Balancing Work, Kids, and Family Life When Working From Home

By Christy Tanner

One of the harder aspects of freelancing from home is balancing work and family. Balancing work, kids, a spouse, chores, and everything else is not an easy task. Work and family are both very important to us and finding a balance is sometimes hard to figure out how to do. It isn’t like it used to be when the wife would stay at home while the husband would be the bread winner. In fact, in 50% of family households, both parents work. There has been research to show that once a child is born into the family, men and women tend to move towards a more traditional lifestyle. In other words, once a child is born, women tend to be the one to stay home and the men are usually the one to go back to work. However, if you truly want to successfully balance multiple roles in your family, then you will need to become even less traditional than most families.

Obviously, as we add more roles to our repertoire it becomes even harder on us and adds stress to our lives. This stress comes from two sources, known as role strain and spillover. Role strain comes from the responsibility of one role interfering with other roles that you are performing. Let’s say you are working on a project, but then you child comes to you needing immediate attention. This is called role strain. It occurs when you have to stop one thing because you are being pulled towards another role. Spillover happens when relationships and conditions from one area of your life affects another area of our life. Perhaps you have a difficult client who wants to call you numerous times every day to change a project around. This constant disruption affects your family life because you are spending more time on the client than you are with them. Constant customer disruptions can make it difficult to balance your family and work life. However, when either role strain or spillover occurs, you can work through them.

Following are four ways that you can work to balance your work and family life:

- Clarify values

- Set goals that are realistic

- Manage time and priorities correctly

-Understand control and how to let go

It is very difficult as a freelancer to find the right balance of a successful career, happy kids, a happy husband, happy friends, happy family, a clean house, clean laundry, and every other item in your life that has to be managed correctly and efficiently. If you follow these 4 rules, then you will be on your way to easily balancing your work and family life. The rest of this article will discuss how to achieve these 4 steps to achieve a happy and successful balanced life.

Clarify Values

Values are our guides to our actions that normally result in a better life experience. In order to clarify values, we need to manage our family and work demands properly. What exactly is a value? A value is “a principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desired”. The fact of the matter is that we don’t really know what all our values are. Some values are unconscious and unknown, and in deed will stay this way throughout our lives. The only time that we really question a value is if we are taking on a new role, or perhaps experiencing a conflict that will bring the value to light. However, most of the time, the unknown values are the ones that cause us the most stress. In order to ease our daily stress, we should become more aware of all of our values.

At times we even have values that conflict, such as going to work early, but feeling guilty that the kitchen wasn’t cleaned first. This guilt might give you daily problems, depending on whether or not you cleaned the kitchen. Or, maybe when you wake up late, you get stressed out because you wanted to start working on a project early, and now you are running behind. You can ease role strain by modifying or even prioritizing your values. We may not be able to get completely rid of stress from values, but we may control it easier.

Set Goals That are Realistic

Goals are very important to us; they help us define how our time is used. Goals may be ideas such as “I want to be a football player”, or “I want to freelance”. Values are part of our goals. In fact, values underlie a goal, giving us an extra push that we might need to reach a goal. We also have relational goals, such as “I want to have a good relationship with my child.” we may ease stress by putting some of our goals on hold, while we reach other goals. We also need to be aware of expectations, attitudes, and perceptions they can affect the way that values and goals are achieved, and how we handle the balance of work and family. Also, You should try to set goals in which you will have the most control over the outcome. There is nothing more disappointing than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons that are beyond your control.

Manage Time and Priorities Correctly

It is very important that we set our priorities correctly so that we can manage our time effectively. It is difficult to work at home, get what we need to get done, and then take care of our family in a way that will make everyone happy. Even our friends need to be factored into this whole layout as well. We need to find time for friends if we want to keep them in our lives. At times, there seems to be no time for leisure, and you just can’t imagine where you could find that 30 minutes to call a friend. We can learn to be more efficient in using our time, as long as we learn how to schedule our lives more effectively. When you don’t schedule the activities that move you towards your goals, especially the relational goals, your goals will be harder to reach at times.

Ways to Manage Your Time Differently … First Define Goals, and Then Ask the Following Questions:

Another way to change your life around a bit is to try a different approach to managing your time. Think outside the box and create another way to work out your life tasks.

- Do my expectations foster or interfere with reaching a goal?

- Do I balance my concrete and relational goals?

- How can I tell when I reached a goal?

- How do I reach this specific goal today?

Understanding Control and Letting Go

A lot of people feel like they are in control when they do everything themselves. But we may be holding ourselves back from reaching our goals by pushing everyone else away. Think about spreading out work so that you can accomplish your needs. Even though it may be tough at times to do so, try to delegate and prioritize work as it will help you in the long run.

Communication is Important When Changes are Being Made. Here Are Other Ways to Balance Work and Family:

- Have family meetings

- Make a weekly or monthly schedule that will show both concrete and relational goals

- If something doesn’t work then revise your plans

- You need to understand what you can control and what you can’t control

- Make sure that you always have your sense of humor

- Effective management is not static, but an evolving process.

Balancing both your family and work life is not always easy. As a mother and freelancer myself, I understand how hard it can be at times. But I know one thing that is true, I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I have been lucky enough to watch my children grow up so far. I didn’t have to drop them off at daycare, instead I learned how to schedule my life in a way that I could always be there for them. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with going to work and putting your children into daycare. I just knew from the first look at my child’s eyes, after touching his little fingers for the first time, or the first time he caressed my arm while I was feeding him, that I didn’t want to ever go to work and leave him with someone else. I DID land up having to go back to work for a little while, but I figured out how to start my own business, and then I was able to be back with him within a year. Working from home, especially with little kids all over the place, is a very difficult task. But it is also the best decision that I have ever made. As long as you always keep your positive attitude, you will be able to overcome the hurdles that you encounter. Good luck.

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