Part III: Enjoying parenthood

Chapter 8: You

Being a parent can change how you see and take care of yourself. There’s no official start and end time to your day, and there are no holidays or long-service leave. It’s a role that you’re always in. It took me a few years to work out that I needed to be proactive in determining how I operated as a parent and how I balanced other aspects of my life.

Our family life can be busy. I could spend all my time just getting everyone through the day fed, clothed and cared for. However, spending all my time focusing on the ‘now’ made me feel as though I was always in catch-up mode when it came to the kids’ development. I was reacting to the ever-changing stages of childhood without much forethought, and without a view towards the long-term impacts of the strategies I was using. The turning point for me was reading a book that showed how different things could be if I spent time investigating the type of parent I wanted to be.