The Conscious Parent: Balancing Family Life and Work.

“Behind every young child who believes in himself is a parent who believed first.”

As parents, we do the most difficult job- we have to give our children a good start in life—hence we nurture, protect and guide them to make them independent.

“Positive parenting” is a concept, spoken about a lot these days. What do you think it is? How is positive parenting defined? As our child grows and develops, there are many things we can do to help our child. The talk show on Positive Parenting navigated around these basic concepts and understands how we can play a better and a healthier role in our child’s development.

Different people have different perspective when it comes to work-life balance. I like to reworded the term work-life balance to life-work balance; putting life aspect first as the top priority in our life and then work matter after that. My definition of life-work balance is: it is a state of mind. When one are able to maintain a healthy life-work balance, it will help reduce stress levels both at home and at work. Learning how to manage stress is very significant as it teaches you to maintain a healthy life-work balance. It is never about attaining life-work balance, but rather about maintaining it.

“Balance” is not having better time management but rather having better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices. Balance is part of achieving happiness. This relates to another quotes, which is “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony,” - Thomas Merton.

A healthy life-work balance is good for your children, your family relationships and you. Profession and family can be described as the two sides of the same coin as both are equally important in one’s life. When you have a good life-work balance, you are more likely to have the mental and emotional energy to give your children the loving attention they need to develop, learn and thrive. A well-balanced family life can also help you enjoy life, manage stress and prevent burnout at work. However, in this productivity-driven society that we are living in, more and more people are finding it hard to adequately fulfill their roles both at home and at the workplace. Increases in female labor force participation and single parenthood have focused unprecedented attention on the pressures employed family members experience as they attempt to balance work and family responsibilities. 

In this talk show, we will cover on:

1. What does the term life-work balance mean?
2. Why it matters to us?
3. What are the common challenges in balancing work and family? What causes lack of life-work balance?
4. What makes a negative impact on life-work balance?
5. How to have a healthy life-work balance? How can parents improve work-life balance especially during uncertain times.

Now, I would like you to ponder upon what would happen if your life is in a state of imbalance? Please leave your ideas.