How to Balance Parenting with Personal Care
Your kids are always the priority – as it should be! But sometimes a little “me time” is essential, so we’ve created a guide to help you balance the priorities of parenting with a bit of self-care. After all, if you want to take care of your children, you’ve got to take care of yourself!: Just like in our professional lives, a successful and fulfilling personal life is all about time management.
Take a little “Me Time”
Me time is exactly what it sounds like: it’s time for you to do something indulgent. It doesn’t matter if that means taking a hot bath, an extra-long shower or maybe even a lunch break, coffee break, or simply sitting down to read a book. Either way, it’s important that you make time for at least one me time break per day.
Make Time for “Us”
Us time is also important. This is time you can spend with your spouse or close friends, and it can be a date night or even a simple lunch together. This can sometimes be harder to plan, but we promise it’ll be worth it when that coffee date or games night arrives!
All in The Family Time
Most importantly, you have family time. This is certainly the biggest commitment, and you’ll need to plan for family time on a daily and weekly basis. It can sometimes take effort to ensure that time is spent with the whole family, but we all know just how special it is. Family time is what you make of it; it can be story time, building a pillow fort, or playing board games/puzzles. Make time for small family moments each day and a “big” family activity, like a picnic or day trip, at least once a week.
Make Time for the Dirty Work
You need to plan for the things you need to do so that you have time for the things you really want to do.
It’s important that these needs are covered on a daily basis. Always try to commit to one need per day. This can be 15 minutes of nightly power-cleaning or meal prep for the next day, but once it’s routine it makes a huge difference and allows you to spend more time as a family, couple and alone.
Balancing parenting with your own individualism can sometimes feel almost impossible, but with time, it gets easier! If you break up your time and plan ahead, nothing will stop you from having me, us, and family time.
Let us help you make this a reality. Schedule a Parent Orientation to learn about how Kumon can help foster routines which will help you and your child find the balance.