How to Manage Your Job While Being a Full-Time Mom
If I ever get a chance to make my one wish come true, I would ask them to make me a kid again and have my mom look after me.
Even when I was a kid, I never wished to grow up. I always wanted to remain as a kid and be with my mother every day throughout my life.
But life doesn’t work that way. We grow up, our parents get old, and they leave. We are left on our own.
I love my mother and I love her more than anything in this world, but I realized her importance only when I became a mother myself.
Trust me; it’s not easy being a mother, let alone a working mother. As working mothers, we must look after our house, work, family and kids.
I work from home, and I have a toddler, and I know how hard it is to concentrate on work while being around your kid. The never-ending stream of “I want this, I need this” sometimes wants you to bang your head on the wall or quit your job.
But it’s not easy to do both. So to make my life a bit easier, I started searching for mothers who are doing excellent personally and professionally. I did thorough research and read many articles, and I’ve distilled the advice of working mothers into five key points that everyone seems to agree that these tips have helped them maintain a work-life balance as a mother.
Then I thought, why not share my research with you all? So this week, our article is about “How to manage your job while being a full-time mom”.
So keep on reading to learn about them all.
Be wise of your time
One of the most important things I gained from my research is that time management is vital in achieving work-life equilibrium. I resolved to begin applying that suggestion to my own life. When I started working, one of the first things I did was figure out how to manage my time effectively. I started allocating my time in accordance with what needed to be done. In order to get more done each day, I started getting up earlier than usual. Then when my toddler would wake up, and I’d feed him breakfast, do some housework, and then let him play in the same room where I was working so that I could keep an eye on him and get my job done. This made it possible for me to care for my child while maintaining my career.
If you’re a working mom who’s having trouble juggling all of your responsibilities, one good place to start is with your organizational skills. Create a schedule of everything you need to accomplish on a given day and follow it. When making a schedule for the day, make sure you do it in such a way that it allows you to have some me time. This “Me Time” will help you unwind and relax a bit.
Learn how to overcome your mom’s guilt
No matter how hard we try as mothers, we never feel like we’re providing adequately for our children. Every mother has experienced the crushing weight of motherhood guilt that makes her want to drop everything and stay home with her children.
If you’ve had similar thoughts, know that you’re not alone. Every one of us can relate to this. It’s common for us to beat ourselves up over the belief that we’re inadequate parents. We are not taking enough time to savour our children’s youth. We miss out on their first achievements because we can’t be present for them while they learn new things and explore on their own.
Unfortunately, no parent can ever be fully present for their children. You must understand that you are working so your kids can access better education and living facilities. Even if you are not working for financial needs, then you are working because you have striven so hard to be at a place where you are in your career. You can’t just pack it all in because you feel bad about your performance as a mother.
Therefore, to achieve an excellent work-life balance as a mother, you must learn to let go of your motherly guilt. Getting things done at the office or during set hours can free you up to spend more time with your family at home and with the kids. You may finally take charge of your personal and professional life after establishing some limits. This way, you’ll have more time to spend with your family, which can help alleviate any feelings of “mom guilt.”
By keeping a strong connection with your kid
To strike a good work-life balance as a mother, you must cultivate a close relationship with your children. Children are tiny people who rely on you for everything, even the most minor tasks.
They don’t get that you have to go to work, so you have to leave him at home or in a daycare Centre. Children who feel they are being ignored may often resort to crying, acting out, or screaming to get their attention. They use these gestures to communicate their feelings because they lack the language skills to do so at a young age.
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance necessitates prioritizing your relationship with your child. Spending time with your kids, even if it means getting dirty, playing games, or watching their favourite cartoons, is a great way to show them you care. Moreover, you can also strengthen your relationship with your children by tucking them in and reading to them before they go to sleep. If your child knows that you love him more than anything else in the world and they are your priority, he won’t bother you while you’re working for a while.
By learning that it’s okay to ask for help
You must understand that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. We all need help once in a while. We are humans, and we cannot do anything or everything alone. Even if we try to do that, we are just doing ourselves a disservice because we are making ourselves overburdened, tired, exhausted and burnout. I learnt it the hard way, and if you want to manage your job and mom duties efficiently, you have to know that it’s okay to ask for help. Once you learn it, you will see how easy it has made your life.
Because when we try to do everything ourselves, we cannot focus on our work or home. Overburdening ourselves makes us irritated and angry, and no matter how much we try to avoid taking our frustration out on our kids, we sometimes do it. And they being kids, do not realize why she is mom asking us not to make a noise or be around her.
So to be stable and have your emotions in control, you must ask for help if needed. You can take your kids to their grandparent’s house and let them spend some time with them. This will gives you time to get done with your work. You can also ask your friend, neighbour or anyone you trust to look after your kid for some time. If this is not an option for you, look out for the best childcare centres around your area where your child can spend some time, and this opportunity will also allow your kid to meet new kids and learn new things. This will also give you some mental peace that your child is in safe hands, and you can focus on your work.
Besides this, you can ask your partner or friend to help you with house chores. This extra help gives you time to relax and have things sorted.
So, ask for help if you need it and save yourself from extra tiredness and frustrations.
By doing one thing at a time
As a working mother, if you have some pending work and have to clean your house and bathe your kid, everything needs to be done as soon as possible because you have invited some guests/friends to your home. You are doing everything with light speed and still not getting anything done.
Then stop for a moment, take deep breaths and think of a plan. Decide what the most important thing to do is. Decide that and start working on it by focusing on it and getting done with it. Then move to the second, third task and so on.
Stop rushing yourself. You are not a machine, and things get some time to get completed no matter how fast we try to do it.
When I started working, I used to make the mistake of doing everything and anything all at once. It took me some time to realize that when I do my tasks in a rush, I don’t do them efficiently, or I do things wrong, and then I have to spend some extra time doing it all over again.
So now what I do is I make a plan and do things one at a time. This technique helped me get done with my work more efficiently and quickly. You can also try this by prioritizing your tasks and getting them done with it one by one so that you can do them accurately and efficiently.
There are probably many more strategies to strike a healthy balance between work and personal life than the ones I’ve mentioned here.
But I am more interested in knowing what being a mom is and how you handle everything. Because it’s common knowledge that no two mothers have similar experiences, and we all have to deal with things according to our situations and learning, so please share your coping strategies as a mom in the comments so that when next time any mother needs help, she can learn from your experiences as well.
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