Accompanying a child in their dreams and future projects means teaching them to explore possibilities, not to freeze a choice. Guidance is built over several years, through the accumulation of experiences, conversations, and confrontations with reality. Since the start of the 2025 school year, the Avenir Plan from the Ministry of National Education formalizes this approach by establishing continuous support from 5th grade to the final year, with dedicated times in each institution and the digital platform Avenir(s) from Onisep.
Self-censorship and social biases: what hinders projects even before they are born
Before discussing encouragement, it is essential to identify what prevents a child from dreaming big. The national consultation on guidance, launched on November 28, 2024, documented significant gaps between the paths of children from executive families and those from working-class families. Girls remain underrepresented in digital and IT specialties.
Self-censorship is established well before high school, often starting in primary school, through remarks from those around them, representations conveyed by the media, or the absence of accessible role models. A child who has never met someone in a particular profession will struggle to envision themselves in that path.
Parental roles, therefore, go beyond merely validating a choice. They also involve broadening the child’s horizons: taking them to various professional environments, introducing them to atypical career paths, and discussing reports on lesser-known professions together. Resources like quandjeseraigrande.net allow for the discovery of diverse trajectories that break away from usual patterns.
Confidence and autonomy: two concrete levers to support a child’s project
Encouraging a child does not mean applauding every idea without discernment. Confidence is built through recognizing efforts, not just results. A child who hears “you worked hard to prepare this presentation” develops a different perception of their abilities than one who only hears “you got a good grade.”
Developmental psychology distinguishes two types of parental feedback:
- Process-oriented feedback, which values the method, perseverance, and strategy adopted by the child in facing a difficulty
- Result-oriented feedback, which focuses on the final performance and can create anxiety related to failure
- Comparative feedback (“your brother succeeded”), which erodes intrinsic motivation and encourages avoidance
Prioritizing the first type does not require specialized training. It is a reflex to cultivate in daily conversations, especially during homework or extracurricular activities.
Letting the child change their mind without dramatizing
A future project at 8 years old is not a contractual commitment. Changing dreams is part of the normal process of identity construction. Parents who react with disappointment (“but you wanted to be a veterinarian last week!”) send an unintentional signal: changing one’s mind is failing.
It is better to ask open-ended questions. “What attracts you to this new project?” or “What has changed since the last time?” allow the child to verbalize their reasoning. This habit of reflection will serve them when it comes to real guidance choices.
Avenir Plan and school guidance: what parents need to know
The Avenir Plan, published by a service note in the Official Bulletin on July 3, 2025, modifies how guidance is handled in schools. Every middle school and high school must now have a multi-year plan, with half-days dedicated to discovering professions and pathways.
Guidance becomes a skill to be built progressively, rather than a one-time decision made at the end of 9th or 10th grade. The Avenir(s) platform from Onisep centralizes resources for students to explore, compare, and revise their projects throughout their schooling.
For parents, this evolution changes the posture to adopt. Supporting no longer means waiting for the 9th-grade class council to get involved. Here are some concrete actions:
- Regularly consult the Avenir(s) platform with the child, starting in 5th grade, to identify sectors that match their interests together
- Participate in the orientation half-days organized by the institution, which facilitate dialogue between families, teachers, and professionals
- Identify local mentoring programs that connect young people with professionals in their area
The trap of parental projection
Families are the primary interlocutor for adolescents regarding guidance, but this role can also exacerbate inequalities. An engineer parent may tend to value scientific pathways. A craftsman parent may sometimes steer towards a path they deem “safer” than their own.
Supporting a future project means accepting that it may not resemble one’s own. This stance requires a conscious effort, especially when the child’s project seems risky or far from what the family knows. External mentoring, whether academic or community-based, provides a useful counterbalance by exposing the child to adults who do not share the same perspective as their parents.
Childhood dreams and professional reality: articulating imagination and information
A six-year-old child who wants to become an astronaut does not need to be told about ESA recruitment statistics. However, a fourteen-year-old considering a career in video games deserves an honest conversation about the realities of the industry: available training, working conditions, and the diversity of jobs (game design, programming, sound, storytelling).
The challenge is to balance information according to age. Too early, realism becomes discouragement. Too late, the absence of concrete reference points turns dreams into dead ends at the time of choosing specialties or Parcoursup.
The right time to introduce concrete data is around 8th or 9th grade, when the adolescent begins to distinguish their desires from their aptitudes and can integrate information about training pathways without losing motivation. Before this age, free exploration, play, and reading remain the best allies of a project that matures at its own pace.
