I was reading through Twitter posts the other day about the possibility of holding down a full time teaching (or even leadership) post and winning at the parenting thing. It got me thinking about the sentence ‘having it all’ – as if managing to do both brings some sort of glorified sense of satisfaction that you can get from having a career and having a bunch of mini me’s running around……. and maybe there is.
But on an entirely practical level, the reality is that the sentence is slightly cut short. The sentence should say ‘having to do it all’ and sadly that isn’t as glamorous, but is much closer to the truth. And yes, while working you aren’t parenting. There are some elements where you aren’t doing it all, but you certainly need to be in charge of organising it all and micromanaging each day so that the wheels don’t fall off.
So this leads me on to how to do this. At some point you kind of need to expect that you, at times, perhaps won’t do either roles well. For a perfectionist this might be a step too far, and for someone who desperately wants to saviour every second of your little ones existence, this may perhaps be emotionally too much of a compromise on what you are prepared to accept- and that is fine.
We all entered teaching for different reasons. Mine, genuinely, when I started nearly 20 years ago, was for the money and good holidays – this isn’t now the reason that I have stayed in the profession, suffice to say I fortunately have grown up and now have a far more altruistic purpose. If really lucky (she says after having several years fertility treatment) you become a parent which brings with it an absolute minefield of unrealistic expectations, ideals etc etc. One thing is for sure, parenting is not what you were expecting. There are massive highs and massive lows. There is a reality that your life is no longer the same, as all of a sudden, you have these little creatures that you would literally die for.
But, doesn’t mean that you should give up your life for them. Make this distinction. On any day, I would ‘take a bullet’ or ‘jump in front of a bus’ to protect my child from harm. My love for them is that strong and I fortunately, have not had to do that, but no question, I would. I wouldn’t however, give up my life for them. In my (nearly fifteen year) journey of having my four sons, my views opinions and perspective on this have changed massively, so please bear with me if you are at a different stage of this path (or on an entirely different path. I have the utmost respect for people who chose to parent full time over work – I hate the term SAHM, it degrades how hard that role is, but some of you people totally rock this, and are the most engaged parents, I could never be).
Truthfully, if I didn’t work, then I would actually be a worse parent than I already am. I know this because I really struggled with my maternity leaves.
Part of the problem, was my initial total underestimation of how my life would change when I became a parent. At that stage of my life I couldn’t afford more than 4 months maternity leave and that probably worked out well. I’m the kind of person who likes the tight routine that the working week provides. But at home, I have no capacity or drive to have the same level of routine and so felt completely out at sea. I go into full on slob mode, would struggle to tell you what day of the week it is or how many days since I last washed my hair. I envied those yummy mummies who looked amazing and spent their days ‘making memories’, whilst I waited at home, clock watching, punctuated by back to back TV rubbish; Homes under the Hammer, This Morning, Loose Women and an afternoon waiting for it to be someone else’s turn to look after my precious little person. I’m just not very good at it, and haven’t really got a huge amount better. My youngest son is only one and the difference now for his life experience, is that he gets dragged along to all sorts of different things, not for his own benefit but because our full on life style. We work full time, have to navigate the extra curricular activities of two teenage sons, have a small holding with horses, sheep, pigs, a dog and a cow. His experience is richer but it isn’t entirely by design.
I love working, I love everything about having my life divided into these totally separate parts. I love my family time with our children, but there is the day to day monotony of the husbandry of sorting PE kits, training schedules, cleaning, replacing toilet rolls and washing. Oh my god the washing – don’t judge, well actually judge all you like, my major life hack is that everything that is washed, goes in the drier – irrespective of the time of year. I am an environmentally bad person in this respect and I cope with this by remembering the fact that I have approximately 1000 Christmas trees in my field to offset my carbon footprint- but understand this is probably both naive and misjudged. However it saves us an absolute tonne of time.
Furthermore, I actually have two washing machines and two driers!!! In your quest to ‘have it all’ you are going to need to be prepared to cut some corners.
There is a possibility that your children don’t need to be washed everyday (shock horror), and I retract this statement to say that some of my children definitely need to be washed every day – but as a teenager he can do that himself. Bedtime routines can be notoriously time consuming. If it’s a choice between a daily bath and a daily book, pick the book. I grew up as a child in the 80’s. I had a weekly bath (how disgusting does this sound??), but I survived, and here I am saying that your children possibly don’t need to be washed everyday either. There are times an emergency bath is a must. My youngest two are prolific vomiters. At this point we operate ‘the emergency bath and bedding change’ protocol. My husband does the bed (I am rubbish with sick) and I deal with the child. Batch cook, have a ‘weekly menu’, we do. It might be boring but makes shopping much easier (even though grocery shopping is on my husband's list). Our eldest two cook 3 nights in the week. This helps.
We also have this unwritten child line management structure. In our working memories, along with our things we remember for work, there would be no capacity for both of us to remember everything for all 4 children. Neither is it necessary.
My husband line manages my 3rd son – he is 5 and is a bit like the NQT of our brood. When picking up him from after school club any important messages about things happening with him get passed to my husband- he deals with them. He sorts attendance at all birthday parties, things required for school, school clothes, lunch box the lot.
We have the two teenagers. These are our middle leaders. They are actually helpful (cooking, looking after the little ones), but need some sort of guidance and physically need taking places. My role is that I remember the stuff for them. I sort logistics of lifts to training and manage their calendars (all of our family events are on our phones and the 4 of us can view them at any point).
My husband line manages me line managing them because I’m sometimes a bit too soft!!
This brings us to the youngest one, the ‘wild one’, and my god he’s wild. We tag team on him. I currently have ‘remembering the stuff’ for him on my list but we share actual care of him. This is essential because he is utterly bonkers. He’s about to turn 2 and he can turn the house upside down in seconds!! I’ve even said, that if he had been my first then he would have been an only child!
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