Tips for Doing the Impossible: Juggling Parenthood and Your Career

I’m a grandparent. My toddler grandkids lived with me for a year, so I know what I’m talking about. To juggle parenthood and your career, you need to recognize when both sides are tugging you too hard and have a strategy for easing your responsibilities on one side, so you can attend to the other. You’ve got to be willing to let slip a little, so the other can thrive. Here are my tips:

1. If money can fix the problem, spend money. If it’s your company’s busy season, and you’re overstretched, hire a temp. If you’ve served your family frozen pizza six nights in a row, order meal kits for a few weeks. I know money is tight at work and at home. But we should be grateful if we have problems money can fix because the other kind are more serious. If spending money can help you juggle, find the money and spend it for a short time. The relief is worth it.
2. The more you juggle, the more you’re learning about juggling. Throughout your life, you’re juggling lots of things. At work, you juggle your goals and your boss’s goals. You juggle competing business development risks, such as taking on too many clients or having too few. At home, you juggle your parents’ needs and your in-laws’ needs. Juggling parenthood and your career isn’t a different kind of juggling, so use what you’ve learned in other aspects of your life.
3. You have no free time. Grieve it and get over it. Before kids, you could go for a run, read a novel, or watch a whole movie. Accept that your free time is gone…for now. It won’t be gone forever. The kid who hated Dr. Seuss books turns out to love Harry Potter. That’s an hour of quiet, and you can watch half a movie! Your employer adds another telecommuting day each a week. Without the commute, you’ve got time for a jog. It’s easier to endure the loss of your free time if you tack the words “for now” to the end of your sad statements. Try saying, “I have no time to go to the gym…for now” or “I have to postpone that camping trip again…for now.”
4. Ask for what you need. From your employer and your family. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask your employer or your family for help. Say this to your boss: “I can handle the web redesign project this year, but I need help. Could Jason manage our subcontractors, so I can focus on the redesign?” Say this to your spouse: “Helping Katy complete her math assignment takes an hour every night. Could you do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays? That will give me about 30 minutes more at the end of my workday.” Yes, asking is risky. Your boss could say no and think less of you because you asked. Your spouse could say no, causing painful thoughts about whether parenthood responsibilities are fairly shared. Or they could both say yes.
5. Have an unconventional work life, family life, or both. It’s harder to balance parenthood and career when you’re trying to do both in the typical way. So, be unconventional. Reject the conventional 9 to 5. Work 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 7:30 to 9 p.m. Or step off the corporate ladder and open your own online business. Your salary may take a hit, but your workdays will be more predictable, and your family will be happier. Be an unconventional parent. Sign your kid up for one extracurricular activity, not three. Give yourself a time out when your kid misbehaves instead of giving the kid one. If being conventional is a burden, don’t be.

Juggling parenthood and career can be heartbreaking because you want to be great at your job, and you owe your kids every effort to be great at home. In difficult times, stay steady. You can do almost any difficult thing for a short time. Consider the difficult times a type of “30-day trial period.” Do your best to cope for 30 days, then find a new way to move forward.

Leslie O’Flahavan is a get-to-the point writer and an experienced, versatile writing instructor. E-WRITE owner since 1996, Leslie leads customized writing courses for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Leslie helps the most stubborn, inexperienced, or word-phobic employees at your organization improve their writing skills, so they can do their jobs better. As a result of her work, Leslie’s clients improve their customer satisfaction ratings, reduce training cycles, improve productivity, and limit legal risk. Leslie is a LinkedIn Learning author of six writing courses including Writing in Plain Language, Technical Writing, and Writing for Social Media. She’s the cohost of the monthly LinkedIn Live broadcast “Fix This Writing!”

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