I can't believe it's the end of the school year already! My, how quickly has that flown by. Now it's summer holidays time, well, for my children anyway.
Juggling work and school holidays is never very easy so here's my advice on managing both well.
1. Plan your time well. If you are self employed like me, you can't always give much time to work during long school holidays so you have to plan your time well. I find, organising the 6 week stretch into distinctive weeks really helpful and making sure my 3 children know what's going on even more so.
2. Balance work & play. I know each job is very different and has different requirements but I find splitting up each week so that I have given the right amounts of time to the needs of my business and of my children is imperative. There are some jobs I can get done before the end of this week, so I'm busily trying to accomplish as much as possible before the holidays actually start, but there are also plenty of things which need to happen week in week out. Use everything at your disposal to get as much done as possible before you have your children at home- scheduling your tweets, website updates and blogs helps and try to switch off completely on some days if you can!
3. Plan play dates in advance. Set up play dates so your children are out at the same time as one another on certain days then return the favour on a day where you have less to do. Get those dates in the diary NOW! Last minute never works well if you have more than one child you need to plan for. Involve your kids in who they would like to see; their ownership of the process will stop them feeling 'pushed out' so that you can 'get on'.
4. Decide as a family what 'events' or 'activities' you'd all like to do (if you having a staycation) and plan those in first, then plan work around them so everyone knows you have prioritised family times and then make sure they actually happen- that may mean ordering tickets now; sorting travel arrangements or paying for stuff upfront so whatever you all decide, just make sure it happens. We use a big roll of lining paper and literally write out every day so everyone knows just what's going on when.
5. Enjoy it! Children grow up fast. In the immortal words of Ferris Beuller "If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".
Have a great summer whatever you are up to!.....
x
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