Visiting Dad at Work

Visiting Dad at work is something that brings my children great delight, and I think The Accountant kind of likes it when the children visit Daddy at work also. Alex is lucky that he has a lovely work environment and the staff at his office don’t mind if the children pop in for a quick visit to see their Daddy in action on the odd occasion.
Visiting Dad at work can be beneficial for many reasons.
  • The children get a mental image of where Daddy is all day. “At Work” is an abstract concept for a child until they actually eyeball it for themselves.
  • Seeing the equipment Dad works with and where he physically works gives them a better understanding of Dad’s job.
  • The children feel included in Daddy’s life.
  • Daddy gets to show off his offspring to his colleagues. (And the child bring their own little sparkle into the workplace.)
Of course some workplaces do not permit children to come into visit, so it’s best to check first if it will be OK. If permission is granted, here are some tips that have worked for our family when visiting Daddy. (Same principles could be applied to those children who might be able to visit Mummy at work also!)
  • Don’t visit too often. Make the event special so the children have a little bit of awe about the occasion. 
  • Keep the visits short, especially when the children are toddlers. Increase the time if you are able to as they get older. I just walk the triplets in, they say hello to everyone, walk in to Daddy’s office, have a look and type on his calculator and off they go. If we are near Dad’s workplace at the end of the day, I will on occasion drop a bigger boy off for up to an hour or so and he will sit doing drawing, some shredding (that’s about as exciting as it gets in an accountant’s office!) and playing on Dad’s phone until it’s time to go home. Then they also get a half hour to chat with Dad on the commute home also.
  • Remind the children on how to behave in an office/work site before they arrive. We also talk about how it is polite to greet other people in the office by looking in their eyes and saying hello clearly.
The last time we visited The Accountant was during the September school holidays. We had just been to a Colin Buchanan concert nearby, so we popped in to say hello. It was a great time to visit because Toowoomba was celebrating The Carnival of Flowers and the gardens at Alex’s office had won 2nd prize in the Business Garden division. The gardens were spectacular!

After we finished at Daddy’s office, we nipped over to the spectacular Laurel Bank Park for a picnic lunch.

There was an “under the sea” theme going on in the park floral display. We had gone up to the viewing platform to look at the display and then walked down for a closer look from the ground. As I was taking a photo of some of the children in front of the shark, I heard a collective gasp from the viewing platform above my head. See the cute seagulls in the forefront garden bed? My child was running through the flowers trampling the seagull. I was horrified. I grabbed him and tried to make the quickest exit possible.

It’s not easy being obscure when you are trying to round up two year old triplets, a four and eight year old in front of a viewing platform full of people.

In the end our exit was anything but obscure. My garden trampling offender was already out of sorts because Mummy had been cranky at him for what he considered a lovely frolic, so when I refused to let him play in a dog’s water bowl, he chucked an epic tantrum and Jonty and I ended up carrying him the rest of the way to the car. Yeah. Fun times. It was lucky we hadn’t stayed at the office very long! I don’t think two year old tantrums would have been useful while The Accountant counted numbers!

Do you (or would you?) take your children into the workplace? What do they love about it?

I’m linking with Essentially Jess

You may also like

11 Comments

  1. We go to visit my partner at work about once a month. We are lucky though because my partner works by himself so there aren’t other colleagues to worry about. We make a day out of it and catch the bus down to see him.

  2. We have been to Boatman’s work, but not whilst he is working. It’s about a forty minute drive, and he is often out on the ocean, so it’s not really a pop in kind of place.
    We have done it in the past with other jobs though, and he loved it. 🙂

  3. Caitlin I admire you for even leaving the house with all of those kids 😉 You must have nerves of steel and bucket loads of patience. I agree. A trip into Daddy’s work can have so many benefits for everyone involved. I recently took my eldest into my work and she loved it. She’s still talking about it 🙂

  4. That’s so nice. Warms the cockles of your heart when they take such pleasure in the small things. Nerves of Steel, yes, patience, hmmm. Could be improved. Although of course patience is always improved in public compared to behind closed doors, so it might be safer for them to leave the house!

  5. How lovely is that!!! I bet your hubby loves the kids visiting too. Hehe yes the shredder is very exciting!!

  6. We used to visit the hubster at work when the kids were really small (bout the size of yours), he worked in Customer Service at our local Council and it was set up kind of like bank tellers. Except my kids would crawl under the half door barrier and go sit on his lap! I think they tightened security after that 😉 . Funny thing is, I still bump into people from those days that remember when this used to happen – and my kids are now 20 and 18!!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *