Last night, I was talking with my grandmother and we were discussing parenting through the ages.
She said to me, “The problem today is that parents want to be happy in addition to being parents! We stopped our hobbies when we became parents, that was the way it was.”
We want to be happy while being parents. We want it all! We want to have our cake and eat it too! We want to be fulfilled in a job that we can relate to. We want to stay healthy by going to the gym regularly and eating healthy food that we have prepared. We want a hobby that will make us feel good. We want to have quality time with our children. We want to keep the flame in our marriage alive through all of this. We want to be happy. We want our children to be happy, our marriage to be strong, our spouse to be happy, we want it all.
Is that a problem?
Our first reaction was to say no.
We have a right to happiness. Of course we have a right to happiness! However, wanting it too much can be problematic at times. Indeed, we want it so much that we never manage to reach our goals. This causes us to experience endless anxiety as well as repetitive failures.
In real life and not on Instagram, is there really a parent who manages to work full time, play a sport every day, always cook meals and snacks, be there every morning and evening with their children to play with them, have a romantic time every week, have a house that is always ultra clean and tidy, etc?
The truth is, no, no one can do it.
Our expectations are too high.
We think we can do what no one before us has been able to do. Even our grandmothers, who were mostly housewives, often had to give up their hobby. Far be it from me to encourage you to go down this road, but for a successful work-life balance, we absolutely must lower our expectations. The dishes might sometimes or often overflow into the kitchen sink. Lego may be lying around. It is up to you to determine your priorities and stick to them. If your priority is sports, you may need to lower your expectations of how tidy the house is. If your priority is cleaning, you may need to work a little less or do some cleaning when you spend time with your children (they often like to help, at least before they reach their teens!)
As a new school year begins, it’s a good time to take stock.
Determine what your priorities are and plan your schedule around those priorities while remaining realistic.
If you have too many priorities and not enough time, you may want to consider getting help and delegating some tasks. You could ask a sibling to take your youngest to dance class.
You could also hire someone to help you with household chores, etc. The goal is simply to level out your expectations of yourself so that you are not constantly failing.
You only have 24 hours in a day, remember that!
