Parent Time

Sometimes it's not returning to work that gets to new parents most, it's the pace of life at home: that frantic race to pick up your children on time; the dash home to get dinner on the table while your little one screams for attention; and fast upon the heels of dinner, the bedtime routine. It's that feeling that you spend most of the precious time you have with your children trying to get them to eat something or do something. Here are some suggestions from the experts, and from the parents who've been there.

Set priorities: According to Lucille Peszat, director of the Canadian Centre for Stress and Well-Being in Toronto, one of the most important lessons parents need to learn - especially when both work outside of the home and they have young children to raise as well - is to set priorities. "You have to look at all the things you have to do, or feel you have to do, and the non-essentials have to go," she says. Once you've figured out what's important to you - whether it's spending more time with your baby, keeping the house spick and span or putting a home-cooked meal on the table - you can find ways of achieving those things. "But remember, you only have so many hours in the day."

Delegate: Don't forget your partner in this family venture: your spouse. Toronto mother Sue Marteleira's husband, Luis, helps out with the cooking and most of the household chores. "He wants me to work," she says. "That's part of the deal." London, Ontario mother of four, Nancy Ambrogio, admits her husband, Frank, is "not domestic." But while he doesn't do laundry or make dinner, "he entertains the two youngest children while I do. It works for us." Siblings can also help out in some way, points out Spinks. Make it easy for them to do so. Replace sheets with all-in-one duvets so they can make their own beds; put out colour-coded laundry baskets (blue for denims and dark colors, red for brights, and white for pale colors) where they can drop dirty clothes to save sorting later; give them their own alarm clocks and put the onus on them to get up in the morning; and put hangers at their level so they can dress themselves and put things away, for example.

Get outside help if you can: I recall weeping on the shoulder of a friend when my daughter was three years old and I was eight months pregnant with my son. "I just can't keep up," I sobbed. "There aren't enough hours in the day to do everything and Paul [my husband] doesn't help." My friend cooed in obligatory sympathy and then she said, "Cam, I have to tell you, your problem seems quite simple to me. You could go to a marriage counsellor, but I think you'd be better off hiring a housekeeper." She was right; by dispensing with a couple of take-out dinners a month I was able to afford to have someone come in and give my house a good cleaning every two weeks. It gave me back a feeling of being in control. Yard and house maintenance services, touch-tone banking and grocery delivery can also make life easier.

Plan in advance: Marteleira gets a sense of accomplishment from putting a home-cooked meal on the table at dinner. But she also likes to relax a bit with Erika and Michelle when they get home from the babysitter. Her solution: "Every second Sunday I do casseroles or lasagna or spaghetti sauce and freeze it in batches, so I'm not faced with making a full dinner every night and I have a little more time to spend with the girls." You might also peel carrot sticks the night before, so when you come in from work to the usual refrain of "I'm hungry," you've got something quick and nutritious to dole out, and make lunches and get everything packed for the next day to make the morning rush a little easier.

Shop with time management in mind: Are you hovering over your children as they tie their shoe laces with agonizing slowness: buy Velcro. By the same token, shop for clothes that don't require a lot of hand-washing or ironing and make use of short-cut foods like frozen veggies, prepared sauces and deli pasta, which cooks in five minutes. Be realistic. What you should not do, says Spinks, is work yourself to the bone trying to make everything perfect for everyone else and never having time to enjoy it yourself. Says Peszat: "Many women are perfectionists. But by the time you've made sure the house is spotless, you've made a home-made meal, and the children have been helped with their homework, the thing that gets sacrificed is your own health and your rest."

March 1998