Everyday tips for working parents

Work and family: How to get the everyday life easier under control!

Text last updated: 2023-04-03

Parents between work and family life: How it works better together

Children, job, partnership, parents, hobbies, friends - anyone who starts a family usually quickly realizes that it is not always easy to meet all the demands at the same time. Time is scarce and one's own energy limited. The daily challenge between one's own expectations and those of others can easily lead to overload. This makes it all the more important to ensure a well-organized and equal distribution of tasks and a balance between family, career and personal needs.

  • Strict planning: If you want to reconcile professional life and raising children, you need to be well organized. Agree with your partner or partner, who takes over which tasks. A weekly schedule can help.
  • Smart everyday helpers: Keep a calendar in which really all professional and private appointments as well as occasions in the daycare or school are entered. Family apps are suitable both for an uncomplicated arrangement of appointments and for the collection of shopping lists and to-do's. This saves time and preserves the overview.
  • Set up an emergency plan: The child gets a fever overnight or school lessons are suddenly canceled? With children, flexibility is often required. Design an emergency plan that you can fall back on in challenging situations.
  • Accept relief: Seek outside support and have no inhibitions about accepting help. (Loaner) grandmas and grandpas are often grateful to be included in caregiving. Build a social network of mutual support.
  • More ease: Probably not everything always goes according to plan, despite perfect organization in the family. Learn to improvise, not to set their own standards too high and deal with it more calmly when things turn out differently than expected. With children, something unforeseen always comes up.
  • Teamwork in the family: Divide the housework fairly. Fair can be to split everything 50:50 or do everything together. Another option, for example, is for everyone to take on what he or she is particularly good at. Always renegotiate these things and adjust your arrangements. When the children grow up, the offspring can be included according to age, and also take responsibility for individual tasks.
  • Down with the ideal: Do not be too perfectionistic with yourself and your family. Set the bar lower: excessive expectations only lead to frustration and unnecessary stress. It may be the purchased cake for the school festival, instead of the homemade cake. Or a frozen meal instead of a freshly cooked meal. Ask yourself where you set priorities and in which areas you are willing to turn a blind eye.
  • Say no more often: If it's too much for you, just say no to an invitation or help at the next flea market. Instead, give yourself a break to recharge your batteries.
  • Support each other: Team up with other parents whenever possible, for example, for rides to school and soccer games, or take turns with after-school care.
  • Organize quality time: Schedule intentional family time and think together about how to make that family time positive. It is not just about the length of time, but to make the most of the time available for the whole family.
  • Talk to each other: Be sure to stay in dialogue with your partner and share your needs. Otherwise, there is a risk that the couple relationship between family and work wear down. From time to time, take stock of the situation: How is the compatibility working out? What is going well? Where are there problems? How can the problems be solved? What concrete changes can you make? How does each partner come to his right and small timeouts?
  • Workplace design: Agree on family-friendly conditions with your employer such as flexible working hours or home office days. Set limits on too much overtime or professional mails after hours and on weekends.
  • Parental health: Also pay attention to your own mental health. Take small time-outs where you can relax. If you feel overwhelmed and exhausted for a long period of time, consult a doctor. Among other things, he can tell you about the possibilities of a mother/father/child cure.

Where can we find help and advice?

Having a family is a great happiness. But sometimes the challenging daily routine can also become a burden. When difficulties get out of hand, seeking the advice of professionals is a great help. The services offered by the Parent Counseling Centers are free of charge to you, and counseling is available in person, by phone, chat or video - anonymously if you wish.

More information Links for further reading

The State Institute for Early Education and Media Competence ifp provides tips for creative time management in the family in its online family handbook.

www.familienhandbuch.de