Well organized between family and career

Finding a Healthy Balance

Many parents feel stressed and pressured in the face of high expectations. After all, having offspring adds many new tasks to the family and household: raising and caring for them is a 24-hour job. After restless nights, it is difficult to concentrate on work. There is often no time for personal downtime, etc. How can you succeed in reducing stress factors and better balance family and work? The following tips can help you to organize your family and job everyday life well.

Repurposing roles

When a working couple becomes parents, it's important to rethink roles. Do you both want to continue working - perhaps with a reduced number of hours? Or will one parent care for the majority of the offspring and possibly take a career step back? How much self-care can you and do you want to provide, how much outside care do you want? You should discuss these questions openly and at an early stage with your partner. The answers to these questions are individual, but at the same time essential for satisfaction in the new family constellation. On this topic, you can also read the article "Division of labor in the family" here on Familienportal.NRW, with tips and food for thought for making arrangements with your partner.

ADJUST WEEKLY WORKING TIME

.

After birth, your child initially plays the lead role around the clock. If you then want to share work and parenting responsibilities with your partner, it's important to adjust to a different rhythm early on. Consider how many hours per week you both want to and can work, and talk it over with your employers. Flexible working hours or the option of working from a home office make it easier to balance family and career. If you work in a company with more than 15 employees, you have a good chance of being able to work part-time.

professional and private meetings

Even if you want to balance your job and family, draw clear dividing lines between the two. Leave your parenting duties at home when it comes to the workplace. Your child is safely well taken care of and in a real emergency you are always available. If you do work at home, make sure you separate yourself physically and acoustically. The same applies vice versa for family time: make it clear to your team or business partners or customers when you are available. Outside of these times, you shouldn't feel guilty if your smartphone is set aside and you don't answer emails or take calls.

FAMILY CALENDAR: WELL PLANNED IS HALF WON

Are you already using a shared family calendar? It proves its worth in the long run to record all professional and private appointments there and to make tasks visible to everyone: Toddler group and kindergarten appointments, and later school appointments, doctor's appointments, music lessons, sports classes, invitations and appointments with friends, etc. Whether you manage your appointments digitally or record them manually on paper is up to you. The only important thing is that you record everything in writing. You will notice, this helps to relieve the full head.

WEEKLY PLAN: WHO DOES WHAT?

Write in a plan what household and family chores need to be done. Discuss together what needs to be done and write down who will do which of these duties. It's also best to plan your shopping in advance with the help of a meal plan - either for the whole week or the coming days. This saves time, nerves and money! The weekly plan serves as orientation, makes responsibilities visible and helps to distribute tasks fairly. In the meantime, there are many practical apps for the smartphone or tablet that help you organize your household. Whether tidying up, cleaning, cooking or writing joint shopping lists: The selection of digital offerings for planning everyday family life is large and helps to always keep track.

Daily ROUTINE, ROUTINE, ROUTINE!

Bring structure into your everyday family life. Regular routines take the pressure off you as parents, and your offspring also benefit. The following tips have proven their worth in many families:

To avoid the stress in the morning, plan a fixed morning routine for dressing and breakfast.
Orientate yourself to a fixed routine when putting the children to bed in the evening.
Set the breakfast table already in the evening.
Lay out already in the evening the clothes for the next day.
Pack the daycare bag with your child the night before.
Schedule fixed wash or shopping days.
Schedule times in the weekly schedule, where you deliberately do nothing.

Especially important: Always make sure you have a time buffer! Because despite the best organization, it runs with children rarely strictly according to plan. After all, an injured knee, a lost favorite animal or a sudden fit of defiance can intervene. If you don't need the time buffer: all the better! Then treat yourself to a little downtime and take the time to breathe.

LEARN TO SAY NO!

Going to the zoo with the kids, meeting your friend at the playground, visiting the grandparents, bringing a salad for a friend's birthday, and parents' night at daycare coming up, too? Sometimes it's just too much. People who rush from appointment to appointment often feel stressed. It is better to set priorities. Weigh what and how much is good for you and when the appointments and obligations become too much. Many people find it hard to say "no," but sometimes it just has to be done. And it can be learned: you'll see that saying no will be much easier the next time.

Accept help

The double burden of family and career can be quite exhausting in the long run. Let someone help you. Take up the offer from family members, a friend, or the neighbors and allow yourself some relief now and then. Family sponsorships also offer support. The Early Help program matches trained volunteers who provide scheduled breaks for two to four hours a week for young parents with children ages zero to three. And here's another tip: Delegate tasks as much as possible - even if some things may not get done exactly as you would have done them. If the household budget allows, help with housecleaning or gardening is helpful. You can claim the cost of this as a tax deduction.

BUILD A NETWORK

.

If your child falls ill or you have to work late, you may need help at short notice. Are there people in your circle of friends and family whom you can spontaneously ask for support in such a case? Build up a network and make a list of addresses. Parent-child groups, such as those offered by Early Intervention, are a suitable meeting place for getting to know each other, exchanging ideas, playing together and having fun. The network also includes a reliable babysitter, whom you should hire not only in an emergency, but on a very regular basis, so that the time for two does not come up short. You can find a contribution worth reading on this topic here on Familienportal.NRW.

NOBODY IS PERFECT!

Goodbye to perfectionism: Screw down your personal demands to an unattainable ideal goal of family! A frozen meal can be just as tasty between meals as a home-cooked meal, a dirty car drives just as well as a freshly cleaned one. If the lawn is mowed only every two weeks instead of twice a week, the insects are happy. More important is family time spent together!

INCLUDE SMALL TIME ISLANDS

.

Yes, being a parent is a tumultuous job with an immense workload. That makes self-care all the more important. Make sure you have a little personal downtime in your day every day, where you can recharge your batteries - and do it without a guilty conscience. Just 15 minutes a day in which you consciously take care of yourself is enough for this. You can use this time to move in the fresh air, do some relaxation exercises, listen to music or read your favorite magazine with a delicious cup of tea.

Where can we find help and advice?

Feeling overworked and exhausted because you're having a hard time implementing tips for organizing everyday family life or self-care? Then seek professional help. In North Rhine-Westphalia, there are many contact points where you can get free advice. Or you can call the parents' hotline on 0800 111 0 550. You can find more information about parenting advice here on the Familienportal.NRW.

Organization everyday family life