Guest Post: Finding Balance For Busy Families

When you’re part of a busy family that’s always on the go, time can pass far too quickly. Your children grow up before your eyes in what feels like seconds. With work obligations and other life responsibilities, it’s far too easy to let time slip by and miss the essential family moments that can’t be duplicated. Even your kids may be so inundated with school, homework, extracurricular activities, and friendships that they have no time for family bonding.

Part of a balanced life is making time for your family along with all of your other obligations without feeling overwhelmed. Here are some tips to finding a balanced life in even the busiest family.

Weekly Family Activities

If you don’t make the effort to have quality family time at least once a week, it won’t likely happen on its own. Even if you have to schedule the family activity to ensure it happens, you should. The activity should give you time to bond as a family while having fun.

These are the memories you’ll remember fondly for years to come. Some of the activities can include a weekly board game, a trip to the movies, or even a nice meal out where everybody has the opportunity to treat themselves.

One Real Conversation

As a parent, you definitely know how difficult it can be to get your children to talk to you. “How was your day?” is usually followed up with “fine” and nothing more. If you let enough time go by without a real conversation, you could end up not knowing anything about your loved ones. Take at least five minutes out of your day to ask your family questions about their lives so that you can get to know them better. Surely you can find five minutes before bedtime for a question and answer session.

Don’t Over Schedule

Children these days have so much pressure on them to succeed that sometimes it’s difficult for them to handle the pressure. While you don’t want your kids to have too much idle time, keeping them too busy can lead to major stress. Make sure they have enough time for homework, studying, and maintaining friendships before you go overboard with extracurricular activities. They should be able to have a balance between becoming well-rounded students and fun kids.

 After School Help

If you’re a busy parent, you can’t be expected to be home in time to help your children with their homework every night. But you shouldn’t feel guilty, either. Being a working parent doesn’t mean that your child can’t get the school and homework help they need. You can get them into an after school program or tutoring.

If you have financial worries, there are plenty of tutoring programs that are free for low income families. That way you can ensure your child is getting the educational attention they need without affecting your work life.

Eliminate The Overwhelming Mornings

Mornings can be the most hectic part of the day. Sleeping in for even five minutes can throw off the whole schedule. Things are so busy that it’s easy to miss out on the opportunity to interact with your family over the breakfast table. If you make the school lunches and pack the backpacks the night before, you can ensure that you have extra time in the morning to enjoy breakfast and talk. You can even use a slow cooker to make a healthy breakfast the night before.

Getting sick only complicates life more, and as a parent, it is so hard to watch your child when they feel under the weather. Rather than making up a complicated health routine, simply set out their vitamins along with breakfast each morning. This is an easy way to keep up their immune systems.

If you’re a busy parent, quality time can fall through the cracks. It’s important to maintain a balance between work, responsibilities, fun, and family. When you can finally find that balance, you’ll be a much happier family unit.

Virginia Cunningham is a freelance writer. She tries to find ways to make her family’s lifestyle less chaotic and more simplistic, even in the little things.

[Tweet “Tips for finding balance for busy families”]

Welcome to our weekly Making a Happy Home post. One of my focuses this year is home life. Specifically spending more quality time together, organization, cooking and pre-planning meals, and decorating. To help with that focus, I have this weekly post for all things home-life. If you’d like to contribute as guest poster with this series, feel free to reach out to me.