Overworked and Neglecting Your Kids? Me too.
I’m a classic workaholic and at times you can get to the point where you’re SO focused on work, you can end up neglecting your kids. That’s exactly what happened to me and my kids. I realized, I’d spent ALL my free time on business activities instead of having any fun with my boys. Thankfully, since this period in time, I have made a lot of changes and I no longer invest nearly as much time in my business as I used to, but it’s still an on-going struggle.
I’m writing this at 3:42 AM, so I apologize if it seems a little “unpolished”, but I’ve just had something the Flylady calls a “God breeze”. She refers to Him as the “Midnight Editor” and He sometimes sends her little messages and topics for her essays in the middle of the night. The topic on my mind is the concept of work-life balance and how to be a good mother to my kids.
However, a lot of us don’t really practice the habit of work-life balance – I know I don’t, which is why I’m sitting up here typing in the middle of the night. As many of you know, I recently lost my mother, which tends to make you step back and take a look at yourself and your life and right now, I don’t really like what I see.
I love my stamping business, but there definitely is a dark side of it and I’ve run smack into it tonight. I’m an enthusiastic “all or nothing” type of person and when I throw myself into a new “something” – I tend to throw myself pretty hard and damn the consequences.
How it Feels When You Realize You’ve Been Neglecting Your Kids
In this case the consequences translate into something I called “Neglected Kid Time” or NKT. I look back on how I spent my day today and it’s nothing but NKT. Here it was a beautiful, sunny Saturday and I had my husband and my two wonderful sons right here, waiting to spend some time with me after a looong week of working at my full-time job and yet I sacrificed pretty much the entire day to my part-time hobby business. It was a classic case of neglecting your kids in favor of success in your business, and it made me feel AWFUL.
I had a chance to attend a quarterly downline meeting and even though it wasn’t really my downline, I was invited. I decided to attend, even though I had already spent an entire evening with my my stamping friends a couple of days earlier. Tons of fun, and a nice chance to get out with some great girlfriends and make some fun projects, but again a entire evening of Neglected Kid Time as my kids sat home with my husband and probably watched TV all night.
Then I add in travel time, preparation time, time spent making samples, and waaaay to much time staring at this computer screen at waaay too many stamping websites like this one and I wonder why I have a couple of grouchy, unruly kids with their rooms a mess and their chores and homework not done – duh!
Then I look around at my house that looks like a bomb went off in every room (if Flylady saw this house right now, she’d turn tail and run right back to North Carolina!). I look at my husband who has watched so much football, I think he has green Astroturf imprinted on his eyeballs! Then I look at our two boys who practically have square eye sockets because played so many video games and spent so much time on their computers!
(Yes – we do have HIS, HERS, and KIDS computers as well as separate TV’s for each – that’s a big clue right there!) And I think – boy did I screw up again!
I don’t know about you, but pretty much all my adult life, I’ve felt like that guy you see in the circus with the spinning plates. I have all these plates going and they are labeled WORK (my “real” full-time job), KIDS, MARRIAGE, HOUSEWORK, STAMPIN’ UP!, CHURCH, a whole bunch of others and even a little tiny one called ME. Then I realize that I’ve been spinning the ones called WORK and STAMPIN’ UP! so much this whole year that all the other ones are starting to wobble badly and even start to fall.
So what do I do? I have to admit right now, I don’t really know. Obviously I’m going to have to stop spinning these two plates so much and go over and give the other ones a few extra spins. But how to keep them in balance for the long term? That’s really the $64,000 question, isn’t it? Do I reduce the number of plates, or just figure out some great master plan for spinning them all a little more evenly? I don’t know – maybe that’s not a good question for 4:20 in the morning.
But I do think it’s a good time for us all to ask an important question – what are your kids (if you have any) doing while you are reading this message?
Hopefully by now, mine are spending some Non-Neglected Kid Time with their one and only, ever lovin’ Mom.
