Their Next Chapter is a site for parents and teens working out what comes after high school. If you're new here, start with how it works.
The plan, step by step
Your teen does the deciding. Here's the whole process, stage by stage, with who leads each one and the nearest research behind it.
Start with what your teen is saying
"I don't care," "You pick," and "What if I pick wrong?" each point to a different kind of stuck, and it can be a mix. Find your teen's words in the list on How it works or in What you might be hearing, and start at the stage it points to. If nothing fits and your teen is up for it, start at stage B.
Taking time is fine. The waiting that costs something is waiting with no goal and no end date.
Why: Being undecided can be a phase that passes, or it can run deeper and take longer to ease. A career-counseling review recommends matching the help to the kind (Gati and Levin, 2014).
The eight stages
A. Lower the pressure
You lead. Steady yourself first: talk your worry over with a partner or a friend instead of your teen, and ask yourself whether this is about the next step or about your own worry.
Then offer one easy invitation your teen can turn down, like a walk or a drive. Say once that the door is open, then let it rest, and bring it up again small on a calm day, not the day after a fight. If a real deadline is coming, say it once and attach one small step, because some doors have dates. More in Talking about it without breaking the relationship.
When the talks get going, say out loud which parts you think are theirs to decide and where you need a say, like the money. Expect your teen to see more of it as theirs than you do. Once your teen picks something to try, hold firm on the date, never on the path.
Why: In a two-week diary study of 106 teens aged 13 to 17 and their parents, a conflict with a parent went with more school problems the next day, and the spillover lasted about two days. It ran the other way too, from a bad day at school to more conflict at home the next day (Timmons and Margolin, 2015). In a study of 677 Belgian 10th graders and their parents, parents' worry about their teen pulling away went with more guilt-tripping and pressure (Soenens and colleagues, 2006).
B. Find your direction
Your teen, in the tool. About ten minutes of questions: what gives them energy, what they've actually done, what they'd like doing, and their situation. Their answers build a picture, with a few kinds of work to look at and small things to try. What matters to them and their strengths come after, as optional extras. They choose whether to do it alone, with you, or with someone else.
Why: In a one-time survey of 834 college students in Quebec, those who saw their parents and friends as more controlling felt less able to make a career decision, and that went with more indecision (Guay and colleagues, 2003).
C. Compare your options
Your teen, in the tool. Cross off the clear no's, keep two to four, and score each one on your teen's own yardsticks. A "?" stays until a real number or a real person answers it.
Why: Simple scored lists predict measurable outcomes better than expert gut judgment (Dawes, 1979). That research is about predicting outcomes, not about which choice people end up happy with, so your teen can still overrule the numbers with a reason.
D. Try before you commit
Your teen, with your help on logistics. One thing to try that they can back out of, with a when, a where, and someone to check in with. When your teen asks, help with the looking: go along, share how the work really runs day to day, and introduce people you know who do it. Don't take it over, and don't drift away from it either. Before anything asks for money or a signature, check the basics.
Why: Two small experiments with college students found that people who heard only how another student felt after a speed date or a critique predicted their own feelings better than people who studied the details instead (Gilbert and colleagues, 2009). So a good try can be as simple as asking someone a year or two into a path what an ordinary week is like. On helping with the looking, a study that followed 451 Chinese teens, average age about 17, found that parents' career support went with teens feeling better prepared for career choices 10 months later (Liang and colleagues, 2020). In a study of Chinese university students, parents taking over went with less exploring, and parents staying out of it went with feeling less prepared (Guan and colleagues, 2015). In the study of teens around 17, neither taking over nor staying out of it showed a link either way, so the evidence on those two is mixed.
E. Step back (optional)
Your teen leads. A walk, an afternoon, or a weekend somewhere calm. Nothing gets decided there. Plan a think weekend has sizes, ground rules, and a light plan.
Why: Adults who imagined a partner's betrayal reasoned more wisely about a friend's than their own, and thinking about their own as an outsider would closed the gap (Grossmann and Kross, 2014). That tested a mental step back, not time away.
F. Check in together
Both of you. On the date you agreed, ask what they found out. Keep looking, drop it, or not sure yet. Then another try, a step back, or on to deciding. See how to run the check-in.
Questions worth having ready:
- "What would you want to find out next?"
- "Next year, what do you expect you'll be doing? What do you want to avoid? Anything you're doing now toward it?"
- Now and then: "When we talk about after graduation, does it feel like I'm listening or pushing?" Take the answer as it comes.
Close by naming one concrete thing they did, like "You emailed the program yourself." How often to check in is a judgment call, and we found no study that tested it. Let your teen pick how you check in, and if their copy of the plan says how to bring it up, go with that. Between check-ins, don't phone just to ask how it's going, and don't call or text about it when you're upset. Looking tends to come in bursts, so stay steady through the quiet weeks.
Why: A study that followed students from the end of 12th grade into college found that those who handled exploring and committing better in senior year were more likely to enroll in their choice, did better at adjusting to their courses, and felt more committed to them in the first term (Germeijs and Verschueren, 2007). It's observational, so it can't show the exploring caused it. And across 313 studies, parents rated their own parenting a little more kindly than their teens did, so asking how it's landing is how you find out (Hou and colleagues, 2020).
G. Your teen decides
Your teen. When one path keeps landing on the keep pile and still fits what matters most, they write it down. It can still change later. A few steps bind, like a deposit you may not get back, a signed contract, an early-decision application or a loan, so read those together first. For a tie, see When two paths stay tied.
Why: People rate the same decision as worse when it happens to turn out badly, even when they say outcomes shouldn't count (Baron and Hershey, 1988). Judge the choice by what your teen knew and how they made it.
H. Make a plan together
Your teen, in the tool. One page: where they're headed, the next step with a when and a where, who they'll check in with, and the date. You can do the paperwork side by side, and the choices stay theirs.
Why: Plans that name a when and a where help people follow through. The effect is small once you allow for studies that likely never got published, and the review didn't break out career or college choices (Sheeran and colleagues, 2025).
Around all of it
- Another sounding board: an adult your teen trusts and picks, who mostly listens.
- More than a stuck decision: when your teen seems low or irritable about most things lately, not just this, start with their school counselor, at any point. If school's out or your teen has graduated, call the school or district office and ask who can help over the break, or reach another trained professional you trust. When it's not going smoothly lists the signs and what to tell the counselor.
- If something falls through: back to stage A for a few days, then stage C with what's still open. See My plan fell through.
- If a talk goes badly: back to stage A for a day or two, then reopen small. See When a talk goes badly.
What the research can and can't tell you
We found no study that tested these parent moves with stuck teens directly. Each step borrows from the nearest research we found. Several of those studies are small, were done in a lab, or were done with adults rather than teens, and some show only that two things go together, not that one causes the other. The complete guide goes deeper.
General background to help your family through this decision. It isn't advice about your own family.