When I grow up I want to be..... Pre-employment for IDD Teens



Ask most fourteen-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up, and you'll get an answer somewhere between confident and ridiculous — astronaut, professional gamer, veterinarian. Ask a parent of a teenager with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) the same question on their child's behalf, and the answer is often quieter, more uncertain, sometimes tinged with worry rather than excitement.

That gap matters, and it starts earlier than most families realize. Work identity — the sense of being someone who works, who contributes, who has skills worth offering — doesn't appear suddenly at twenty-two when adult services begin. It's built gradually, over years, often starting well before a student's final year of high school. The families who start this building process early tend to see their young adults enter the post-school years with more confidence, more direction, and more genuine options.

This piece is about that early building process: what pre-employment skill development actually looks like for teens with IDD, why it matters so much before the transition years arrive, and what families can start doing now, regardless of how far away graduation feels.



1. What "Work Identity" Means Before There's an Actual Job

Work identity isn't the same as job training, even though the two get conflated. Job training teaches a specific task — how to stock a shelf, how to complete a data entry form. Work identity is something broader and more foundational: a teenager's internal sense that they are someone capable of contributing, someone whose effort produces something of value, someone who belongs in the working world in some form.

This sense of identity develops the same way it does for any teenager — through repeated, lived experience of doing something, getting feedback, and gradually internalizing "I can do this" as part of who they are. For teens with IDD, this process is often slower to start, not because they're incapable, but because fewer structured opportunities exist for them to practice it in the way typically developing peers naturally encounter through babysitting jobs, summer work, or part-time retail positions.

Without intentional effort, many teens with IDD reach their last year of high school having had very few experiences that let them practice this identity — showing up reliably, completing a task, receiving feedback, contributing to something larger than themselves. That gap doesn't appear because families or schools don't care. It appears because the natural, informal opportunities that build work identity in typically developing teens often aren't structured to include teens with more significant support needs.

What's your teenager already doing that resembles work, even informally — a chore they own completely, a task they take pride in finishing? These small moments are the building blocks of work identity, even if no one has labeled them that way yet.



2. What Pre-Employment Skill Building Actually Involves

Formal pre-employment transition services, sometimes called Pre-ETS, are available to many students with disabilities starting around age fourteen through their state vocational rehabilitation agency, often coordinated alongside school transition planning. These services typically include job exploration counseling, work-based learning experiences, counseling on post-secondary education options, workplace readiness training, and instruction in self-advocacy.

Work-based learning experiences are often the most valuable piece — structured opportunities for a student to actually try tasks in a real or simulated work environment, with support, well before they're expected to perform independently. This might look like a supervised volunteer placement at a local business, a school-based work crew, or a job sampling program that lets a student experience several different types of tasks to discover genuine interests and strengths.

Workplace readiness training covers the less visible but equally important skills: following multi-step instructions, managing time and attention during a task, communicating needs or problems to a supervisor, handling routine workplace social interactions. These skills transfer across virtually any future work setting, whether that's traditional employment, a supported work program, or independent gig-based work.

Self-advocacy instruction may be the single most underrated piece of this whole process. A young person who can clearly communicate "I need this instruction repeated" or "I work better with a visual schedule" carries that skill into every future job, every future supervisor, every future workplace relationship for the rest of their life. This is a skill worth investing in years before it's urgently needed.

What strengths has your teenager already shown that could translate into a future work setting — patience, attention to detail, physical stamina, social warmth, focus? Naming these early gives both you and your child a head start on a much bigger conversation.



3. How Families Can Start Building This Now

If your child is in middle school, the most valuable thing you can do is simply create low-stakes opportunities to practice the building blocks of work identity at home — a consistent chore with real ownership, a small responsibility within the family that doesn't change week to week, a chance to complete something from start to finish and receive specific feedback on the result.

Ask your school explicitly about pre-employment transition services and whether your child is eligible to begin them. Eligibility and program availability vary, and these services are sometimes underutilized simply because families don't know to ask. Your school's transition coordinator or your state vocational rehabilitation counselor can clarify what's available in your specific district and how to get connected.

If your teenager is already in high school, look for low-pressure, real-world opportunities to practice workplace skills outside formal programs too — a few hours volunteering somewhere aligned with an interest, a supervised task at a family business, a structured chore-for-pay arrangement at home that mimics some of the basic dynamics of a real job: showing up, completing the task, receiving payment for effort.

Throughout this process, resist the instinct to steer your child toward a "safe" or predictable type of work too early. Genuine exploration — trying several different types of tasks and environments — often reveals strengths and interests families didn't expect, and narrowing the field too soon can quietly close off options that would have been a great fit.



Building Toward Real Opportunity

Work identity built early doesn't just prepare a teenager for a future job. It builds confidence, a sense of contribution, and a foundation of self-understanding that carries through every stage of adult life, including the transition years that can otherwise feel disorienting and uncertain.

At Rising Heights Work, we see pre-employment skill-building as directly connected to the work we're building toward — flexible, strengths-matched employment opportunities for adults with IDD in Northeast Ohio. The earlier a young person starts discovering and naming their strengths, the more genuine choice they'll have when the time comes to step into real work, whether that's traditional employment, flexible gig-based work, or something in between.

If your family is thinking about this stage, whether your child is twelve or seventeen, we'd love to talk with you about what's ahead and how we can support that journey. Reach out at natalie@risingheights.org , or join our interest list to stay connected.