Juggling Work and Kids: I Don’t Have a Perfect System, Just a Crumpled List and Emergency Cookies
I’m sitting here mid-workday, and there’s still a faint smudge of blue marker on my jawline from this morning’s 9am client check-in. My four-year-old slipped into my home office while I was leaning forward to plug in my laptop, drew a full curly mustache on my face, and by the time I glanced in the corner of my screen to check my appearance, half the sales team had already seen it. Someone dropped a crying-laughing emoji in the chat, my client said “been there, done that”, and I laughed along. But five minutes after the call ended, I sat here staring at my to-do list for ten minutes, wondering how every single day ends up feeling like I’m running to catch a bus that already pulled away from the stop.
I used to be obsessed with finding the right routine. I followed all those accounts that tell you to wake up at 5am, get your workout in, prep all your meals, block your calendar into neat 30-minute chunks, and carve out two full hours of undivided attention with your kids before bed. I tried it for three whole months. I was dragging myself out of bed two hours before the kids woke up, drinking cold black coffee while I mapped out my day, and by 10am I was already yawning so hard my jaw ached. Turns out, when your four-year-old wakes you up at 3am with a bad dream about a monster in the closet, getting up at 5am just means you’re running on four hours of sleep. I gave up the whole routine after I fell asleep mid-team meeting, snoring into my mic. No more 5am wake-ups for me.
These days, my “time management” is a lot messier. My older kid is seven, has violin every Tuesday afternoon and soccer practice on Thursday, which means I have to shut down my laptop 45 minutes early every week, which means I make up that time after the kids go to bed. Some nights I’m answering emails until 10pm, sitting on the living room couch because I don’t want to turn on the bright office light and wake anyone up. Last month I had to ask for an extension on a big deadline because both kids got strep throat, and I didn’t get any real work done for three days except alternate between giving them fever reducer and ordering more popsicles to the house. I felt so guilty, like I was failing at being a mom and failing at being an employee. Then my boss texted me “don’t worry about it, my kid had flu last month and I missed a whole week of work” and I ended up crying in the bathroom for ten minutes, because I was so used to pretending everything was fine all the time.
People love to talk about “having it all”, but what no one tells you is that having it all just means you’re dropping a few small things every single day. Today I finished that big report my boss has been waiting for, but I forgot to pack my older kid’s after-school snack, so she had to get a sad pre-wrapped cheese stick from the cafeteria. Last week I made it to every single one of her soccer games, but I missed a smaller deadline by a full day because I spent Saturday afternoon hanging around the field instead of working at the picnic table like I planned. I keep a drawer in my office full of emergency Goldfish, wet wipes, extra hair ties, and a pack of chocolate chip cookies I hide for when I need a break, and that’s the most useful system I’ve ever had. I don’t do time blocking. I do 15-minute bursts of work between snack times, potty breaks, and urgent requests to come see the Lego castle someone just built. I jot notes down on the notes app of my phone while I’m pushing kids on the swing at the park, because I know if I don’t, I’ll forget whatever good idea I had by the time I get back to my desk.
A couple months back I had a big presentation to the whole company, and my babysitter canceled last minute, my mom was stuck in a 2-hour highway accident, so I had to just bring both kids onto the call with me. The four-year-old spent the whole time crawling on my desk, eating Cheerios off my keyboard, and my seven-year-old held up her entire collection of shiny rocks to the camera halfway through my talk. I was mortified, I thought I’d get written up for being unprofessional. But after, three different working parents messaged me saying that was the most honest thing they’d seen all year, and one dad told me he’d had his toddler interrupt a client call just the week before. It made me realize almost everyone is faking it a little, that no one actually has it all together.
I still feel guilty a lot. Last week I missed my older kid’s school poetry reading because of a last-minute meeting that couldn’t be rescheduled, and I cried in my car after, because I know I’ll never get that moment back. Some days I look at my mile-long to-do list and I just close my laptop and go get ice cream with the kids, and the work waits until tomorrow. That’s the thing: it doesn’t all get done. Some things have to slide. I used to think that meant I was failing. Now I think that’s just what it is, working and raising kids at the same time. You don’t need a perfect routine, or a fancy system. You just need to be okay with the fact that some days the marker mustache stays on for half the day, the laundry doesn’t get folded, and store-bought cookies for the bake sale are just fine. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, but everyone’s fed, the work mostly gets done, and we laugh a lot more than we cry. That’s enough, I think. Most days, anyway. (Word count: 1142)
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