Page Contents
Work-Life Balance
Parents have additional competing measures for their time. You could struggle to find a balance of what you need to accomplish as an adult, give time to your children, and time preparing for your work. I have previously gone over the value of work-life balance and suggestions in my previous article: Parents in the Home, How Can you Improve? The truth is, there is no balance between all of the things which compete for your time. As part of practice, managers and business leaders know which things are priority and will always receive attention. Being a parent means that you are a household manager with priorities for the family.
Which things become priority for you in the family life. Will your priority list include your spouse or children, your self-interest, your education, or your work life? While they compete for your time at home and at work, know and understand which things are easily accomplished and the attention toward your purpose. By doing so, you can work with the end in mind, and give precedence to those which will consume your overall time.
When you have children, or if you recently have kids, you will need to learn their cues, and to express yourself positively. For example, if you come home with a negative attitude from work, your children’s evening would be altered. If you work from home, ask for a time to decompress, go for a walk, or exercise, or a read a book. If you drive home, you could take the time listening to music that makes you happier; you might want to add something else to help you with that transition. Change your clothes when you get home, changing your outfit will make your work clothes last longer and your mentality to relax. This transition is quite important for you and your partner to make sure that your home life feel better than you work environment.
Make Your Personal and Social Life Consistent
Adjust to your child so they better understand the difference between right and wrong. Your child will have a different set of temperament and character. They are not a one-size fits all glove; they will need positive reinforcement if they behave poorly. They will also frustrate you, and keep your cool in front of them so they will need establish a different temperament than you are trying to change. They will exhibit themselves differently during socialization, and you will want to make sure they play well.
Teach your children skills and responsibilities and your family will benefit. The best part of teaching your children home skills is that it allows them to do the easier and quicker chores you do on a daily basis. It teaches your children to care for what they have, and will give a greater appreciation for their home. It also helps creates memories in family function and effectiveness. The best part of guiding and teaching your children is they become far more proficient in their tasks. With dedicated time to enrich your children’s work ethic, they become productive societal members and a family unit will understand how to work with others.
Important education elements for your children enrich their ability to think logically and critically. Subjects such as math and science teach curiosity and logic. Reading and writing teach the ability to research and organize thoughts. Arts and humanities enrich creativity in order to conceptualize and create opportunities in other important areas. It goes from understanding basics to advanced subjects towards levels of high education. School systems are often organized in support of work and opportunities for being a productive member of society. It doesn’t necessarily teach your children the means and methods to lead others and proficiently organize people and drive them towards a unique goal or concept.
Children are naturally curious and you should promote this ability as much as possible. Creativity and exploration are a natural and innate ability. Some children have a higher perception and curiosity than others, but this skill wanes in ability as children age into adulthood. The importance of curiosity is that it will constantly push boundaries (even personal limits) and those of understanding of the world. Adults who are set within certain parameters of life will find further frustration as they see children’s’ curiosity antagonizes the normalized and repetition some lives have. This may promote a child to explore into areas of science or the way that the world works. Parents must understand that this curiosity will push your limits and engage into exploration of your own.
Quite possibly, the most important reason to maintain consistency of your work-life balance is your relationship sanity. It reduces any mental clutter if you feel distracted from your partner, keep your relationship healthy between the two of you, and it sets a better precedence for your children.
Time Management as a Parent
Understand the needs of what is important verses urgent. Everyone has a calendar and a list of items to care on a daily basis. The important things are those that if you do not do the job, it will affect the rest of your work. The urgent things in life are those things that will severely take away your ability to function. The best thing to do over-time is understand the differences between these two, because you determine priority of your work based on the day and how you accomplish them.
Keep a running calendar. You classify your tasks, preparation, events, and scheduling your life on the calendar. Without a running calendar, life will become unfair rather quickly. You will see that other people have more priority than you, and your life will be subjective to others. Find the ground you want to stick with and move forward with your life plans on your schedule. You can find many examples of a daily or monthly calendar to tasks. This can break up the monotony of the days and make home cleanliness a consistent effort.
Schedule playdates with your children. You will want to mingle with other adults, or go on mini-adventures with them. This can include finding a local splashpad for the kids to play in the water, hiking a local trail, riding bikes on a rail-trail, driving through neighborhoods on holiday seasons for lights, or creating family fun events. There are plenty of low-cost adventures that you can take your children on that will hold off boredom.
Maintain a meal calendar. You will have to force yourself to find healthy alternatives because eating all too much is costly for your wallet, and not as healthy as you think. When you maintain the meal-times with your children, you will create a consistent schedule to keep up your nourishment. How about making your own set of trail mix before that hike?
Keep bedtime consistent. The younger your children are, the more sleep they need to have. If you’ve been through several children like myself, you take whatever time you can with a newborn. Through consistent action, you will find yourself sometime in the evenings to take care of personal matters or just unwind.
In conclusion, there are several factors to parenting. We looked at the struggle of parenting through our balance; we looked at making your social life and personal life consistent; and we looked at time management as a parent. These different values and tips are here to make you feel better about yourself and set a good example. If you found these tips helpful, please follow us, subscribe to our newsletter, and leave a comment. We appreciate your feedback in hearing what has worked for you.
