Working with kids can be a very rewarding and amazing career. Children can be extremely fun, so working with them can consist of a lot of excitement and creativity. Just like each child is unique, every workday will also be unique when it comes to working with kids. If you needed any more reasons, here are 11 amazing benefits of working with kids.
Great Career Opportunities
There are so many different careers that involve working with kids, meaning plenty of opportunity for growth and career progression. Some of the most common and rewarding jobs working with kids include:
- Play therapist
- Counsellor
- Youth worker
- Teacher
- Social worker
- Child psychotherapist
- Pediatric nurse
- Pediatrician
- Camp director (for summer and children’s day camps)
- Nanny
- Pediatric dentist
- Children’s nutritionist
Most of these amazing careers not only involve working and helping children, they also provide you with opportunities to learn new skills, climb the career ladder, and come home at the end of the day with a smile on your face and a good wage.
Social work is a very common career that involves working with kids and their families, to help support kids in their home environment or those who are in foster care or going through adoption. Social workers have lots of possibilities to develop their careers, including taking a master’s degree to work in children’s healthcare, substance abuse, or as a juvenile justice social worker.
Career Stability
Not only are there plenty of job options for those who want to work with kids, there is also a lot of career stability. Not everybody is cut out to do the job of a pediatric nurse or social worker, so if you are, there will be job offers wherever you go. Kids will always need a helping hand from a responsible adult, meaning jobs working with kids will never go anywhere.
Jobs like these can’t be replaced by a machine and can’t be done online, so working with kids provides lots of career stability. This is great for your family and home life, as having a stable career with lots of opportunity means there is no need to stress or worry about finances.
Develop Your Imagination and Creativity
Kids have the best imagination and working with them will certainly spark your own imagination again. Whether you are creating a magical fairy kingdom or playing with dinosaurs, there is always space for your imagination to flourish. If you enjoy being imaginative and fun, working with kids is the perfect job role for you.
Connecting to your inner child and having fun is so vital, especially as an adult as we rarely have the time. Developing your own imagination and creativity whilst working with kids is extremely fulfilling and great for stress levels! Sometimes it can be all too easy to get stuck in adult life that we forget to take a step back, relax, and have some well-deserved playtime.
Chances to Travel
Once you have experience working with kids, you will be wanted worldwide for your skillset. There are many great opportunities to travel to different parts of the world and do your job. You may even want to take a gap year and use your experience with children to do something different, such as being a nanny or working at a summer camp abroad.
There are other fun opportunities too, such as working abroad in hotels as a children’s entertainer. If you are lots of fun and love working with kids, doing something like this will give you so much satisfaction and allow you to travel and see new places. Other great traveling jobs include working on cruise liners, teaching kids how to ski at resorts, and teaching children in developing countries.
Give and Receive Lots of Love!
Kids are full of love and what they need most in this world is to give and receive love. No matter what career you are in with kids, there will be kids that you will connect with and never forget. While there is always a professional boundary, this does not mean they cannot trust and look up to you, especially if you are in a role which is improving their life. If you want to be in a loving, fulfilling role, working with kids will give you plenty of opportunities to love.
Be a Role Model
Being a role model is a vital part of working with kids and gives you plenty of chances to help grow and shape young minds. As a role model, you can teach and help kids to understand what it means to live with hope, honesty, integrity, and compassion.
Depending on the career path you take, you may be one of the only adults in that child’s life that they can look up to, meaning the work you do is so important for that child. Being a positive role model can also help you to improve and notice the things you may need to change in your own life.
Kids Make You More Patient
Patience is a virtue, especially in the modern era where everything comes to us at the touch of a button. Even for those who don’t have the best patience, children can help you to become more patient, very quickly.
You may be asked 100 questions in the space of 5 minutes, or you may have to spend 30 minutes explaining something to a child that you find very simple as an adult. Helping a child to learn something new or answering questions so they can satisfy their own curiosity requires patience.
Change Lives
It does not matter what role you take with children, any job involving working with kids can change lives. For pediatric nurses, this may mean saving a child’s life. For social workers, this may mean getting a child away from an abusive home.
For teachers, this could be spending time with the child that is really struggling in school and helping them overcome any obstacles, leading them to behave better and feel loved. This could be the difference between a child giving up with school and becoming the “class clown” or working harder and sticking in to get good grades. Each day working with kids is an opportunity to change and shape lives and not every career can offer you that.
Stay Healthy and Active
If you’ve ever worked with kids, you know they don’t like to stay in one place for very often. If a 9-5 office job isn’t really your thing, working with kids is a great way to get active, stay healthy, and most importantly have lots of fun doing so! Every day can be different, from getting outdoors, to teaching a sport, or playing a new game. There are plenty of opportunities to join in, no matter which career path you choose.
Even careers where you won’t spend as much time playing with children still involve staying healthy and active. Nurses and dentists will spend plenty of their day on their feet, whilst social workers often travel around visiting families and schools. Just be sure to always look for the signs of burn out, as you must take care of yourself to be able to have the energy, love, and attention to give to the kids.
They Can Teach You
Children have a knack of hitting us right in the heart strings. Before they have been shaped by education, their parents, and society, children are great at being sincere. For adults, this can be an extremely refreshing place to be, especially if you have worked in toxic work environments. Honesty is essential when working with kids and they won’t be afraid to give it back.
Children are also very curious beings, which in turn may make you more curious about subjects. Teaching kids about things will help you to learn and retain information better. While many adults believe they know everything, children are there to remind us there is so much more to learn.
Children can even change your perspective and view of life. Often, children have the most positive and innocent view of the world, leading you to look at your own life experiences differently and be more appreciative of the good things.
Endless Rewards
If you are tired of coming home at the end of the day and not feeling like you have a purpose from your job role, working with kids can give you that. A beautiful smile from a child you’ve been caring for is enough to know that what you are doing has a purpose. The rewards of seeing a child who was once naughty, now getting stuck in at school and getting good grades is priceless. There are many rewarding times when working with kids, making even the hardest of days worthwhile.
There are so many benefits of working with kids, so if you want a career where you can shape lives, play, have fun, learn more patience, and get to view the world from a different perspective, then a career working with children is the perfect option for you. You will have plenty of job opportunities and career prospects to continue learning and refining your skills.
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