Working Mom Needs Help

Dear Expert:

Can you help me? I am working now after being a stay at home Mom for years. I am finding that with all the work at work and work at home, I don’t have time or energy for my husband any more. I have two teenage sons who also demand my time. There’s plenty of guilt about there not being enough of me to “go around”. What can I do?

Exhausted

Dear Exhausted,


“Never do anything for anyone who can do it for themselves,unless it gives you BOTH pleasure.” Virginia Satir


Your problem sounds very familiar. As more and more women go into the work force, the more I hear this issue. First, you are operating as if you were still at home full time. If you have a husband and two boys at home, you can sit down with them and work out a plan to share some of the home chores. You and your husband are now BOTH employed so he can take on some of the chores. With the boys, you have a parental responsibility to teach them some life skills (such as cleaning a kitchen, mopping, taking out trash).


I can tell you without doubt that they will not like the idea of their mother asking for help since they haven’t been asked before (or they’ve been asked but you couldn’t get them to comply). Secondly, I decided that whenever a baby is born, the mother gets a baby, a placenta, and a bag of guilt. We feel that if there is a “glitch” in our child’s behavior, we must have “forgotten” to teach him/her that or we didn’t impart the right knowledge, enough knowledge, etc., etc., etc.


Trust that you’ve done as good a job as you knew how to do. That’s all we can do as humans. I was sure that I could, somehow, “convince” my boys that chores were great and they could learn to like to do them. Well, needless to say, I found a way to enforce the chores but to this day, they don’t shout with joy when they do their own chores . (Wait a minute, I don’t either!) Thirdly, you will have to find a way to ask for help (expect help) and stand your ground. That will involve knowing that YOU have a right to have some time for yourself. You get to decide how you spend that time. “Yes I’m going to my meeting.


Yes, I’m sitting down. Yes, I’m getting my nails done”. You can expect some resistance and you can expect some “push back” (as in, “can’t we get this back to the time when YOU did everything?”) When you get some disrespectful comments, just deal with the disrespect by giving a swift, meaningful consequence and go on and go to your meeting (even if it is a group of friends and you’re talking about books, or knitting, or nothing).All us humans dislike and inherently resist change. My friend, John has a plaque on his wall that says: “Change is good. You go first.” This is a huge family change that should take place. Perhaps you want to sit down with your entire family and map out the changes.


For example, “now that I’m working, I need for us to re-examine how things get done around here.” Stop feeling as if you are letting them down. You will be teaching your boys some valuable life skills and teaching them that in their relationships with other females, they will have to make at least a 50% contribution. As for your husband, I think he will have more respect for you (eventually) if you expect to be treated as an equal and not as the family maid.


Give it a try and let me know how it works out!!

M>T Dibble, LCSW, MSW Family Expert for Creative Childcare Solutions