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How to spend quality time with your children when you work outside the home
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When you work outside the home, it can be quite difficult to find a balance between work and family. Quite often, your job will interfere with the quality time you should have with your family, your children in particular. For a working mother, obtaining a work-life balance can mean sacrificing your quality time with your children, but it does not have to be that way. Let's face it; you can never get that lost time back and your children will not be young forever. It is important to take the time to know your children because before long, they will be teenagers and as teenagers, they won’t want anything to do with you.
Just because a demanding work schedule is a part of your life, it does not mean you should take that home with you. There are many things you can do to make sure that you are able to spend time with your children.
Start by prioritizing your schedule. Find out what is most important and take care of that and forget about the things that are not so important. You do not have to wash the windows every week, but you have to load the dishwasher every evening. You will be surprised that by looking at what it is you do daily or even weekly basis, even and eliminating or minimizing the things you can do without, will free up a lot of your time.
Think about your priorities. Playing at the park with your children is far more important than cleaning out closets. Read with your children, talk to your children, watch a movie with your children and cuddle with them. Those are things that are far more important than clearing out the basement, for example. Those things can wait, but your children cannot. They need you today, and you will have plenty of time for organizing closets, cleaning basements, and tackling the mess in your garage when your kids are older.
Your housework does not count as priority in your life. Your housework will always be there, everyday, and no matter how many times you do it. Leave the weekends for cleaning (of course, manage small tasks like loading the dishwasher during week) and spend weeknights with your children. You can help them with their homework, read with them, go to the park, or take a walk around your neighborhood.
Get your children to help out with the housework. Anytime with your children, no matter what you are doing, is quality time, even housework. Remember, as a working mother, your house will never be June Cleaver’s house, and it will always look like Roseanne Conner’s house. You must accept this as something that every working mother needs to do because worrying about your housework will only take away the little quality time you have with your children. You can delegate chores and allow your children and your spouse to help you. If you are the only one doing housework, then you are not spending quality time with your children.
Another way to have quality time with your children is to limit the activities they participate in. Pick the activities that your child is most interested in and concentrate on those two or three times a week. Your child will not be the next Jose Canseco or American Idol, and three times a week is enough to keep them entertained. Limiting the time your children spend at these activities means more quality time with your children.
Last, prioritize your work schedule so that you are not spending too much time away from your children. Set aside special days to just spend time with them. The time you spend with them when they are younger will allow for you and them to stay connected during their teen years, a time when your input is most critical.
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