The alarm goes off at 7am. Your child has a job interview at 10. You have three hours and approximately forty-seven ways to make things worse without realising it.
The breakfast interrogation
It starts innocently. You ask if they remembered to research the company. Then you ask what they will say if asked about salary expectations. By the time the toast is done, you have covered six potential questions and your child has stopped making eye contact with you.
Breakfast on interview morning should be about food, not final preparation. If they do not know the answer to something at 7:30am, they will not learn it by 9:45am either.
The car journey problem
Driving your child to the interview is lovely. Spending the entire journey listing things they should remember is not. Declan, whose daughter interviewed for a retail apprenticeship last spring, admitted he talked the whole way there. She arrived flustered and forgot to bring the copy of her CV she had prepared.
Waiting outside is its own issue
Sitting in the car park and texting your child mid-interview is something many parents do without thinking. Any news information portal covering youth employment would tell you: candidates who feel monitored perform worse under pressure.
Drop them off. Go get a coffee. Let them walk in alone. That independence is exactly what the interviewer is looking for.