Health & Fitness Tools

Phenomenal Guidelines On Juggling Work And Family Over School Holidays

12th August, 2010 - Posted by health news - No Comments

For working parents and working mums, who tend to be the primary organisers, school holidays can represent a planning nightmare! On your agenda will be six weeks of available time, during which you have to focus on the irreplaceable value represented by this quality family time together, full of bonding opportunities. Doesn’t it seem that the months and years just fly by and you are all too aware how, before you turn around, the kids will be adults and on their way into the future. In an ideal world, you would want to spend the entire summer holiday with the children as well, taking time to soak in the summer. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a six-week holiday as well?!

Then reality strikes home. If you are self-employed, you realise that holidays are few and far between anyway as you work to develop your business.

If you are employed, you understand that your boss cannot afford to be without you for the entire period of time either, but hopefully he or she is understanding and at least a little bit flexible, as this will make all the difference.

You have important decisions ahead and professional coaching can help you to unravel the answers.

You may need to juggle your parenting time between mum and dad and this is the time to see just how flexible your respective employers are. Some might suggest that mum takes her two weeks first and dad takes his when she gets back to work. While this might “cover” for four weeks, it is hardly an ideal situation. For the younger children, this could be simply confusing and if you learn anything from online coaching advice, you know that you need to try and bring together that all important family fabric as much as possible.

Maybe this is time to investigate the concept of telecommuting, which is becoming much more popular and might be a solution for you? Talk with your supervisor and see if it might be possible for you to operate from home over the summer holidays, or at least during part of this vacation, so that you can be much more flexible and allocate some of those precious hours to the children. If you are thinking along these lines, you should try and introduce this concept slowly before the holidays arrive, to show just how well it could work.

As the kids get a little older, you will find that there are many holiday clubs on offer – a whole range from football to dance and drama. Plan as far in advance as you can as the best holiday clubs get snapped up relatively early.

The summer holidays call for a great deal of creativity on your part, when you have to fit in all your work duties and demands and make sure that you plan accordingly to make this time as smooth as possible. Now, more than ever, you need to look for professional coaching help to ensure that you are not out of your depth and remember that there are many online coaching resources available these days.

Amanda Alexander is the Director of Coaching Mums and a widely renowned ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums across the globe who long for more time, balance and fulfilment in their busy lives. Download our free eBook especially for working mums with 5 easy ways to achieve balance.