The Secret to Work Life Balance
The Secret to Work-Life Balance
What do you do when your job and your kids both need your attention? Work-life balance is a mathematical theorem that has yet to be solved. There are thousands of suggestions, but no one is saying there is a perfect solution. So maybe it’s time to consider the way we approach the issue.
Time. It cannot be produced. It is not something we make, but it is something that can be managed well. This is a very hard thing to do when there are a set number of hours daily. The income that allows you to take care of your kids requires a certain amount of hours and then there are the demands of the household that are required to physically take care of your kids. This is not an easy issue at all. But, if we look at it differently we might come up with a few solutions that work for most people involved.
We have long considered the “time” part of the phrase quality time, but emotional health awareness teaches us that it is not the time part, but the quality part that allows kids to feel seen and heard. We leave this part out of establishing meaningful connection in the life balance part. Because the objective is not physical time, but the quality of any time, the dilemma changes. Let’s consider what can make quality time. Gary Zukav introduced a simplistic but effective version of this through his book the Five Love Languages.
The Five Love Languages are Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service and Touch. When you have a kid that does not like to be hugged and this is what you are always asking of them, then you are not using time well to connect with this child. This makes this child feel like you do not understand them and this is what makes it hard to have a connection with your teen or anyone.
Connection comes from loving someone the way they want to be loved and not in a way you are comfortable loving them. For the teen, this is a very selfish way of loving them because it considers your needs and not theirs. Another way to say this is that your need is to get a hug, possibly your love language is touch. So you always think to hug them when you are feeling lonely or exhausted. For the teen who will eventually catch on, they recognize that you are using them to get the hug that you need.
This can frustrate your teen so much that they will no longer be able to hide and this is when you will hear their protest through nonverbal communication by dodging the hug, verbal communication by shimmying out of your hug and saying no. Then, firm communication which is a low anger by whining or saying something sarcastic or even harsh. If a parent is not able to hear this type of relatively mild request, the needs of the teen get louder and there is an argument. This is also when you might hear, “You don’t understand me!” Here is the unconscious or unknown part by the parent. You may not hear the understand part. What you will hear is “No!”
No is another form of rejection. This is very important because since the hugs unconsciously came from a need you have to connect and this is your love language, you feel rejected. There are so many times this will remind the parent of being rejected by a parent, or caretaker when they were younger. Again, this is all unconscious. This is what makes the parent, who now has power in a way they did not when they were younger, punish, argue or evoke anger and the intense hurt of feeling unloved or rejected or unappreciated. So what comes out of the parent’s mouth is, you are so ungrateful. Why do you think you have all these things? You consider that you work so hard and this weighs on the work-life fit balance because we think the answer lies in less work life.
This is what makes the teen feel bad about what is happening to your relationship. They are equally sad about this, but they have no power or words to make you understand what you are really feeling, what they are feeling, what each of you is missing emotionally and how to repair it. That is a lot for a teen to know and express. So when a parent in frustration says they don’t understand their teen. You feel like you do everything and there is nothing more to give and you are so very tired, it can make you feel like nothing you do is right. It can make you feel hopeless and this is where the depression of having a teen comes from.
Anytime we do not feel like we are empowered in a situation, we are going to eventually avoid it, procrastinate it, ruminate about it so we can try and figure it out and when we can’t we resolve that since we do not know how to solve it, it cannot be solved. Because so much of what is wrong is not happening in this current time or being done by either party consciously, it is really hard to place blame somewhere. Unfortunately, since the parent has more power the blame inevitably is on the teen. So we start to see an increase in phone, video games, friends, isolation and no conversation.
Work-life synergy does not fix this. Therapy can fix this, but you have to be able to work with someone who can see the root of the problem and forms a great team with you and your teen. We cannot fix this problem by placing the teen only in therapy. Both parties have to learn new tools and gain more insight.