An Intro to Career Exploration for Children
Career Exploration: Take Your Child To Work!
Updated April 29, 2023
For many of us, it seems like every day since March 2020 has been Take Your Child To Work Day. From spilled apple juice on a company computer to little uninvited guests on a team Zoom call, the line between family life and work life has never been more blurry. But while our kids watch us juggle conference calls, weed through our ever-growing inboxes or rush out the door to an important meeting, do they actually have any idea what we do to earn a living?
Show Your Child What A Job Is
It’s essential that we take time to let our littles know what we really do for work. While there may be no need to get into the nitty gritty (unless our kiddos are interested and ready for a full job description), it’s important for our children to have a high-level understanding of what we do to earn a living, why we chose our particular career path, and what are some of the benefits and challenges of our jobs.
Involve Your Child in how we Earn
If we can involve our kids in just a small part of our work, they can learn through experience how adults earn a living (i.e. some BT kids have taken countless trips to stock up at the warehouse, prompting important conversations about the product side of the business.) If doctor’s kids visit the office, teacher’s children help set up a classroom or architect’s kiddos come along on a site visit, they can get a real feel for their parent’s workday.
4 Prompts to help you explore a Career with your child
Just a few simple prompts can also help our children learn about the nature of our work. They can ask a parent, grandparent or other trusted adult some of these questions to get their little wheels turning about career path options for the future.
How did you choose your job?
What training or school did you need to do your job?
What is your favorite thing about the work you do?
What is the hardest part of your job?
If a parent is staying home as the primary caregiver, it's also important that we address this decision with our children. Or if a parent made a career change, went back to school or took an employment hiatus, it’s beneficial to help kids understand these choices as well.
Bottom Line: Start the conversation
By starting an evolving conversation, our kids can begin to understand the value and purpose of the work we do…and set the stage for their own decisions about a career path in the future.
Now that we’ve chatted about my job, what do you think you’d like to do for work when you get older?