Balancing family life 🤹

Hello dear reader,

A recent Instagram reel really annoyed me.

The following words, overlaying some video on a beach with twinkly nostalgic tunes, were posted by many an influencer:

"75% of the time we spend with our children will be spent by the age of 12."

This is a reasonable stat, you may think, but it made me cross, and quite a few others, too.

What’s my issue with it? Well, I guess I have several. If you have children 12 or under, you’re likely to be sent into a cycle of guilt and panic, thinking you’re not making the most of it, making the wrong choices, and wondering why you can’t just be more present and more grateful. And if your children are well over the age of 12, like mine, it will add feelings of regret, grief, and sadness. You may worry that you missed it, that it’s all over and you’re never going to get it back.

It plays into the feeling of scarcity and honestly, it did nothing to encourage me to make changes in my life. I just felt sad and a bit cross that something on the internet had bothered me like this.

I get that this probably wasn’t the intention. I realise that the point of the stat was to encourage us to make the most of every opportunity that we have right now, because we can’t get it back, so enjoy every moment. The problem is that it’s very hard to enjoy every moment when you’re living it out. When you’re working and parenting and everything feels like a priority, it can be difficult to focus on bringing your best and loving each interaction every day.

The other problem is that I just don’t believe it to be totally true. I have children much older than this, and I can promise you that they still love to be with us. One of them may not live full-time under our roof anymore, but our connections are possibly more meaningful and less juggled than they once were. We treasure the time we have together now. I too am a grown-up child, and I still spend a lot of quality time with my parents. It’s a choice, and I make the choice to still prioritise these relationships.

So, today’s podcast taps into this issue—the prioritisation of family when you’re living in the juggle. How do we stay present for our children when we’re right in the middle of it all? We chat about the sandwich generation—people like me—who have dependent children and also parents that need more help now they are older. How do we balance this? We also look at the triple-decker generation—my mom was this for a while—caring for my son Noah once a week while I worked and caring for her mother-in-law regularly, too. Grandparents that are caring for babies and caring for the elderly, too. That’s a big deal that I don’t think I really recognised at the time.

One of the big tips from my own experience that I give on how to actually manage all this in real life relates to the idea that it’s about quantity and quality. That quantity enables the quality. The here and there, the ins and outs of normal life and regular connection points are what allow us to have the quality moments. We can’t rely on the grand gestures to give us what we are looking for with our children and our families. The quantity means that those quality moments naturally arise at the right moment.

Another important way we can prioritise others is to be present. An ongoing personal challenge of mine, as I am so easily distracted and my mind is so often on other things. But I am constantly working on this, trying to give my boys eye contact and full attention at least some of the time. When do I miss an opportunity to really connect and prioritise because my mind (and maybe my actual actions) are on other things? Putting the phone down and having moments to really be fully together matters, even if it’s for a minute or two.

Finally, we have to plan. Even the most spontaneous of us need to recognise that life is too full to rely on spur-of-the-moment connections. We need to plan those special moments, time when we are all in, and find ways of building rhythms and routines that work for our lifestyles and life stages. I got back this week from a mini-cruise with my dad and mom as she turns 80, while my husband took our middle son to Snowdon to celebrate the end of his A-levels. If we don’t plan these moments, they simply won’t happen.

If you want to listen to more on this subject, a conversation that’s not judgmental but real, full of my own learning and mistakes, then have a listen.

There’s no point looking back with regret. Let go of any disappointment you have over choices you made, and instead take hold of today and look forward.

All we have is now.

I hope you enjoy the episode. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Before I sign off:

1 quote: Instead of saying, “I don’t have time,” try saying, “It’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. —Laura Vanderkam

1 stat: The typical social media user spends 2 hours 23 minutes a day using social platforms.

1 question: Who needs you right now? 

Love,

Hannah