Working Mom Managing Relationships

This post contains affiliate links. Read my Disclosure Page.

How many times have you, busy working, homeschooling mom have felt guilty that you couldn’t get to sit for a moment to read to your youngest, or watch that show with your husband, or even for not making it to a “coffee date” with your girl friends? I know I have. Plenty of times actually. It is challenging to nurture relationships when you can’t say “no”. What am I talking about? Commitments. Commitments at church, commitments at homeschool co-ops, and even blogging commitments (there, I said it).

Writing this series has made me realized that I’m far from being the so called “Super Mom”, as one of my best friends calls me. I really can’t do it all. This week, I have experienced what it is to swallow my own words and suffer the side effects of over committing myself. I’ll admit to you, the period of transition from when I switched to a full-time job, was more tolerable than what this spring semester has been. Why? Because back then, I didn’t have so much on my plate. I did the smart choice of leaving co-ops, and sticking to just my commitment at church, work, and homeschool.

This year we returned to our Classical Conversations (CC) Community after a two-year break (we needed to adjust to me working full time). That right there was enough. I shouldn’t have taken the commitments of organizing academic nights at the homeschool association we are part of. I did it the previous year and it was more tolerable since we were only in a co-op that met every other Thursday for a period of 8 classes each semester. It was wise to drop that co-op commitment prior to returning to CC, but I should have also not kept the academic night coordinator responsibility. No only that, I also took coordinating duties for our graduating kindergarten group in the association since my youngest will be graduating this semester (yes, you are allowed to roll your eyes, I deserve it. I’m rolling mine too as I write this).

You can be as well planned and organized as you can be, but when you overcommit yourself, something falls apart, and when that happens, your stress levels reach epic proportions and begin to affect the efficacy in which you deal with all your other responsibilities. Some of those important ones, has to do with your relationships.

In a period of two months, I suddenly began sacrificing family time to accomplish the tasks required from my commitments. Now, I’m in the thick part of the soup, and I just have to swallow hard and finish what I have left to do. Can I just say that I’m so ready for this semester to end? With all these being said, I do have my few cents to share with you on managing relationships. It has worked before for me, and I will be implementing it again as soon as this semester ends.

Nurturing Family

I do keep a couple of days in the week, when I’m off from work, where we have a family night. We go out to eat, then watch a movie at home, or take-out dinner and a movie, play board games, simply play, have interesting conversations, etc. just relaxed evenings at home, where we do as best as possible to stay away from social media, and more present with our family.

Do take my advise, do as best as possible, to not schedule yourself every single day with a commitment. You have a very important commitment with your family already. Our purpose with this home educating lifestyle, is to bring up well rounded children that can enter society as individuals that can have the ability to positively contribute to it.

Marriage

Usually, after we put the kids to bed, my husband and I do our best to spend quality and intimate time together, as often as it is possible. This has been a major benefit in our relationship. I wrote more about this in “Making Marriage Work with an Opposite Schedule”.

Children

Remember that when you are doing school with your children, you are also life schooling. Your interactions should be as normal as possible, maximizing that time to bond with them. Get into the learning. Feel the story when you read aloud cuddling, show excitement (and really get into it) as you learn in science about the wonderful things God has made. The subjects should be an integration of life, so that they embed in their minds that learning is a way of life and of bonding with family and everything that surrounds us which is creation of God.

Friendships

We can’t stay away from people, many times our friends need us and we certainly can use their company, listen to their opinions and suggestions, and to support each other in our walks of life. Try to meet for a coffee date with your friends at least once a month. Make sure you can schedule it during a week that is not booked with more than two commitments (or just even no more than one). My friend Nicole is one of my friends that I can’t always get together with, but we stay in touch by reading books “together” that we discuss via Messenger. We are both always in the look out for books that we can both read at the same time (We are knowledge seekers. Yes, you can call us nerds if you like, but we do share a passion for home education, academics, and personal growth). We are currently reading Sarah Mackenzie’s “The Read Aloud Family”. It is so good, we recommend it to you!

Sally Clarkson in her book (co-authored with her daughter Sarah) “The Life Giving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming” writes that “Without the ability to value honor and to show respect to others, there is no pattern for bowing our knees before God. How can we have a pathway in our brains for humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God if we have never learned the value of respecting or honoring those we can see?”

So you see, we need to value and honor those in our lives, because they are our personal ministry. I’ll also add, that to also have a loving heart for others, we need to nurture one of the best relationships there is: Our personal relationship with our almighty God. When we have in our hearts to stay committed to that relationship, everything else flourishes, because from that relationship, you only get positive outcomes.

God

I’m writing it last, but it is not. When we schedule personal time with God, even as busy working moms, reading his Word and keeping a consistent devotional and study guide that can build up our souls, we are more capable to take on all the duties and responsibilities that come our way. God helps us to tackle them even when we overcommit ourselves, and He also finds the way to make us aware and to recognize when we are doing too much, better yet, He helps us find a solution and create a better plan for the future.

I hope this gave you an idea of how to make time for the important people in your life. For a full month on successful homeschooling schedules of working moms visit:

*As you read above, by all means I don’t have the perfect organized life. Sometimes I fail (more than I would like to), but with prayer, motivation, and dedication these systems work. Usually it requires building a habit in order to have workable time saving systems in place.*

“We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us” (Phil. 4:13), but we can’t do them all at once.