Balancing Family Life and Work: Tips for Moms with Teenagers

Balancing family life and work can be challenging. Are you a stay-at-home mom or a working mother? Both face unique challenges as their children grow. Teenagers need your attention in different ways than younger kids. Whether it is their peers, teachers or adults; teenagers interact and form opinions about themselves and the world. This phase is crucial for their development. You need to make sure they engage in fun and meaningful activities. So, let’s delve into this topic with experts from the international job search website Jooble and find out some tips on how to balance your family life and work being a mom of a teenager.

Frankly speaking, long vacations are an excellent opportunity for jobs for teens. Jobs provide new experiences and teach responsibility. You can help them find job opportunities and activities to fill their time. This balanced approach supports their growth.

Evolving Mindset in Teenagers

A teenager’s brain is adaptable and flexible. Hence, they need the right support as well as encouragement from their parents in making the right decisions. It also helps them learn how to think, adapt skills for studies as well as plan for the future. 

As a parent one can help teenagers in the following ways:

• Encourage them to know and be aware of their feelings, how to process new information.
• Share experiences of one’s own past, how one grew and learnt as a teenager.
• Share things such as people in one’s family tree and talk about the paths they took for their life and careers.
• When it comes to finishing tasks, help teenagers set goals and try to achieve them.
• Encourage teenage kids to work as per set goals or schedules.
• Help them choose subjects or career options as per their interest and skills.

Besides the above, parents need to be there for their teenagers, especially to help solve problems. Teenagers experience depression, anxiety which parents need to help them overcome. Also, this is a stage in life when parents become friends with their teenage sons or daughters. They need to listen to them, take their advice and empathize with them. It is important to see things from their perspective. When teenagers know that their parents are open to listening to them, they are also open and forthcoming with their parents.

Working Mothers with Teenage Children

When it comes to balanced working conditions at offices, for mothers, it is usually about new parenthood. For instance, nowadays fathers can take paternity leave, along with the mothers. Again, there are prolonged maternity leave benefits in most modern workplaces. However, even after children are born and they grow up, working mothers need to find ways to provide time and attention to their children. 

As children develop into teens, the following changes occur:

• High schoolers do not need much supervision but have more activities they need to be shuttled to and fro from.
• Many teenagers or young adults opt for internships during holidays.
• Teenagers have several social engagements.

The above responsibilities usually fall on the mothers, more than the fathers. In general, working mothers will find that they do not need to give much time to their teenage kids. However they need to help them navigate emotional and social situations, which are important for their empowerment and growth.

Hence, besides assisting teens to find jobs on sites such as the mentioned above job aggrerator mothers can help in forming the right opinions and attitudes in the minds of their teenage sons and daughters. Jooble gathers jobs from different sources for you. Daily, it adds over 300,000 new jobs. Up to 1 million users search for jobs each day. Many job seekers in different countries use Jooble. Teenagers also use it for finding their first job or internship.

Upsides for Working Mothers

Parents who have older children feel that they are better equipped in handling both home and work. By the time children are in their teenage years mothers who work are experienced multi-taskers. Hence, they can get all things done, both at home as well as at work. Also, by now mothers have overcome the need to be the “perfect mom”. They are able to harmonize their work and home responsibilities smoothly. Also, kids who have grown up, are more supportive of their parents and their work. They take pride in what their parents do. Many working mothers find that their career has a positive influence on their children, especially when they are older.

A study by the Pew Research Center in 2022 showed that 70% of working mothers in the US believe work experience improves their time management skills. Researchers gathered data from various states and regions. The study involved mothers juggling work and family duties. Work demands helped them organize their time better. You can see a clear trend in these findings. Most mothers link job roles with better time skills. This study highlights significant data about working mothers’ time management.

Riding the Transition

As children grow older, their school and other activities change. Hence, parents need to plan ahead and make arrangements accordingly. For instance, a teenager might need someone to drive them back and forth between different classes. A working mother can plan her work schedule accordingly to be there for such activities. Or else, one can arrange for a driver or car pool services to ensure that one’s child’s travel arrangements are taken care of.

For such requirements many working mothers have networks of support. There are car pool services that one can take up. Again, many have colleagues who can provide support in integrating work, especially when one has to run errands for their children. 

Workplaces are also becoming more flexible, even for parents with older children. This involves giving them time off for the following:

• Going off from work early to attend a school performance.
• Stepping out of a meeting to pick up one’s child in case of change of travel plans.
• Providing leave or to work from home when one has to attend a school meeting or take a child to a scheduled activity.

Today many workplaces have flexible work hours, especially for parents or working mothers. Also, the trend of work from home allows parents to be there at home for their children without having to take leave from work. 

The Benefits of Balance: Positive Impacts for All

As children get older, parents take up the role of a supervisor and a friend. They need to empower their children as they participate in different activities. That is, a working mother can take time off to shuttle her children to and from social engagements or tuition classes. They are required to listen to their teenagers and guide them in the right mode of thought and action. With older children working mothers can find it easier to balance their work and home responsibilities, especially if they plan ahead.