Hi everyone, being a working parent makes it hard to maintain strong communication with my kids. How do you juggle work and family conversations successfully? Thanks for sharing! — Michelle
Hi Michelle,
Oh, I feel this question deep in my soul! Thanks so much for posting this, because it’s a conversation we all need to have.
As a mom to two, a 9-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter, juggling my work schedule with their lives feels like a constant circus act. Some days I get home, and it’s a whirlwind of dinner, homework, and chores, and before I know it, it’s bedtime, and I realize I haven’t had a single meaningful conversation with either of them. The working-parent guilt is so real!
Over the years, I’ve found a few little things that have really helped our family stay connected, even on the craziest days.
One of the biggest game-changers for us has been making the dinner table a strictly “tech-free zone.” At first, it was a battle, especially with my teenager who is surgically attached to her phone! I’ll be honest, using our parental control app to automatically pause the Wi-Fi on their devices during dinner hour was a lifesaver. It took the fight out of it for me, and now it’s just expected. It creates this little 30-minute bubble where we can actually look at each other and talk.
I also had to get smarter with my questions. “How was your day?” always got me a one-word answer (“Fine” or “Good”). So now I try to ask more specific, open-ended questions like:
- “What was the funniest thing that happened today?”
- “Tell me about something that made you feel frustrated.”
- “Who did you sit with at lunch?” (This one tells you a lot!)
Sometimes the best conversations happen in the car. There’s something about not having to make direct eye contact that really gets kids to open up, especially my teen. I learn more on a 10-minute drive to soccer practice than I do all evening sometimes!
Please know you are not alone in this struggle. The fact that you’re asking this question shows what an amazing and intentional parent you are. It’s not about having hours of deep conversation every day; it’s about finding those small, precious moments of connection.
Hang in there, you’re doing a great job!
Warmly,
A fellow mom trying to figure it all out
Hi Michelle, welcome!
And goodness, that is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I’ve got three of them – 15, 10, and 6 – and some days it feels like I’m just a taxi service and a short-order cook. Getting a real conversation in between work, homework, and everything else can feel impossible.
My most reliable trick is what I call “captive audience time” – the car ride. The 15-year-old can’t just retreat to his room with his phone, and the little ones aren’t distracted by the TV. I swear, I get more out of them in a 10-minute drive to soccer practice than I do all evening sometimes. It’s not a deep heart-to-heart every time, but you start to pick up on the little things.
We also have a strict “no phones at the dinner table” rule, and that includes me and my husband. It’s amazing what you hear when everyone isn’t scrolling. It’s funny, you see all these parental control apps trying to sell you “family time” features, and I just think, why pay for something a simple rule can accomplish for free?
Honestly, I’ve looked into so many of those monitoring apps, and besides the fact that they want you to pay for every useful feature, they just don’t replace an actual conversation. If my son is having a problem online, I’d rather he feel he can tell me about it than for me to find out by reading some activity log I paid $10 a month for. It just feels like a shortcut, and I’m not convinced it works.
It’s a constant battle, though. I’m curious to hear what others are doing. Are there any other simple, free tricks people have found that actually work?
Barbara