Working in the magic
Balancing career and family shouldn’t be a quest for perfection – it’s about crafting intentional connections.
Balancing career
and family shouldn’t be a quest for perfection – it’s about crafting intentional connections.
words Ellie Gwilliam from Parenting Place
Adisclaimer right up front – all parents work. Paid or otherwise, parents work 24/7. This article is written with the parents in mind who have kids home from school and employment commitments to juggle at the same time. Annual leave only stretches so far and it can feel like the end of school term comes around with alarming frequency. The kids are on holiday, but you're very much not.
School holidays are great, don’t get us wrong. Less rush, more PJs, no school lunchboxes. School holidays can mean a chance for a getaway, an adventure, a road trip or simply checking out local attractions. But, in families where parents have to work right through the break, school holidays can feel a bit tense. Parents may feel thinly spread across work and home, kids may feel bored and disconnected.
There’s no magic pill for this. The work/life balance is a complex thing for families to navigate and some days it all works better than others. Encouragingly, there are huge benefits in making the most of even small moments of connection. Kids love quality time with their parents and yes, spending entire days together would be wonderful, but the good news is that shorter periods of a parent’s focused attention still do a child a world of good.
If you’re trying to meet the demands of both your boss and your kids and feeling pulled in all directions these holidays, here are five simple ideas for fitting in whānau connection:
1. Make the most of mealtimes
If you’re working from home, schedule long lunch breaks with your kids and take some time-out together. If you’ve got older kids with some kitchen skills, maybe they could even be in charge of preparing your lunch, setting the table and waiting on you (it’s worth a shot anyway). If you’re out at the office all day, aim to make dinner a bit more special than usual. Maybe the kids could plan some menus for the week and decorate the table. You could even have a themed dinner or two, complete with costumes and ‘international’ cuisine (sushi totally counts, as does pizza).
2. Something special in the evenings
Lots of after-school activities are on pause for the holidays, which hopefully means less parental taxi driving and more whānau time in the evenings. Book in some special activities that give everyone something to look forward to at the end of the day.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Board game night
Movie night
Bowling night
A post-dinner dessert mission for ice cream sundaes
Toasting marshmallows under the stars
Family slumber party in the lounge
Talent show
Kahoot quiz night with another family
Lego Masters challenge
Paper bag challenge (put a set of craft supplies in a paper bag for each kid and issue them a challenge, e.g. longest paper chain, fastest cardboard car, scrap paper collage self-portrait).
Reading aloud a chapter book.
3. Go big in the weekends
If at all possible, plan some adventures for the weekends (or your rostered days off) for something fresh to look forward to. And adventures don’t have to be elaborate or expensive – local and simple can be just as memorable.
4. Puzzles and projects
Spread a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle out on the dining table and chip away at it together over the holidays. Puzzles are a great point for connection, and something you can come and go to as time allows. Likewise, maybe there’s a craft project or kitset model lurking at the back of the cupboard that no one’s had time to get started – something that you can work on together in the evenings without pressure. Creativity is such a great outlet for work stress too, so long as we dial up the fun and dial down the expectations. (Trying to follow pages of tiny instructions and find the corresponding pieces from 1A to 5000B may not be your family’s idea of fun – it’s okay to face facts here!) Outdoor projects can work wonders for connection too. Maybe there’s some gardening or landscaping you could tackle with your kids after work each evening, or some fence painting to tick off together in the weekend.
5. Start a new tradition
Traditions and rituals offer so much in terms of family connection and speak volumes of our kids’ sense of identity and belonging. You may already have some traditions in place, like visiting out-of-town cousins at certain times of the year or a dinner party with friends to celebrate the end of term. Whatever matters to your family, make a tradition of it and you’ll be surprised the value your kids will place on the fact that “In our family, every holidays we... go to the zoo/buy a new board game/help Grandad tidy his shed/sort our wardrobes and have a fashion parade/take a load of things we no longer need to the op shop/bake cookies for the neighbours/do a massive jigsaw/plan our summer camping trip/help at the marae working bee/read a new book together/watch Star Wars/have a themed dinner party/make a stop-motion video/climb our local mountain/eat ice cream at the beach...“
A fine balance
Holly Brooker from Parenting Place offers a parent’s gentle guide to reining in screen time
Holly Brooker from Parenting Place offers a parent’s gentle guide
to reining in screen time.
While there are real benefits to all those handy screens in our lives (connection with faraway loved ones, online grocery shopping and relatable parenting memes would be my top three), there are also down sides. When screen time isn’t balanced with the other things that make us happy humans (things like exercise, sleep, time outdoors and, most importantly, face-to-face connection), the benefits are overpowered by the negatives.
Recently, the annual Nib Insurance State of the Nation Parenting Survey, which canvasses the issues and concerns of parents around New Zealand, released more research results showing what parents are struggling with the most.
The results reveal that 70 percent of parents and caregivers are concerned about their kids’ tech use, with 24 percent revealing they are “extremely concerned”. However, two-thirds (66 percent) of us admit we rely on technology as a distraction for children. Easy babysitter, right?
Are we addicted?
What is interesting about this research is that parents admit lacking discipline when it comes to their own screen time and their inability to model healthy device use.
In fact, a whopping 50 percent of the parents surveyed said they themselves felt addicted to their devices. I’m sure most of us can relate. We are living and parenting in the thick of a digital era and can feel this constant push and pull as we use tech while also trying to maintain balance for our families.
The family hui
I’m a big fan of the “family reset”. There can be more buy-in when boundaries are discussed as a family (in a family meeting or hui), and there’s an opportunity for kids to identify the positives and negatives they see from device use and feel heard as they voice their opinions too. Be honest, share your own thoughts and concerns – it’s great to share how too much screen time affects us as adults as well.
If tech time has crept in as the default activity at your place, you might want to chat with your kids about ideas for offline things to do. Joining your child in these activities can help them transition back into the real world − whether it’s a board game together, a walk to the park to kick a ball, or doing something creative together.
Walk the talk
The thing is, kids learn by what they see more than what we say. So if we keep harping on about the dangers of screen time but are constantly on our phones ourselves, the message is murky.
I’ve found that turning notifications off, deleting social media apps and news apps with never-ending feeds, and even using grey scale has helped me rein in my screen use and makes my phone less enticing!
Putting limits in place
Limits are good. While we can’t live in a screen-free bubble, we can put boundaries in place around when, where and for how long our family can use devices. We can also have family limits around what content our kids are consuming.
Every whānau is different and parenting isn’t black and white. How much access to technology you want your kids to have is something you get to decide for your family, and limits might vary according to circumstances or change as your kids get older.
When we set limits, it can take a bit of work to stick to them and continually reinforce them. Patience and consistency are key here. Kids are wonderfully adaptable – they will adjust to the new framework and find fresh ways to spend their time. They’ll also benefit hugely from the developmental opportunities that time offline can bring.
Trust your own instincts, weigh up the pros and cons, and figure out where your family values lie, then set the limits you want for your family. And apply them to yourself, too.
Then, when all of that hard parenting work is done, sit down with a cuppa to enjoy that gripping show on Netflix you’re hooked on.
In the ‘hood
Kids can have big emotions. Simple self-care for parents helps find and lend kids our calm.
Kids can have big emotions. Simple self-care for parents
helps find and lend kids our calm.
Words Holly Brooker, Parenting Place
Parenthood is an incredibly fulfilling, beautiful journey, but it can also be one of the most challenging experiences. During times of high stress, it’s important we care for ourselves and build our own reserves so we can manage the stressors we face, and be present to support our tamariki. It’s like the safety message we hear on planes: Put your own oxygen mask on first.
Fitting in self-care
Life as a parent is incredibly busy. But self-care doesn’t have to be the luxe pampering you see on Instagram. It can be the small things, little and often, to achieve balance, like refraining from starting that gripping Netflix series at 10pm. Getting a good balance of fruit and veg (and no, the “grape juice” that goes quite well with Netflix doesn’t count as fruit). Moving your body, even if a daily five-minute walk around the block is all you can manage. Or snatching two minutes of silence during times of high stress to process the triggers you might be feeling.
Creating space for ourselves is an important tool to help ensure we are able to keep calm during periods of stress, so we can provide our kids with the emotional stability and support that they need.
Our kids need self-care too, with a gentle balance of sleep, good food, movement, and play. Consistent routines, exceptions and boundaries increase our child's feelings of safety and security, especially during times of extra stress and uncertainty.
Expect the unexpected
If there is one given in parenting, it’s that our children will have big emotions and big behaviours – often when we least expect it (like when we’re running out the door, already late). Big emotions can make children feel out of control. Children generally express themselves through behaviour rather than words, and sometimes that behaviour can be pretty confronting and loud.
Hence the need to look after ourselves first, so we’re well-resourced to be a cushion for our kids when their big feelings erupt. This is when our kids really need us to help them find their calm – we can lend them some of ours, but only if we can prevent ourselves from having our own emotions triggered by their big feelings.
Pause, reflect, engage
“Pause, reflect, engage” is a simple strategy to help reduce the brain’s threat level, enabling our prefrontal cortex to do the work it was designed to do. It’s particularly helpful if you’re struggling with additional stressors as well.
“Pause” is about stopping and taking a slow, deep breath (or 10!) in a stressful situation. It really is just about breathing. Oxygen is a gift to the brain and nervous system, and a very quick and effective way to calm things down a bit.
When we “reflect”, we gather information about and from ourselves, as well as from our surroundings. We use “reflect” with empathy to notice our thoughts and feelings based on the situation we’re in.
We do this by asking the following questions:
Name the feeling you are experiencing. It might be, “I feel frustrated.” No judgement, just acknowledgement.
Now consider, what might my child be feeling? “They seem to be feeling sad.” Accept where they are at, without judgement. “Those are their feelings, and that's okay.”
Consider the why? “I’m wondering whether I’m feeling so frustrated because they are making me late to work by mucking around?” or “I’m wondering if he could feel sad because I’m getting snappy and grumpy?”
Now we “engage”. Once we have that information, we can use it to better understand ourselves, our kids and the situation, and we can plan of how to move forward together. A simple, sharing conversation could be enough.
“When you and I were arguing before, I noticed that things were getting out of hand. So I just needed to stop and take a breath. When I did, I realised that I was feeling really angry and frustrated. Then I thought, well, maybe you felt angry too, maybe even sad because we were arguing? I don’t like feeling that way and I’m sure you don’t either. I’m sorry that it happened. There must be some way we can work this out. Let’s give it a go.”
This simple process of understanding our triggers and emotions, as well as our kids, and sharing these through conversation can provide a healthy process of connection.
Our children’s behaviours can be so big and intense that it is difficult to see the emotions underneath. When this happens, we are easily drawn into their emotional turmoil. But if we approach them with an attitude of empathy, compassion and understanding, we show them that their relationship with us is more important than their challenging behaviour. It might be a work in progress, but it’s always progress when you're moving toward connection at the forefront.