Reflect

Georgie specialises in coaching professionals at the pivotal return-to-work transition point after parental leave, is author of The Working Parent Equation: Balancing Small Humans and Big Careers, and is a mum of two.

Autumn: season of mists and bumpy transitions (still). How was September for you? It appears that John Keats and I have slightly different areas of focus. I can appreciate the beauty of the season, but the lived experience has felt a bit less "mellow fruitfulness" and more like a spin in the tumble dryer. For working parents, it’s all too easy to feel squashed by the hectic schedule, especially if your child is going through a transition like starting school or entering secondary school.

As October dawns, leaving the shiny back-to-school front door photos in the rear-view mirror, we step into the longer-term reality of the new term. There is the realisation that it's all systems go without much let-up until Christmas, at work, at home and at school. If you have a child who has made the leap to secondary school, the crunch of gears will have felt particularly stark. As we explored recently in Returning to Rhythms, this transition can bring plenty of excitement, but also new challenges for children and parents alike. It's not unreasonable to assume that some of us are still feeling discombobulated.

Perhaps you feel impatient that the sense of ‘new’ is going on longer than you’d hoped? Maybe you feel impatient on your child’s behalf that a comfortable rhythm still eludes them, because you’re longing for them to be happy and feel settled? The reality is that the ‘new’ feeling can go on for quite a long time and has different phases.

Hands up, I underestimated the duration of the secondary school transition. It took a whole term for us to feel like our daughter had settled well, for us to breathe out and stop wondering at 3am if we’d made the right decision. Personally, I struggled with the switch for a lot longer than a few weeks.

It was the ongoing plethora of school communications coming through various new channels; the expectation that everything will be found through a device no one really knows how to use; the pressure to ensure they have all the right kit on the right day and not let the side down; school bus journeys; the loss of the familiar parents' network at the old place; increased expectations of homework; music and sports practices at unearthly hours; the emotional tug of hoping they make good friends and wondering if they will last; knowing how to encourage a child to get stuck into opportunities without overdoing it; feeling disheartened by an interaction we've had; juggling the schedule and commitments of other siblings too, not to mention your own.

It’s a noisy world of expectation and opinion for working parents. Advice comes at you from all sides, plus there’s that shrill inner voice telling you that you’re failing on all fronts. Read on for some ways to put your own needs higher up the to-do list and find a way to balance loving your children and your career without losing yourself along the way.

Motivate

It's wonderful and it's terrible. We can't do it for them anymore. We need to let them get to the right place at the right time, probably fail a few times and try again, allow them to find good friends of their own and make wise decisions on what they will and won't do. It takes time. The same goes for us. Maybe we are now much more on the sidelines of school and we may well feel like fish out of water.

How we feel and how we manage ourselves through change is as much of a priority as supporting our children through it all. Inevitably, our own needs tend to linger at the bottom of the list and our energy is directed to ensuring everyone else is OK. However, you matter!

We're better able to be the rock when we're shoring up our own foundations. In my coaching with working parents, we explore sustainable ways of succeeding, the importance of resourcing ourselves for the long race and the increase in effectiveness which becomes possible when we are putting our needs at least on the list (and even better, nearer the top!).

Support

1. Reframe to appreciation and embrace the power of "yet". Focus on all the things you are doing well. Resist filtering out all the positives in search of the balls that got dropped. What can you appreciate about how you’re managing things?

Identify the things that your child is doing well. If your inner perfectionist is whispering that x, y or z didn't go exactly to plan or they forgot some homework or they haven’t made the sports team, switch your filter to all the things that they succeeded with and draw their attention to these.

Dial up your appreciation ratio internally and externally. The Gottman Institute identifies the magic number for successful couple relationships as a 5:1 ratio. That’s five seconds of time in a positive mode for every one second of time in a negative space. It’s been translated to mean five moments of appreciative feedback to every one moment of ‘could do better’. Quite a high bar for most relationships, I’d warrant! But it’s a useful prompt for our interactions with our children too. Some days a 1:1 ratio feels ambitious when we’re all under pressure, but finding more ways to appreciate your child at this fragile time can pay dividends in confidence. Maybe they have been brave, shown kindness or had a moment of being organised. Call it out.

Remember the power of "yet" (for example, you don't yet know how to find the right notes on the new school portal but you will soon). Carol Dweck defines a growth mindset as the ability to reframe perceived failures as opportunities to learn and grow. Lean on the word “yet”.

2. Balance the voices. Your inner critic, that harsh and critical voice in your head, has more than its fair share of the airtime so let some other perspectives have a say. What about your inner experiencer, the voice that knows you’re learning and doing your best in difficult circumstances?

If it’s hard to find that version of you, summon up the person in your life who is the voice of reason, the person who smiles on you, knows your strengths and focuses on your successes. What would they say to you about what's gone well and what you're doing effectively right now? Write down the words they'd say and reflect on them. If you can, call them or meet up with them to hear it from the horse's mouth. We all need a cheerleader to help us find a more balanced view.

3. Ask for help. If you have someone who can give you a hand, then ask them! If you're resisting accepting offers of support from friends or family or feel it's a sign of failure to ask, you’re denying others the pleasure of being of genuine help.

As my own cheerleader said to me when I sent out the emergency bat signal last Sunday (because it looked like I'd need a TARDIS to get through the week without some assistance), it's unnecessary to battle on alone if there is someone who is willing to make things easier. If I forward-wind the clock and imagine my own daughter juggling the impossible in 30 years' time, I'd absolutely want her to be reaching out for help and support.

4. Build in recovery. The mental load is infamously high for working parents. Again, asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Start that conversation with whomever you need to talk to about the pressures and how it can be shared more evenly. Your wellbeing cannot loiter at the bottom of your to-do list. Even small steps forward such as a 30-minute online exercise routine, a meal out with a good friend or simply making time to eat lunch each day can make a difference.

Take micro breaks in the day. It doesn't need to be a day off. We're talking five-minute recovery breaks during the working day. If your to-do list is longer than your arm, your logistics look like army manoeuvres and your brain/heart are exploding with new information or emotions, nobody wins if you go down. When the inner critic tells you to keep working harder, deliberately take a walk around the block, go out to get a drink, do some stretches, take some deep lungfuls of fresh air, throw a ball for the dog for three minutes. Calming the system down in the moment is far more powerful than we think in accessing our most rational and effective thinking and, consequently, behaviour. So, treat it as valid, essential activity.

5. Allow yourself to feel. It's OK not to be feeling on top of everything. Change is always a mixed bag of feelings as you adjust; your emotions are information. Susan David’s work highlights emotions as data, not directives. They are signals helping us see ways to work with, rather than deny or bulldoze through, our feelings. Be curious about what your emotions are telling you. Acknowledge what you’re feeling. Talk to people you trust. Connect and discover that you're not the only one. We all like to pretend we've got this and are on top of things, but we're human. There's no shame in saying you're finding it tricky. Chances are someone will be glad you said it first so they can open up about their own moments of doubt or despondency. The challenges may not be exactly the same, but every household is going through ups and downs just like you. We might look like swans on the surface, but our legs will often be paddling furiously beneath the water. Let it out and find the humour.

I may be feeling like I've been tossed about in the tumble dryer, but I'm madly impressed by the aplomb with which my children are persevering as they find their feet in the new term. Whatever stage of parenting you might be at, bumpy transitions are part of the terrain. Embrace the changes, remember you’re definitely not alone and create a moment to appreciate the loveliness of what's around you. Keats might have that bit right; can you take a moment to notice "gathering swallows twitter in the sky"? Take a breath. Here’s to October… and November and December.