As a working mom, you know that it can be difficult to spend good, quality time with your family. You may feel guilty about working late or leaving the house early, and if you work from home you might feel bad when you have to tell the kids to quieten down and let you work, especially if they are craving your attention. With everyone so busy and careers so hectic, there will be times that this happens, and feeling guilty will only make you feel worse; it won’t solve anything.
What will help the situation is if you can spend more time with your family throughout the week. Even when you’re working, if you can allocate specific times for work and other times for family, and ensure that the two don’t mix, you can settle back into a good work-life balance, and everyone in the household will be much happier.
Here are some ideas for spending more time with your family so that you won’t be tempted to check your work emails, or sneak in some extra meetings when you’re not supposed to.
Arrange A Family Night
By setting aside one specific night each week as your family night, you will be able to always have at least this time with your family, even if you are super busy for the rest of the week. Which day you choose is down you, and will depend on the different after-school clubs, sports, and other activities that your family takes part in, as well as when they might go out with their friends as they get older.
There are numerous things you can do on family night to make it special, whether you stay in the house or go out somewhere else.
You could:
- Watch a movie together, complete with snacks and popcorn. Snuggle up on the sofa under blankets and drink hot chocolate in the winter and homemade lemonade (that you made together) in the summer.
- Go out to dinner somewhere new each week, trying different cuisines and exploring new places.
- Have a game night – play in teams if the kids are too young to play individually
- Make crafts. This is the night where you can let your imagination go wild and make a mess as you create some fantastic paintings, models, and other craft ideas.
Book A Family Vacation
Being able to book a family vacation every year is hugely important. This is time you can really, truly spend together without any distractions. An emergency won’t come up at work that you suddenly need to deal with (and if it does, it will be someone else’s problem when you’re not at home), you won’t be distracted by the household chores that still need to be done, and everyone will be a lot more relaxed than usual as the vacation works to de-stress them and make them calmer.
You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money on this vacation, and if you do need to borrow, you can always check Bonsai Finance for the best deals on credit cards and loans. The important thing is spending time together somewhere different than home.
What you want from a family vacation is to take home some wonderful memories for both you and your partner and children. You can go camping, take a cruise, head to a park like Disneyland, or stay on the beach for two weeks. Do what will work for your family, and make sure that everyone will enjoy their time away.
Exercise Together
Exercising regularly is massively important if you want to be as fit and healthy as possible. It’s important for you, but it’s also important for the rest of your family too; everyone should exercise when they can (or, even better, make room for exercise in their schedule).
Since this is something you should be doing anyway, why not make exercising a family thing? You don’t have to join an exercise class to get fit and healthy; just going outside and running around playing games can be perfectly adequate. This way, you (and the rest of your family) are getting the right amount of exercise you need, and you’re also having fun together. It won’t feel like exercise, but it will be doing you a lot of good.
Read Together
Spending quality time as a family doesn’t have to be loud and energetic. Reading is a wonderful pastime that has been shown to increase the reader’s memory and cognitive ability. So it’s great to show your children how important reading is to their lives. If you sit and quietly read a book, they will want to follow suit.
Alternatively, you can read one book together. This is great for bedtime when you can carve out an extra 10 to 15 minutes together, one on one. This is a special time and will help your child fall asleep more easily. Reading a bedtime story can be done both ways; you read to them and they read to you. Take it in turns.
Make Dinner
Dinner is another task that needs to be done each day, unless you are going out to eat. Since this is the case, it makes sense that your children get involved. This is the perfect opportunity for you to talk to them about their day, and to teach them some skills in the kitchen. Plus, even a fussy eater is more inclined to eat something if they’ve helped to create it themselves. Eating all together at the table at least a few times a week is also a great way to spend more time with your family. You will find out a lot more about them this way, and it’s a memorable experience for the whole family.
If you’re not what you might call a confident chef, don’t worry; you and your children can take a class to teach you the basic skills in the kitchen, and as a bonus, you get to spend even more time together.
