Youth development has been and is being studied extensively by researchers. I’m certain our understanding will continue to evolve and deepen. Let’s start further down the life cycle – at the peak of career potential (age 30’s -50s). This peak in potential turning to reality is based on a person’s alignment with their talents earlier in their life – around the age of 17-21. That’s not to say that someone can’t “find” their talents at 40 and reach their potential 10 or 20 years later. That certainly happens – more often than necessary.
What makes up our talent is a very well studied area of science – as TTI Success Insights termed it – “the science of self”. Employers are relying on job-talent matching assessments as part of their talent acquisition and hiring strategy with great success. Matching people to jobs and assessing for things like long-term leadership potential is proving to have an extremely high ROI ranging from lower employee turnover and greater performance at the individual and team level, to significantly stronger bench strength.
So what do we mean by “talent”?
Talent, for our purpose in this article, includes all of the “human” abilities such as behavioral style (how), personal motivation (why) and cognitive acumen (what). In fact most of the “career assessments” available today focus on some aspect within one or more of those three areas. In mid-career, talent will also include more tangible things like skills and technical knowledge.
Children evolve and develop their talent throughout their first 16 years of life. In fact, parents often state “He/she came out of the womb like that.” So, think of talent at a young age of 10 years old like liquid Jello, and a moldable Jello at 16 years of age. We all continue to evolve and add to our foundational talents throughout our life but stability and predictability is possible at about 15-16 yrs of age. 
Therefore, contrary to the message on the blackboard, prior to age 15, the consensus is that a broad, general curriculum is ideal. Students can still focus their energy when they find something they are passionate about before age 16. There are many highly focused programs for the 5% child prodigies (or wunderkinds) needing or wanting specialized schooling for highly gifted students under 16 years of age (common focus on core specialty areas include music, dance, visual arts, mathematics, and comprehensive STEM science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
Even within these focused areas, gifted children need to understand the nuances within their talent design. About 50% explore and refine their career interest accurately. The other 50% are at risk of going in a direction based on an adult mentor’s advice that may not be considering the teens talent makeup. The student my turn out successful on one level, but may experience low job satisfaction, low life satisfaction, burn out or excessive job changes.
What Career Coaching for Students by Success Discoveries offers
Career Coaching for Students offers high school and college students THE premier student career coaching program that is what EVERY student needs. For starters, the assessments used are the same assessments that employers use to match people to jobs.
Career Coaching for Students is offered in 9th grade, throughout high school and again as a freshman required credit course in college. We did exactly that at The University of Texas Austin College of Communication which is very exciting. This program is also being delivered direct to families every day to individual high school and college students. Want to know more: https://successdiscoveries.com/career-coaching-for-students/
Have questions? To schedule a convenient Q&A session with Carl Nielson, go to his calendar at https://my.timetrade.com/book/TLVDK