Parenthood is a full-time commitment. Raising children will take 24/7 dedication. Not only do you need to keep kids alive and healthy, but you also need to teach and nurture them. Raising kids full-time is exhausting and full of perils, and yet many of us combine parenting with full careers. Taking on two full-time jobs at once is not easy for anyone and is especially difficult for nurses.
Nursing is a care role. The key difference between a nurse and a doctor today isn’t the level of education but instead the way they approach care. APRNs today can have their own clinics and can lead healthcare teams, and yet their approach is going to be different than their physician counterparts.
The key difference is that nurses focus on care and the patient, and doctors and physicians focus on medicine and science. They both care for patients, and both use science and make decisions based on data, but one focuses on the medicine side of health and the other on holistic care first.
What this means for parents is that you need to be on 24/7 without a break. You need to show your patients compassion and care and then carry on with that empathy and care at home, too. This can quickly lead to anyone burning out.
You don’t have to, however. Burning out may be common amongst nurses, but it certainly doesn’t have to be the norm. Finding what your passion is, adjusting your career to suit your needs, and chipping away at your goals day by day can help you manage the career and personal life juggles that is being a working parent.
Nurses are the backbone of society. They are the most essential of workers, and with this guide, you can learn tips and tricks to better manage your personal and work life.
How to Put Your Kids First When You Have a Demanding Career
Your kids are your priority. Just because they are your priority, however, does not mean that everything else has to take a backseat. Finding the right support and setting expectations that can be relied on will go a long way towards giving your kids a better home environment and helping you make progress on all of your goals.
Have the Right Support
To start, know that you cannot do it all without the right support. Your partner needs to be present as much as possible, just as you are. This applies to couples who are together and those that aren’t. Regardless of your home situation with your child’s other parent working out a way to better co-parent is going to be essential for both of you. Without an equal part, neither of you will be able to move forward in your career and be good parents for your children.
Support can also include friends, having a list of go-to babysitters, your own parents, your partner’s parents, and more. Sharing the load around those who love you and want to help can improve the quality of life you and your kids lead without overbearing any one person.
Know What Commitments are Essential
There will be practices and recitals and plays and big tests. Knowing what is essential and what isn’t can help you prioritize appropriately. For example, you don’t need to be there for every practice. You don’t even need to be there for every game. It's important when your kid is on a starting line for the first time or it's a finals game.
Similarly, you don’t need to help your kids with every piece of their homework, but you should try to be there when they are stressing out about a big test or when they need extra help.
Some commitments are like glass in the juggle of life. Others are rubber. The rubber ones you can pick up again if you drop them, but the glass ones will shatter. Work out with your kids and partner what commitments are glass so that you can prioritize them.
These glass commitments apply to your work too. Being able to work around the essential commitments at your work that go beyond your average workday is just as important as adapting your professional life to meet those essential personal commitments.
Never Break Promises
You want your word to be worth something. If you make a rain check on your kids for whatever reason, you should be good for it. This way, your kids can trust that you will make it up to them and that they do mean something to you. There will always be extenuating circumstances, but if you do your best to be true to your word, then you will immediately have a better balance between your work and personal life.
Give Your Kids a Stable Routine
Don’t just be there for the big things. Create small routines that your kids can come to rely on. This could be movie night, where you all take turns choosing a take-out option and pick a movie. These routines can be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Daily you could make it a point to eat dinner together. Weekly you can organize a movie night. Monthly you can go on a hike or to a new area nearby to explore.
Routines like these can become cherished moments in a busy schedule, both for you and your kids.
How to Progress Your Career as a Parent
Being a better parent when you are a working nurse isn’t going to be your only priority. You owe it to yourself and your patients to progress your career and find that perfect role for you. Part of finding the right role is finding the right work environment, and the other part of it is finding the right department and specialization.
You can move workplaces at any time. What you cannot do as easily is progress forward. This, however, is the best way to enjoy significant change.
You deserve to work in a role that you love. You deserve to be fascinated by the science behind the care that you provide. You deserve to feel like you have found your place.
There are so many ways that you can customize your career as a nurse. With these tips, you’ll know how to customize and progress your nursing career, even as a parent.
Choose the Right Degree
There are so many programs out there for nurses. Just look at the Wilkes University online nursing programs that are available. If you have a non-nursing bachelor’s, for example, you can fast-track into nursing with an Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing. If you have an Associate’s Degree in Nursing, then you can skip going back and earning your BSN and go into an ADN-MSN program to get your Master's degree instead.
There are MSN specialization degrees and post-graduate APRN certificates. You can even further your career from there with a DNP or PhD or EdD.
Not only are there many different levels of nursing education, but there are also many different approaches. If you have the support, you can take time off from your career to commit to your degree full-time. If you do feel you have the energy and are naturally organized and dedicated, you can take on a degree part-time while you juggle the rest of your responsibilities.
There is no right or wrong approach. The only thing that matters is that you look at how you manage your time and energy and work with your needs. Parenting is a full-time job. If you have younger kids, it can feel impossible to juggle a career, a degree, and kids all at once.
If parenting feels like it already takes up all your time, then you may be better off committing to your education full-time. You don’t need to fast-track through that degree either. You can take it on part-time while you parent your young children. The end result? You’ll be graduated and ready to start a new role in a more advanced position by the time the kids are older and better able to care for themselves.
This option isn’t ideal for everyone, yes. If you have the option to stay at home as a parent, however, then using that time to progress through a BSN or MSN can really help you launch your career without overloading your efforts.
Make Use of Dead Time
When it comes to juggling either a degree and parenting, or alternatively a degree, a job, and parenting, know that dead time is an opportunity. Your commute is a big example of this, or when you are doing chores or running errands.
Listen to the lectures while you are doing these everyday errands. Create voice notes out of your own notes. If you are waiting, read or review coursework instead of playing on your phone.
Breaking up your study periods and using the dead time to revise can immediately take a lot of stress out of managing your degree on top of other commitments.
Rely on Others for Support
You have support. This support may be professional, it may be personal, but you do have it. Friends and family, mental health services, childcare services, and more are all available to help make it easier for you to achieve your goals and really accomplish what you want out of life.
The only thing you need to be careful of is not overload your friends or family. Having your parents or friends look after your kids several days a week every week is too much. Having them babysit once every month is far more doable.
To ensure that you don’t overload any one of your personal systems, remember to rely as much as possible on the professional support systems and your children’s other parents.
Study with Your Kids
Do you want to bond with your kids and get your work done? Study together. You will make sure that they do their homework on time and set a good example since you are all working on your education together. Bonding like this is easy and passive, meaning that you don’t need to put much effort in. The best part is that you can take your breaks together.
This works especially well for older children and teens. Most parents cannot help their kids with their high school homework simply because it’s been too long since they learned those concepts. As a nurse, however, you will be able to help better with science, biology, chemistry, and other STEM subjects.
Always Remember to Put Your Health First
A healthy parent that is well-rested can manage themselves and be a better parent to their kids. A healthy nurse that is well-rested and well can give more of themselves to their patients and make fewer mistakes.
Being both may seem like a pipe dream, but with the right priorities, you can find that balance that allows you to do it all. You won’t be able to have it all, all the time, but with the right setup and support, you can be a better nurse, a better parent, and a better person.
To do this, you need to put your health first. Both your physical and mental health will make a huge difference when it comes to your goals. If you find it difficult to stay healthy and well with your current setup, then you won’t be able to find a balance, just a few brief instances of reprieve.
Build your routine and support system on your needs. If you need a calmer working environment, then find a clinic or move more rurally to work in a smaller hospital. If you need more support at home, you may want to move closer to your parents or explore all of your childcare and other support options.
Putting your health first gives you a platform. That platform can be used to thrive as a nurse and be a better parent. Explore personal options, career options, support options, and more. Putting yourself first will always lead to results when your main goal is to help others.
