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Submitted by Theodosia Wicktor Ahern
I'm 80 years old and raised three sons. Unlike most women my age, I worked and went to school while they were growing up. I'm sure that my work helped them become the strong, self-reliant and honorable men they are today. All three of them have married strong independent women who worked while they raised their children, and all three of my boys turned out to be excellent home chefs too. It's probably because they had a working mother.
My sons were always interested in what I was doing, or where I was working. I think that contributed to their respect for women and appreciation for family. They turned out well in spite of, or maybe partly because of, the roles I had outside our home.
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Submitted by Rick Steffens
One challenge that confronted me every day at work was determining what time to go home. I get great satisfaction from finishing a task and like to start every morning with a clean slate, but many days, when my meetings were over and it was time to go home, I found myself facing a backlog of action items. At the same time, I felt a strong pull to get home and spend time with my wife and kids. To figure out where to draw the line and when to go home, I created a process so that I could defend my decisions to my kids, my wife, my boss, and most importantly, myself. Interestingly, in the end I never needed to defend them to anyone but myself. Here's what I did. At the end of the day, if someone or something was pulling me to stay in the office, I would imagine sitting down with my kids and telling them why I'd needed to work late and miss out on spending time with them. If I felt good about that conversation, then I stayed and focused on the task. But way more often than not, imagining that conversation just didn’t feel right, so I went home. On the occasions I did decide to work late to take care of something, I felt better about it because I knew that there had been many more times that I'd put work on the back burner to be with my family. This process enabled me to show my family that they were important to me, and to show them that work requires sacrifices sometimes too.
An interview with working mum Jenna as published at Digital Motherhood
Jenna has been back at work for ten months after spending ten months at home with her new baby. READ an interview with her to hear how it's going. Related story:
On many Monday mornings (or Tuesdays for that matter :) I used to wake up with my mind spinning: “I am tired. I don’t want to go to work. How much longer do I have to go through this? Maybe I should just quit my job.”
But despite my inner dialogue, I managed to get up, get dressed, help my kids get dressed, make breakfast, and then, luckily, after the first cup of coffee, I felt better and more energized as I started my day. One thought that really helps me get through my days now are the words a colleague (also a working mom) once told me: Take it one day at a time. Submitted by Paul Helbling
After I was divorced, I had custody of our four children. The youngest was eight years old at the time. It worked. Not necessarily perfectly, but that just meant that there were a lot of learning experiences along the way. As an educator, I think that was a good thing. One way we made it work was to require each person to take responsibility for their own laundry. As I said, it worked. There were some issues, but I didn't get involved with any of them. When there was yelling, I ignored it. When I needed to do my own laundry and found a load of clothes that had been left in the washer, dryer, or both, I just moved them into a basket. Years later, when I remarried, I shared this strategy with my new wife who was still raising her youngest (12 years old at the time). She was surprised by the idea, but gave it a try. It worked for her too. Even when she found clean clothes that had been in the washer for two days. Ann Landers probably said it best, "It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings."
Submitted by Rick Steffens
When my two kids were in grade school, I needed to travel for work a lot. To be sure I stayed connected with them in a meaningful way, I wanted to establish a fun, special and easily repeatable activity that would make it clear to them that our relationship was one of my top priorities. After some discussion, we decided I would take each of them out for lunch once a month.
When we were just starting out, I didn't really think it was a big deal. But every time I picked one of them from school, the teacher would tell me that they were really excited. |
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