Those who are new to the job life are often seen lamenting about how their personal life has gone for a toss. For a quick reality check, they should meet parents of school-age children like you and witness what life going for a toss looks like. I may not be a mother but believe me you, I have seen my parents juggling all the while I was a kid.
Undoubtedly, it becomes really hard for parents to manage their job and their kid, so much so that they barely get time for each other or themselves.
Managing a toddler is tougher but a bit grown up school kid throws another set of challenges. Here is how parents can strike a balance between work and life as we know you don’t want to miss the time (your child is going to grow soon).
The Real Problem
The middle-class or lower-middle-class couple living in metropolitan cities away from their family face the challenges more than any other class. It is so as the income is limited aka just enough to suffice the expenses and not really afford much of luxury. Such couples cannot really afford spending bounties on their child. Paying money at play schools, daycare, or appoint a nanny besides school isn’t quite feasible for them.
So, in this blog, we sincerely strive to help you with the same. Herein, we are mentioning various situations and tips to manage them.
- Parent Teacher Meeting
- Holidays
- Sickness
- Vacation time
- Short school time
Tip: You both have a job and a child then why should the mother always be the one making the sacrifices? Try to strike a balance, both the father and the mother should be willing to make adjustments with their schedules, whenever required. Don’t forget that it is a collective effort when you both will take your responsibility sincerely, you will be able to strike a perfect balance.
How to manage your work and responsibility as a parent?
- Know when to prioritise what- There will be times when you will have a meeting scheduled with the stakeholders or your manager. In such situations, one of you who is not tangled in some really important work should leave from the office.
- Stay ready for impromptu leaves- There will be many instances when you would not be able to pre-plan your leave. Going early or taking an unplanned leave won’t affect the manager as long as the work would stay unaffected. So, always try to stay a step ahead of your timelines.
- Work in a company with great work policies- The Saturdays and Sundays off, understanding manager, realistic deadlines, no constant pressure of work would help you a lot in the long and short run. So, make sure you are working in a company that cares for its employees and doesn’t treat them as a machine. Otherwise managing both the things will leave you completely exhausted.
- Use Flexible scheduling– This helps the parents to a great extent. When the AI based attendance software is in place, your attendance will be counted on the basis of work hours and not the timings. So, you can ask your manager to allow you to come early around 8 or so and leave accordingly. You can even negotiate in terms of work hours at the time of joining.
- Take work from home- You can even opt for a part-time job or take work from home whenever your child is ill or coming early from school. This will help you manage both work and the PTM or any other child-related work on the list.
- Keep the child engaged after school- Make your child join a dance, swimming or art learning class so that sometime after school is spent in rejuvenation and enjoyment while you are still in office.
If things are unmanageable even then, for instance, if the child has started going to a play school i.e goes or comes early, you can also opt for different shifts. For instance, your husband can work in the night shift and you in day shift. Else, you can work at offices that have rotational shifts. This way the baby will have at least a parent around him or her all the time. For instance, in the morning one can drop the child to school and in the evening one can pick him/her up.
This is it for the blog, hope this helps. The key takeaway for you here would be to always have a backup of even the backup plan you have. Take a deep breath, the management is tough, but ultimately you all will get through this phase with flying colors..
Keep hustling!