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Balancing Work and Home – Teach Your Kids

It is fantastic to teach your children to balance their work aka school and home responsibilities. People spend a lot of time trying to balance their professional and personal responsibilities. The idea is not new, even though hundreds of articles and thousands of words are written about it each year. Most people have heard the expression, “All work and no play makes  Jill a dull girl.” However, comparatively very few of those articles and words are devoted to the balancing that must be done by children.  Children have a great number of responsibilities:

  • school
  • sports activities
  • homework
  • chores
  • religious activities
photo credit: JP-Flanigan via photopin cc
photo credit: JP-Flanigan via photopin cc
It is truly remarkable all that we expect from our children each day. It is important that we teach them to balance their responsibilities. For example, a child cannot stay up all night playing video games or surfing the internet and function properly at school the next day. A child cannot do household chores and neglect to do homework and succeed in school. In all a child’s life, there are issues of time, place, balance and importance that must be considered. Just as adults cannot  do it all, children cannot do it all. In fact, they should be encouraged to recognize that they must pick and choose their activities. Children can be taught this lesson when they are quite young and in an age appropriate manner:
  • You want to go to the playground and watch Sesame Street. You can only do one, let’s pick.
  • You want to take ballet lessons and piano lessons. They are both at the same time, let’s pick.
  • You want to write for the school paper, play basketball and join the choir. There isn’t time. Let’s pick.
It is important for us to start teaching our children when they are young that they must make decisions. They must prioritize. They must learn to pick and choose so they can enjoy life instead of rushing through it going from one activity to the next. When we teach our children to make choices, to accept only what they can handle, we teach them to be better adults.
In conclusion, it is fantastic to teach your children to balance their work aka school and home responsibilities. So, the question for you this fantastic day is, how do you teach your children to balance their responsibility loads?
7 thoughts on “Balancing Work and Home – Teach Your Kids”
  1. This is such a difficult thing to teach. I have trouble with choosing priorities myself but I have been trying to work on it more lately. I need to start leading by example more. Thanks for posting this Janeane!

  2. We have been trying hard to allow our kids to make their own choices, rather then sending them in one direction or another. We’re doing this in the hopes that they will become strong decision makers in the long run by learning the difference now. Fingers crossed!

  3. Thankfully, with cyber school it’s helped them learn very quickly how to manage time. While I keep an eye over what they’re doing, ultimately it’s up to them how fast/slow they get their schoolwork done and then can move on to “fun” time.

  4. i balance by always putting my kids and family first. I work at home but if my kids need something from me (key word NEED) I am there for them. Giving them those 5-10 minutes isn’t going to ruin my day in fact it keeps me focused because I know I could be interrupted again at any moment

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