The Challenge to Juggle It All As Working Parents

More people are working from home, making it hard to balance work and home life. Most don’t have a home office, so they are just working in the kitchen or the living room, surrounded by their family, who is also home. They are dealing with interruptions all day long, from their children to their spouses. They may pick up their laptops in the evening, just so they can continue to put more work in. There isn’t much balance because they spend so much time trying to get their work done.

Then, there are those who are still working outside of the home. Because many are afraid to (or can’t) work, those who are still going to work are often overwhelmed. Their jobs are short-staffed, so they are working harder and longer hours, just to keep up. These people need to find new forms of child care, since many day care centers are closed due to the pandemic.

Add in children who are learning remote, and you are just asking for a challenge. Many parents are spending hours teaching their children, which takes time away from their job and doing things around the house. This is especially hard on mothers who are more likely to be the ones in charge of their children and their schooling. Not only do they have to find time to make sure that their children are paying attention during Zoom classes, they may be struggling through new math, along with their children!

That being said, there are ways to juggle it all. Here are some tips to help!

Learn to let go. No matter how bad you want to do it all (and do it well), the sooner that you let go of the ideal, the happier that you will be. There are going to be days when the laundry piles up because you had to do something else. You may not clean your home as much as you like, but you are going to have to let that ideal go. As long as your family is happy and healthy, your life is pretty good. You can catch up on your housework another day!

Find a routine and stick to it. The best way to get things done is by coming up with a routine and sticking to it. Getting up and going to bed at the same time every day helps. Eat meals at a regular time. Know when you need to sit down to get your work done. Make sure that your children are doing their schoolwork at the same time every day. After a few days, this will become routine, and you won’t even have to think about it to see that things are getting done.

Learn to be flexible with that routine. You may set a routine and see that it just isn’t working. You have to be flexible and make changes until you find a routine that does work.

Find a job that allows you to work from home. It is much easier to balance it all if you are working from home. If your current job doesn’t allow that, you may want to find one that does.

When working from home, make balance a priority. Balance is often hard because you are never far from your work or your family. For this reason, you need to set times when you are working, along with family time.

This has been a challenging time, and looks like it will continue this way for a while. This is really challenging for working parents, especially those who are home doing remote learning. However, if you let go of your ideal and focus on getting through each day, you are going to find happiness in this strange time!

Previously published on Medium and/or Newsbreak.