We all want to help our children take the world of work by storm. Both for their own benefit and so they’re not still moping around your home and emptying your fridge into their forties. But how do you go about helping your child prepare for employment and, hopefully, flying the nest at some point?

As with anything worth doing, it involves laying some groundwork and you need to make sure you are sewing the seeds early that will help them in the workplace when they’re older. Dadsnet has compiled some handy hints for inspiring your children to be the employees of the month of the future.

Prepare your child for employment – tips

Here are ways parents can help prepare their children for the world of work:

Encourage exploration and curiosity

The mind boggling thing is that the job your child ends up doing might not even exist yet. So, you need to guide them towards being adaptable with where they focus their attention. Encourage your kids to be open minded and try new things.

Help them to explore diverse interests, hobbies and activities. Support their curiosity by exposing them to different experiences and open their horizons. They will take this mindset into adult life.

Promote responsibility and independence

Children and responsibility and independence do not always go together. We can help them become more self-reliant, though, and thay will help them when they enter the workforce.

Assign age-appropriate responsibilities at home, such as jobs like putting out the washing, emptying the dishwasher and so on. Encouraging independence helps them understand accountability and self-reliance, which are essential qualities to know when you start a job.

Develop critical thinking skills

When you are soaking up learning like children do, it can be easy to accept everything you hear from an adult as gospel. You don’t realise until you are an adult how much everyone is basically winging it.

To help them think for themselves, engage your children in conversations that encourage critical thinking and problem-solving. Encourage them to question, analyse situations and find solutions independently. This will help them find better solutions in the future, which will impress their future bosses.

Teach time management and organisation

If doing the school run has taught us anything, it is that children have no concept of time. Putting on a single shoe can take up to three hours some days. This won’t wash when they have to clock on promptly.

Prepare your children for employment by setting schedules for activities and balancing schoolwork with their extracurricular pursuits. Help them understand time management and what goes into getting them to the places they need to be, when they need to be there.

You could also give them responsibility for getting everything ready for a day trip, working out the itinerary in advance and monitoring it as the day progresses.

Teach financial literacy

Yes, money is an essential skill for employment. Introduce basic financial concepts and responsibilities early on with your kids. Teach them about budgeting, saving and the value of money, instilling responsible financial habits from an early age. You can talk about tax in simple terms that they understand, as well as understanding what sort of expenses they might have in the future.

Give them a certain amount of money to spend in the supermarket and a list of meals they need to buy for. They might be surprised that it just isn’t possible to feed a family AND buy twenty seven bottles of Prime as part of a family’s big shop.

How have you tried to prepare your child for employment? Let us know in the Comments