Balancing work life and family life can be quite a challenge. Your children need your time, attention and affection, juggling this with work demands can often mean one or the other misses out.
Taking care of children is demanding and requires a lot of time and energy. Therefore, there are often not enough hours in the day to divide between looking after the children and completing all your work.
Even though you cannot add a few more hours to your day, there are various ways you can improve your balance of a career while still being there for your children as they grow.
Here are tips for working parents to make their lives easier :
Outsourcing some household functions to professionals
This is a straightforward idea that will help you create extra time to have quality moments with your children and the entire family at large.
For example, hiring a cleaning service such as Houseproud Cleaning in Sydney to do some of the household chores will enable you to find more time for spending quality time with your family.
You will not be coming home from work or spending a Saturday morning doing those household chores. Instead, you can spend the time with your children watching a movie or doing a Park Run together on a Saturday morning, for example.
Trade work out time for family time
Exercise is essential. However, you can choose to forgo a work out on a particular day so you can spend more time with your family.
Skipping a day in a week will not affect you health-wise, but it will help you create a long-lasting bond with the family.
Commit to family dinner
Make dinner alongside your family every evening instead of ordering take away. The hour you spend as a family each evening will help create good memories once your kids are grown.
It is often around the dinner table or the kitchen bench as you prepare that you have some of the best conversations as a family.
You can catch up on how everyone’s day has been and nut out any issues that might arise as a family.
Separate work commitments from parental activity
Even though you might decide to take some time and work from home, make sure to separate work from parenting.
You might not have set due times for your work, but ensure that you finish everything in its time. For instance, do not take conference calls while feeding your child or attending to them in any other way.
Work out with the family
This is another perfect way of killing two birds with a stone. Working out with your kids ensures that you not only finish your training regime, but you also spend some time with the family.
Additionally, engaging your children in your workout routine will help them to stay fit as well.
Assign house tasks to your kids
Assigning different house chores to your kids will help you get everything done faster. This will help reduce some of the pressure you face.
Also, asking your children to help with house chores will ensure that they are taking responsibility for the running of the house.
Be flexible
As a parent, you will have moments when you have to choose between working and family time. For instance, you may be forced to forgo work to take care of your sick child. Being flexible enables you to handle the pressure that comes with being a working parent.
Taking good care of your children and spending as much time as you can with them is very important. Most parents would choose to spend all their time with their growing kids if they had that option.
However, this is not possible in real life as parents have to work to provide for their children. Try to get a healthy balance between work and parenting.
