Laura, a working mother of three young daughters, describes the guilt of balancing full-time work with parenting. She found that establishing consistent daily routines reduced both her emotional pressure and her kids' questioning, giving structure to their days.
Any mother struggling to balance a career and raising young children will know how hard it is. Laura first approached me for help when her daughters were little, and she's here to tell you why she reached out.
You were so helpful and so thoughtful around how to manage kids that at the time were 2, 3, and 4. I was saying, I work full-time, my husband works full-time, and I felt a lot of guilt around that. I just felt like I was overcompensating. When I was with them because I was ridden with guilt. And there's a lot of questions around, you know, where are you, mummy? And what, why weren't you there to pick me up today?
I know one of the things that you found really useful was talking about consistency around routines. Sure. And what would you say was helpful about that?
I was coming home to try and do the bath time, the reading the book, getting them into wind-down mode before, before they went to sleep. But then I was also getting calls from work. I was feeling very torn. So one minute I'd be trying to help them, then I'd be quickly taking calls. And then one piece of advice you said was, if you were on a plane right now, would anyone be able to contact you? And you've just got to be very, very strict yourself on making sure that that routine that the kids need and they crave so much is implemented. And so you need to say to everybody, you know, there is only so many hours in the day. I'm a working mother. I am not free because that's my time with my children. And I think being very disciplined around that was something that was super helpful for me.
