter had train conductor and she's like, where
(14:10):
did that come from? And that sounds like a nightmare? Right,
And it didn't really fit from these other standpoints, right,
it fit maybe logically from like one answer that she
gave to something. So how do we maybe break the
mold of testing like that? Like how do we figure
(14:31):
out what to dig into? You know, because you're saying
we know like six or eight jobs, right, yeah, how
do we figure out all these other ones? How do
we find them? How do we sort of figure out
what that might be like for a kid? Right, Like
my kid is thinking surgical technician. Now it's a two
year training program. He's really into science. He thinks surgery
(14:55):
is cool. It's you know, a shorter maybe work week,
but it also gives him money for electronics and gaming
and things that he really likes to spend money, huh
and right. And so it's taken us years to sort
of figure that out. And it was never like on
all of these aptitude tests you took, never did that
come up or anything close to that. And I find
(15:16):
that really interesting, And we didn't even know it was
a job until we just started pouring through lists of jobs,
right what might be available around us?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You've laid out such a good question and also an
exact use case for exactly how this is used. Because
the way he's picking now is going to work because
it's based on what he needs and it needs first
availability after that's the thing that's the key right there,
And that's why the answer to this is not one
that most parents are going to like. It's a ton
(15:47):
of research, yes so much or answer at work. And
the reason I know that is because that's exactly what
we do in the Degree relaunch program. And it takes
hours to find these things based on your zip code,
based on what's available, measure in grants, work programs, all
these different things and just finding oh there's pay training
for this, Oh this small business has this open, you know,
and you just have to look. But what becomes much
(16:10):
easier because the reason it feels so overwhelming to look
now is because you don't know what you're looking for.
But once you figure out what schedule is going to work,
and you figure out how much around about how much
money they're going to need, and then what tide of
training they're willing to do. Then looking becomes much simpler
because you know what shape you're likely, you know what
animal you're hunting. Now you go, okay, well this looks
(16:32):
this looks right. And so the way to do this
is to prioritize those things, so those degree free for
it's overwhelming to look for all four of them. What
you want to do is find one priority that And
the way that I explain this to parents is if
your child does not get this out of work, they
do not want that job. So if they don't earn
what they want to earn, that's a negative. If they
don't live or they want to live, no, right, If
they want to stay in their hometown and that type
(16:54):
of work is not available there, then that's a no.
Because we want to live near family, we want to
live near the cousins. That's important to us, and so
that's not going to be something that we're interesting. We're
not moving to the big city. We don't want to
do that, and so that would be something that then
you would cut off. You say, well, this job's not
really good option because it'll require me to leave and
fundamentally for my life to be successful. In my life,
I want to be near my family, so that's not
(17:15):
something I'm going to do, or it makes them work
too much and they just don't want to do Then
they just don't want to work that many hours because
they just don't want to work an eighty hour week. Also,
that's where for health needs and different stuff like that,
this becomes a very useful framework. So this is something
that I've seen. It's universal because it doesn't matter if
your child has cerebral palsy, if they're autistic, if they
are an amputee. You can change these things around based
(17:38):
on what they need. Right because a location may be
more important to someone who needs to stay near a
certain area versus income to somebody. You know. I worked
with the young lady who had a really chronic health condition,
and one of the things that she needed was she's like,
I just need to work from home. I can't go
out to work, but I do want to work. And
so now we're looking at different options because for her
(17:58):
work environment was priority. Not always, but now you just
stack these things differently and then you look and see
what's available. And you do that by going out to
the wilds of the internet and hunting.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Hunting for sure, so it sounds like we're taking those
huge list and we're sort of funneling it out based
on our kids' answers to these four criteria, right, and so,
like I can give another example. For a long time,
(18:30):
my son talked about eldercare. He's very interested in helping
the elderly, which is amazing that he at his age
has the patience and the interest in that. But you know,
in our area it tops out at like fourteen bucks
an hour, and you can't live here on fourteen bucks
an hour, Like, it's not possible, and it definitely wasn't
(18:51):
going to provide the life that he wanted. So we
had to think, Okay, well, what other uses for this
interest could there be? What other jobs there be? But
we did have to get rid of that one, sadly
because it just wasn't practical at all. From that standpoint.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
It's so frustrating to me to see what a disservice
that mentality has done to young people too. That whole
interest first thing, This is something that I have personal
experience with. I was a good writer, I would say,
an average average high student. I wasn't anywhere I was
doing great, largely though, because I have my own diagnoses,
(19:29):
and I have a hard time concentrating. I was incredibly
bored by anything that I didn't see the purpose of,
which you'll find with a lot of ADC and autistic
kids actually, because I find that they can really if
you give them something that they understand the why behind
it unbelievable. It's like a superpower. I've never seen anything
quite like it, and it's so frustrating to me to
(19:49):
see because I do work with quite a few folks
that fall into that neurodivergic community, and I would say
that it's so frustrating and disappointing to see that the
way the school system really just does not serve that.
And when it's channeled, and when I say channeled, I
mean the individual is channeling it, not they're being forced
to because that's unsuccessful always. But when they see the
why and they know what, they're going to get unbelievable motivation.
(20:11):
I have never studied like I studied when I was
starting to get into tech and I was studying for
tech certifications, I was so unbelievably focused. I was able
to retain everything because I knew I had a clear
why of what I was learning. The application and then
what it was going to get me at the end,
because that's a question you'll find a lot of your
kids if they fall into this category, they would ask
(20:32):
why do I need this? And no one I was
ever able to answer it for them, And that's very
frustrating as somebody who has the ability for intense focus
if something holds their attention. I think that the interest
based thing at that age, in that high school range
is a real, like I said, kind of a crazy
way to pick work. And you'll see it. It has
basically two real downsides one and I have seen this
(20:56):
with Zello, which is the current software that they're using.
I've had somebody walk me through the back end of
that and show me what her son's profile looked like
and then how it was suggesting things to him, and
it was just insane, like, oh, you like to work
with your hands, it should be a plumber. What they're
software developers that like to would work in their spare time.
(21:17):
That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be software developers. That's
an insane Yeah, that's an insane way to kneecap somebody's
career choices at this age when they're so uninformed about
what's out there. And I especially see these affect girls
where they have a much steeper hill here. But oh,
my goodness, heaven forbid, you have a child, a female child,
a girl that says, oh, I like to I want
(21:39):
to help people, or I like listening to people, or
I like children. My goodness, teacher, nurse, psychologists, they'll do it.
See them all day, social work immediately and they pinpoint
them into these pink collar jobs is what I'll call them.
But they're high cost degrees. Often because the degrees are expensive,
you need them to get a license to do those jobs.
(22:00):
Then you get at the other end and you're not
able to even you're barely able to service the debt
that you have, and it traps people. And it's really
horrible because I work with people all the time, especially,
like I said, very passionate about this, with young women.
But someone clearly should have sat them down and listened
to what they actually wanted out of their future and gone, oh, okay, Actually,
(22:21):
what you're saying now is that you would like to
get married, and you want to have three kids, and
you want to be home with your kids, not that
you want to work with other people's small children for
the rest of your days. That's not the same thing.
And again needs because some people do need that that
is what they want. But for a lot of people,
they'll talk through this and you go, oh, okay, so
what you need is you need. I worked with the
(22:42):
young lady in California who's five. She had five sisters,
all of them were nurses, all of them all five
of them crazy right, But she wasn't sure she wanted
to go into nursing, but her dad wanted to make
sure that that was the right fit for her, so
he put her through the Launch program. So she comes
through with me and we go through okay, and I
found all these different specialties that she had no idea existed,
(23:03):
and she found one that she really was super interested
in that really fit. And then we were able to
through that research find okay, like, here's a way that
you can turn this into telehealth during this later period
of your life. Because one of the things that's really
a big deal to her she wants to be home
with her kids at some point and when her children
are little, and it's finding these levers of what they
(23:23):
need and then shifting them in so they're able to
get what they want. And that is just a completely
different way to pick work. But really it's the way
that people used to pick work. Does this fit my needs?
If it does, then I worry about interest, and then
I worry about all of that stuff. And the college
first sales process, which is what i'll call what we
currently have, doesn't do that because the goal is to
(23:46):
get them to sign the loans. That's it, because it's
bankruptcy exempt debt. So the whole system is designed to
just sell these loans. Every single young adult that comes
out of an American high school has one hundred and
four thousand to one hundred and fifty six dollar price
tag on their head. And when you realize the motivation
is so big and the college industrial complex is eight
(24:07):
hundred and forty eight billion dollars, to start to go,
oh okay, I see why we're just pre making our
customers here. It's a very clear incentive. There's a very
clear incentive to do that. And so the way that
we teach through K through twelve is very much self feeding. Right,
We just teach them to this is how you pick work,
even though many of them you'll find so many college students,
so when I work with eighteen to twenty year olds.
(24:27):
They've never they don't know, they've never thought about these
things stones ever. Ask them, they'll they'll be in college
and have no idea what they're going for. What are
you doing here spending twenty six thousand dollars that you're
not knowing what you're doing. That's so insane.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So many of them at the end of their sophomore
year are like, I have to pick a major.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
I don't know what to pick. You already invested two years.
Or you ask them what they're going to make yeah,
and they don't know. Or you ask them what the
schedule of that type of work looks like, and they
don't know, and they're going to be horribly unhappy because
they didn't think these things through.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah. I think we need to give kids so much
more time before we if they want to go to
college that what is determined to be their path, they
should not Most of them be starting that at eighteen,
right out of high school. I don't think you just
don't know enough about what you want.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Think the bare minimum is twenty two Yeah, Yeah, I
think they have to work first. I personally don't believe
we should be issuing student loan debt before age of
twenty five, your brain is not fully formed. Your prefrontal
cortex is not fully formed. The vast majority of people,
I believe, would find that if they worked for that
period of time instead of being funneled directly into the
student loan system, they would find one they don't need
(25:31):
a degree to. If they did need one, they would
be absolutely positively sure. And then when they go back,
the loans are no longer attached to their parents' income
on the fast but and so the cost drops through
the floor all of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, oh, I didn't think of that.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
My daughter calls it soul crushing debt. That's what she causes,
soil crushing debt. I'm like, I'm so sorry, Kew, Like,
we gave you options, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
And it's so hard because they're in this period where
as you said, I'm sure you guys even hold her.
You said, you said, you don't have to do that.
But the pressure, it's like a wave, and it just
pushed it. I call it the college cliff. And really
it's just shoving them off the edge of this cliff.
And and and it's just the social pressure that does that,
it just goes and even parents, you know, parents, even
(26:15):
if they by the time it gets to that decision point,
they go, hey, I don't know if that's I don't
you don't have to do that. It's almost too late.
It's just this avalanche and they just fall over the edge.
And it's such a bummer because it's like, it's so
much harder. I used to work with adult job seekers,
and it's so much more difficult for them to find
what they need later because the pressure is more, especially
(26:38):
if they have student loans. Now all of a sudden,
it's so it's and I just there's a couple of
people who when I talk about this, I can just
picture their faces and just the stress of the money
and they have. Now they want to get married, and
they want to have grow you know, they're growing families,
and it's so much more difficult for them to just
pick their careers correctly because they have to undo the
(26:59):
sunk cost of what they already spent in college, let
go of whatever that is, relearn everything with less time,
with less money, and it's just so it's just such
a bummer because all they needed at the beginning was
a little bit more guidance and clarity about what the
end result was going to get them in the way
that they wanted to live, and so thinking about it
differently just changes everything. Also, the side effect of that
(27:21):
is if you start thinking like this in high school,
it changes everything. It changes everything. The amount of stress
that just evaporates because it's completely unnecessary. It's all fake.
It's all fake. And that's the thing for parents. You know,
as long as your child is graduating with the diploma,
that's all they gotta do. That's it. Diploma ged they
will be okay. The rest of it is you helping
(27:43):
them figure out. They do need for momentum and they
do need a plan, but who cares about their GPA?
Literally who cares? As soon as they leave, it doesn't
matter anymore. And so you don't have to fight them
and there can be peace in your home, and what
a feeling that is to have that unity And also
a time when your child really needs an ally in
your home because they are about to go out and
(28:04):
they're kind of an adult, but they're kind of not.
And we have this really gray financial area of responsible
adult responsibility area that's for better or worse in our society.
In the US is very gray and they need your help.
But when there's this clashing where you guys have just
been fighting for the last two years trying to get
them to oh, your tests, your homework, you're this, you're that.
But what if you didn't have to do that and
(28:25):
you don't amazing right, and you don't, you don't it's
all fakes.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Just releasing that pressure. And I would even say starting
having these conversations earlier than high school, yes, because if
you can catch your kid younger and help them believe
that that isn't the only path that you know, doing
their best is important, but a three point you know,
nine to eight gpa is not the be all, end all.
(28:52):
Then you're relieving a lot of the pressure. You're making
learning more enjoyable for them, and you're setting that foundation
for them to really be able to choose in the
way that you're laying out here, Yes, to really find
the fit for them, not just a fit, which is important.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
One of the best ways to practice that, and I
completely agree that earlier you teach this, the less likely
they already get pushed off the cliff. But anything everything,
and this is kind of like you've probably seen that
sell me this pen a video before. Right. But one
of the best things you can do is something an
exercise that my husband I invented called vocational creativity. And
(29:32):
this is the phrase that we came up with to
describe the lack of understanding about jobs, but also how
parents can teach it. So you're driving past a billboard,
who did work in order to put that billboard there? Right?
Not only the physical labor. There's a copy on there.
There was a copywriter. Somebody sold the space on the billboard.
Somebody is doing the accounts, payables, accounts, receivables as a
(29:54):
bookkeeper for that company. Somebody is doing external marketing for
that company online. They have digital marketers, they have website designers,
they have procurement and going at you know, go to
lamar dot com and you look and see, oh, like
what jobs do they have open? But when you see
somebody doing work, especially the visual jobs are easy. Right.
When you see somebody putting cones out on the side
of the road, Oh that's and you know you can
(30:15):
just do that to kids and just say, oh, that's
a job. Did you know that that's their work. That's
how they get the things that they want in their life.
You know, somebody running a roadside coffee stand and just saying, oh,
you know, that's a business owner. This is somebody's job.
They choose this as their job of it they order
stuff and they make drinks and they post on their
Facebook page to get people to come out to their
coffee shop. And just thinking through and showing them defining
(30:36):
for them what work is outside of this traditional like
you have to go to college and get this paper
and then get this license and then clock in every
day for the next thirty years. Because that's also just
not how work is anymore. And that's something that that's
where my background in AI really you know, this is
something that I am a huge, huge fan of. But
just parents can change this entire conversation by just talking
(30:58):
and visualizing to their kids. And it's going to be uncomfortable.
At first. It feels really uncomfortable. It feels fake, and
then you feel silly because you don't know and you're
just kinda like, I don't know. Maybe you know, you
pick up something, you pick up a package in the
grocery store, you're like, oh, a product designer, you know,
looked at this. And then they had a nutrition specialist
who did this, and then they had you know, a
package designer, and then somebody drove it here on a truck,
(31:20):
and then there's visual merchandisers who put it on the
shelves where it's supposed to go. And you just think
through all the different types of work that touch the
things that you see every day. Services or you know,
you go to the nail salon, you you just say, hey,
you know, this is a this is the job. This
is a job that they do, and you just help
them understand that there's work everywhere they look, there's opportunity,
there's options everywhere they look, and that just opens their
(31:42):
world like crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah yeah, Hannah tell us where people can find you
online and be able to maybe work with you or
learn more about your process.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Sure degree free dot com. Forward Slash podcast is going
to be the podcast We have been running a podcast
for going on four years now where we just talk
about current events, trends that we see, stories, write ins
from parents, and where my husband and I, my husband
Ryan and I answer questions if you are interested, if
your kid is about to graduate, which is coming up
for a lot of people. This is a very stressful
(32:18):
time of year for a lot of people. We do
a one on one service called the Degree Free Launch
Program where we actually do all of that work I described,
all of that research that I just described. We go
through that process with your child so it's guided and
the end result is a custom career plan that tells
them what three jobs are going to work for them,
and the learning options, how much they'll cost, how long
(32:38):
they'll take, where you need to apply, if there's any
grant money, if there's any work program, if there's any
paid on the job training, and then helping your child
create a checklist that says all right, I'm going to
apply here, I'm going to do this, I'm going to
put this on my resume, and then having them creating
a clear plan of action so that you know exactly
what they're going to do, exactly what they're going to
get out of their work, and then the type of
work that's going to work for them.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
All of that up too in the show notes for
the episode, which are at PARENTINGADHD Autism dot com slash
three one two for episode three hundred and twelve, so
that you guys can jump over and access that quickly
and learn more. Thank you so much, Hannah for being here.
For sharing some of your time and your wisdom and
(33:20):
permission to do it differently, to help our kids do
it differently. It's so important in our community and I
just appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Take good care everybody else, See you next time. Thanks
for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you
enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget
to check out my online courses and parent coaching at
PARENTINGADHD and Autism dot com and at Thebehavior Revolution dot
(33:50):
com
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