It's never too early to have these 3 conversations with your kids.

There were three questions I distinctly remember being asked as a primary school kid: "How old are you? What grade are you in? And what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Now that I’m a parent of a seven-year-old, I’ve once again started to hear that exact same succession of questions being asked to my son. (Yep, it seems this remains a school kid rite of passage!)

Some days my son answers that he wants to work in a mine, inspired by the game Minecraft. (IYKYK!) He’s also mentioned the idea of being a game show host after watching the likes of Grant Denyer and Larry Emdur on TV in the afternoons. Other days he says he wants to work alongside his dad in a restaurant.

As a parent, it warms my heart to hear my son dream so wide and so big.

Image: Supplied. 

It might seem like such a tender young age to be thinking about the future, but it turns out, it’s never too early to talk about it. And that’s what the Government’s initiative Little Ripples is all about.

Created by The National Careers Institute and the Career Industry Council of Australia, Little Ripples is about enabling parents, carers and teachers to foster curiosity and meaningful conversations with primary school-aged children about what their future might look like. 

While many of us presume career planning only starts in high school, research found that future direction can be influenced by experiences from as early as primary school.

The initiative is all about empowering parents and carers to understand how suggestions, ideas and encouragement given to children at this life stage can create a 'ripple effect' on the eventual direction their lives take. The initiative is also designed to offer talking points along with practical tools to help facilitate these important conversations.

So, here are three types of discussions that could potentially unlock the door to your child’s future.

1. "There are so many different jobs out there!"

Thinking back to when I was a kid and being asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I struggled to answer — and I think it’s because I had a fairly limited understanding of the breadth of jobs available.

One of the goals of the Little Ripples initiative is to encourage parents and carers to use everyday experiences and interactions with their kids as a springboard for discussing the wide variety of different job possibilities out there.

Let’s take your smartphone as an example. You could show it to your child and explain how someone designed it, someone sourced the materials to build it, someone developed the apps you use on it and eventually someone might even have to repair it!

Or let’s say you’re having a day out at the zoo. You could not only point out the zookeepers feeding the animals or the salespeople selling tickets, but you might lead into a broader conversation about the work done by a biologist or an environmental conservationist.

It doesn’t need to be a huge in-depth discussion. It’s simply about broadening their scope of the types of job possibilities out there.

2. "I wonder what people might do as a job in the future?"

What do a podcast producer, a cloud architect and a social media influencer all have in common? Well, they’re all jobs that were totally non-existent 20 years ago!

Looking ahead to when our children enter the workforce, there’s a good chance that many of them will grow up to do jobs that don’t even exist yet.

So how can we get kids to start thinking now about jobs we’ve never even heard of?

To encourage this creative thought process, the Little Ripples campaign developed a free and downloadable Jobs of the Future card game.

In the game, there are two piles of cards, a 'job' card pile and an 'industry' card pile. To play, each person takes turns selecting a card from both piles and combines them to invent a 'future job'. 

For instance, someone could pick a 'salesperson' job card and an 'aerospace' industry card, so the 'future job' might be selling tickets to fly to the moon! How fun!

3. "You’re so good at that! Maybe you can be a…"

Children start making subconscious decisions about their future from primary school age onwards. This means the things they’re learning at school today and the conversations they’re having now are already beginning to forge their future direction.

A positive way to start this 'ripple effect' is by fostering your child’s recognition and understanding of their own unique interests, talents and personality traits — but doing so without stereotypes, put-downs or limitations. From there, parents can springboard into conversations about aligning job possibilities — and even offer advice on the training or study required to achieve that career path.

Let’s say someone is keenly interested in sports. Aside from being a professional athlete, you could suggest they utilise this interest alongside other talents to be a sports data analyst, a sports psychologist or even a sports journalist.

It’s all about informing children early on about the broad range of possibilities available so that they can eventually go confidently into the world and find their place and purpose.

As a parent, this is one of the great hopes I have for my own children — and it turns out my role in that process starts now. 

Ready to see the power of Little Ripples? Check out the Jobs of the Future card game, e-books and other free resources available to download, print and play. 

Feature Image: Supplied.