Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I mostly work school hours. My Inner Meerkat does a lot of monthly meal planning, admin activities using calendars, diaries, and other organisational tools.
It takes some additional planning to balance school holidays. Our favourite family activity is camping, and we prefer to camp completely off the grid. That is when we really connect, not only to each other, but also with ourselves through nature. So, we do this as regularly as possible. This is where my Inner Koala is at her happiest!
My husband is extremely supportive, not only emotionally, but in many practical ways too. He has no issues driving the girls to their activities, cleaning up the kitchen and doing laundry. He is maybe not a master chef in the kitchen, but he is an amazing BBQ-master!
So, to sum it all up, I would say: Teamwork and Communication!
The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
I’m not sure I’ve overcome it yet, but my biggest challenge in my business is to convince people that investing in their family is a worthwhile investment. Often, people will do lots of professional development to advance their career, but they will never do a parenting course to learn something new.
Is it because they fear that others might think they are not good parents if they seek extra information? Or perhaps that there are secret issues nobody knows about? Or maybe they think this is supposed to come naturally once you become a parent?
So far, the majority of people I’ve worked with over the years (as a volunteer and in my business) have said that this was something valuable to them, and it strengthened their confidence as a parent, but also the bonding with their kids, and even their partners.
And this makes it all worthwhile to keep going on!
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
The pro is definitely the flexibility of introducing more families to the wonderful world of temperaments, while being available for my own family and seeing my girls grow into mature, confident, content and competent women.
The con for me was that I was spending way more time learning and building the back end of the business instead of connecting with parents and chatting to them about their kiddies. But, as the business systems are getting automated more and more, and word is getting out, that is slowly changing.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
Oh, my goodness. Where to start?
I always think of the quote by Frederick Douglas: “It is easier to build stronger children, than to repair broken men”.
This inspires me to assist as many families as possible to understand the temperaments in their homes and how to deal with them. Imagine all the frustration, miscommunication, guilt and anger we can avoid if we just understand each other more.
I’m focusing on working 1:1 with families at the moment, with a few group workshops here and there. I would like to build this out to include more workshops or online courses, speaking opportunities at ladies’ morning teas, parenting days, schools or anywhere else where parents gather.
In a perfect world, every parent will know about temperaments and how that impacts the dynamics in the home, how we learn, communicate, what we need to thrive, how we handle stress and build relationships.
And then hopefully, we will have fewer mental health issues, broken families, and less need for counselling later in life.
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