In the busyness of life, it is next to impossible to balance every aspect of life. From an adult’s perspective, the term for what people have been trying to achieve was called Work-Life balance. Organisations later changed it to Work-Life Harmony, for even they know that it is super difficult to achieve the former, while the latter seems more plausible.
So we devote a lot of time to our work. We also strive to carve out time for ourselves. If you are a parent, you may have an additional goal in life to carve out time for your children too. With a finite number of hours each day, how do we do that in as balanced a way as possible?
My personal answer (disclaimer: this may not be appropriate or even relevant to you) is to combine a portion of time where I get to spend for myself and with my children as well. How? Look for a pastime, a hobby, a field of interest, that is common between yourself and your children. Then, every hour you spend doing that activity, meets the needs of our own “me” time as well as qualifies for actual quality time you spend with your children.
Bonus: if you are a parent who wants to take time to educate your children on the rights and wrongs of life and you are also having trouble scheduling it into your already busy lives, try including it into the activity above too (3 in 1).
My current solution for the 3-in-1 activity above (it is current because things change over time) is playing board games with the kids, and sometimes the wifey/mum joins as well.
I allocate approx 1 hour – 1.5 hours about 2 times a week (a week night and a weekend night) for this family time. It is kind of scheduled, so that the space is not purposely filled with something else. How it works: The kids will make sure their homework for that day is done and the adults will try to finish their work tasks before that allocated time. Then we kind of democratically pick a game to play for the night (a shorter one on week nights and a longer one on weekend nights).
Does this happen every week? Not always, but when it does (about 75% of the time), we have a great time of fun, laughter, learning about one another, releasing stress (both for the adults and kids) and a time of learning too. Not just learning strategy for gaming purposes, but learning how to win well, how to lose well and a myriad of other points as well.
You can do this with any other kind of shared activity that generally everyone enjoys (not necessarily passionate about) where there is time spent together doing something fun and building memories together.
Anyway, I hope it helps. I gotta go and set up the next game session now…bye!
Note: Want recommendations of games to play? You know where to find me 🙂
To know more about John, Click Here!