Many women decide to take a few years off from their working lives when they have a baby, so they can avoid childcare costs and get to spend as much precious time with their child as possible. Of course, when the kids have all started school, often these moms plan to go back to work in some capacity but find that their former career no longer suits their needs or lifestyle, and so want to retrain to do something that they can balance better with family life.

One career that can be a good one to retrain for while you are staying at home with young children is working as a counselor or therapist. Here are four of the reasons why this can be a great career path for retraining moms:

You Can Qualify Using An Online Degree While You’re At Home With Your Kids

Like a lot of careers now, counseling is something you can qualify for by doing an online degree. This means you can get all your studying done while you are a stay at home mom, without sacrificing time with your child.

You can do a masters in counseling online with a lot of reputable universities, and the qualification is as well respected as equivalent degrees gained by attending college the traditional way.

Counselors Are In Demand Everywhere

While many professions require you to be in a major city to find work, counselors are needed in just about every community. This means that if you have moved out to the suburbs or would like to have the option to move in future, your career will not be impacted as it might if you were working in more corporate fields like finance or IT.

It’s A Really Rewarding Job

Counseling can be relatively well paid, depending on your specialism and who you work for. However, this is just the icing on the cake for most people who choose it as a role.

Counselors can help people get through the most difficult times in their lives. They can help them overcome lifelong issues and live healthier, happier lives. They can help families and couples save their relationships and become stronger units. They can help people who have addiction problems or who have experienced abuse or trauma to get better.

Whoever you decide to work with or whatever field you focus on, you’ll be making a massive difference to the people who come to you, and not many people can say that about their jobs!

It’s Interesting

Finally, counseling is an interesting field both to study and to work in. No two cases are the same and you’ll find each patient makes breakthroughs in different ways and to different schedules. You’ll definitely never feel bored!

These are only four of the many great reasons considering counseling as your next career move. If you want to retrain, it can set you on a path to a rewarding and fascinating new working life!