We work hard to provide for our families and to ensure that we ourselves are fulfilled in our careers. We do all that we can to stay on top of current trends within our business and keep our skills polished to ensure that we can deliver to the best of our abilities every single day.
The thing is, we do all of this whilst we are juggling work with parenthood and it can be easy to overlook how much we learn there and how much our skills need to develop as parents, and develop very quickly. We should give ourselves some credit for all that we do and let’s be honest, it is very on-the-job hands-on training, isn’t it? Nothing really prepares you for it and you can often feel like you are feeling your way in the dark on this one. So today we wanted to remind you of all that you have grappled with and adapted to since having children. Here’s how parenting skills give us strength in business, and once you have read through this list, you need to be giving yourself a celebratory high five.
Pregnancy
It starts with the pregnancy. From the moment that you find out that you are pregnant, you are a parent. You already understand that you come second now and you know without a shadow of a doubt that you will do all that you can to protect and love your little one. You read the books, you attend the classes, and even if you manage to completely avoid these, you somehow just know more all of a sudden. It’s funny how quickly you know the size of your baby at any given week, you understand and appreciate how your body works on a completely new level and you become an expert in timing contractions, all of these things that were completely alien to you just a few months ago. The lifelong journey of being a parent and learning a thousand different things has already begun.
Babies and Toddlerhood
From changing diapers to breast feeding to how best to hold and wind your baby, it is utterly amazing how much we suddenly need to know and learn quickly once baby arrives. There is not time to take this learning curve slowly, it’s a steep one and you have to get a handle on basics like this within hours, just when you yourself are recovering from an exhausting physical and emotional experience. Sleep patterns, growth spurts, teething, baby milestones, these all become like second nature to you and just when you think that you have one stage down and understood, it will all change again and you will be dealing with new challenges. Once your little one is on the move, exploring the world as toddlers brings whole new learns for you as you guide them through their early years.
Schools and Education
Before you know it, the baby and toddler years have flown by and you are having to think about their education. Wow, this one is something of a minefield and it really is a big decision. You used to be oblivious to all of this, but now you know local school catchment areas, you know at what age you need to put applications in for kindergarten and phonics sounds are second nature to you now. Your calendar is suddenly overflowing with parent teacher meetings, school clubs, performances that you need to attend and this is all aside from the normal Monday to Friday activities and homework. You will get a handle on the curriculum and along with this, you will be asked a thousand questions on subjects that you really can’t remember covering at school, Google will become your best friend. School life is a busy life for us parents, and we l become magnificent at managing it alongside our work and other commitments.
Technology and Gadgets
We all have our phones and laptops and most of us parents are of the generation where games consoles and video games really began. So you would think that this area wouldn’t really be new knowledge to us, but we really have so much to learn. From the challenge of keeping up with the latest games and then having to watch YouTube videos where they are playing the latest games, there is then the battle of limiting your child’s tech usage and that’s without even considering the minefield that is social media and keeping your child safe on the internet. As technology and social media evolves, we need to do so too in order to keep up.
Friendships and Communication
We cannot choose our children’s friends, which is an often times frustrating truth. Our role here is to guide our kids through their first relationships, and help them as they grow older and they become more complicated. It can be tempting to wade in on their behalves, but we need to be restrained and teach them how best to handle themselves. In order to even get close to being able to offer these levels of guidance, we need to ensure that we have open lines of communication with our kids in the first place. This can present yet another challenge, but it is an important one as our children get older, so we need to lay the groundwork for this one all through their early years to stand us in good stead for the tricky tween and teen years. Diplomacy, tact, honesty and understanding our children are all needed here and it’s one that will test our patience more than once.
We all know that this is just the tip of the iceberg where parenting is concerned. We are diplomats, we are confidantes, we are personal assistants, we are carers, we are chefs, we are taxi drivers, we are teachers, we are playmates, we are all of this and more. Next time that you are doubting yourself in your career you need to stop and think about all that you already do at home, all that you successfully juggle, all largely self-taught too. You have plenty to offer and if you can handle this parenting journey, then you can absolutely drive your business forward and onto that next stage.
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