How To Balance Life As A Parent

Introduction

I’m going to talk about how to balance life as a parent.

Did you know that having someone to care for can put a strain in your personal life and may be detrimental overall?

Today I’m going to go over the things I learned as an adult over the years and how to balance them out in order for you to avoid making the same mistakes.

I will be breaking this down in three main sections:

• Why it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle
• What to avoid doing as a parent to keep your life balanced
• What you should be doing as a parent to keep your life balanced

Hoping by the end of this article you will be better equipped to be able to cope with parenting and maintain a balanced healthy lifestyle like you had before you become a father or a mother.

Why It Is Important To Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle

In this section I’m going to cover why I think it’s important to maintain a healthy lifestyle as a parent. More so than ever in your life you have become a parent either a mother or a father in this stage of your life it’s actually more important to stay healthy than ever.

The reason for this is fairly simply you are now caring for more than yourself. A new life responsibility lays upon you and it’s up to you and potentially your partner to ensure that new life is brought up in a way that’s safe and good for them.

I remember back in the day when I was younger and was careless about my life, yes you’d say boys tend to go through that phase where they feel invincible or they don’t care about consequences and while this is true I really did feel that deeply ingrained on myself. No this wasn’t just a phase of my teenage years it was more of a bigger picture thing where I really had the philosophy that where all here for a short period of time and we should make the best out of it.

Over the years that thought has been ingrained in my mind and it never went away or faded. However when I became a parent I instantly knew that my responsibility to bring someone up is different so the reality I had created was shattered. I quickly adapted to a new lifestyle full of joy knowing that I will now have to take care of myself along with another human being.

A lot of you will be wondering that your old thinking was very irresponsible and sure you may have a point but it was my life, my thoughts and my reality. It would have been irrisponsible if I had continued down that path that I used to be but I quickly adapted and instantly made the decision to change for the better of myself and my family. I can list numerous things that I used to do differently that I now think more than once before I do them.

So talking of things lets dive into things to avoid doing that you used to do before.

What To Avoid Doing As A Parent To Keep Your Life Balanced

Now that we went over on why it’s important to keep your life balanced while you are parenting I’d like to cover a few things to avoid doing as a parent that may be detrimental to your efforts and overall health. This is just my personal experience as a father but it may apply to you so if you find it useful I’d be happy for you.

• Avoid overeating and indulging into junk food. This tends to be very hard to stop doing as your kids growing up will be naturally gear towards eating fast food. Even if you train them to have good eating habits eventually they will start eating out and get influenced by their friends which will lead them to a fast food place. More than ever eating healthy can influence your thinking, weight and prevent you from getting some bad diseases.
• Avoid all nighters and get sleep whenever you can. This is pretty much self explanatory but sometimes we feel that we want some of our personal space and time to deload, while this is good in theory if you are starved for sleep it’s much more important to avoid spending time reloading just go straight to bed and do it another time when you have a chance.
• Don’t let others bring you down mentally. If you haven’t done so already cut out ties with any negative or toxic people from your life, yes this includes your workplace it’s easier said than done but if you don’t put the effort towards it, it simply won’t happen. A lot of us these days focus on just floating by when it comes to toxicity and others but the reality of things is that you need to take instant and drastic measures.
• Do not be afraid to say no to going out and hanging out with friends if you are tired. We all want to maintain our social life and while you can do this some of your friends may be at a different stage in their life and not have kids or responsibilities. Their schedule of going out to a club/bar at night will certainly not coincide with yours, the sooner you understand this the better for you. Reserve your energy and simply say no. Instead try to hang out with people like you where your schedules align up after all your social life should be fun but at the same time not draining.
• Do not spend money on things you do not need. Even if you are wealthy parenting is an expensive period of your life which you simply need to go through. As things get more expensive and there’s shortages we need to be more conservative with our money. In 2022 inflation in the US is hitting record highs above 12% in real numbers which means everything is more expensive. Taking into account that we recently had a shortage in baby food supplies (yes my child was less than a year old during this time) things will naturally will become more scarce and expensive so save your money for what’s really needed.

What You Should Be Doing As A Parent To Keep Your Life Balanced

I went over the list of things that you should avoid doing or flat out do not do. Again this is my personal view and opinion it doesn’t mean this will match with you. The same thing will apply in this section which I’m going to cover some things you should be doing that will be helpful for your life and keep things balanced.

• Start going into mum or dads groups that are similar to you. There’s a lot of parents out there that have kids in the same age. Sharing knowledge and information between each other can be very helpful. Also the amount of recommendations you will get for preschools, sports, activities for the kids or even care givers like nanny’s is priceless. Furthermore you may get as a bonus becoming friends with some of them and expand your social circle. I see it as a big bonus all around so get yourself out there and start socializing in those meetup groups. The internet these days makes it a breeze and easy to find others with common interests and kids as you.
• Find a hobby you can do while still care giving for your children. For some this could be watching documentaries in the TV, others could be interested in doing crafts, others could like painting which could engage their kids or even reading a book. For me it’s reading books and even though most of them are adult books I started buying a lot of kid books to read to my kids. When they get a bit older maybe I’ll teach them how to write blogs who knows!
• Make a schedule. I can’t stress enough how scheduling your life could help you deal with problems. Chaos theory and living by the flow is good and all but when you find yourself needing help they don’t work very well. Instead if you have planned timeouts for yourself and spend it with your partner (which is very easy to neglect by the way this happened to us) it can be savior. So make sure you plan your days out when you will be getting help if it’s available, when they will be going to school how the tasks are split up between the two of you, if you are a single parent it might be a bit more challenging but still doable with proper planning.
• Don’t be afraid to try new things with your kids. I like to improvise here when I have free time to spend with them and I try new things. For example I love cycling and I have taken it up as a sport to do with my kids. I wrote a nice article about it here: Complete Guide For Cycling With Toddlers/Kids
• Take help when you can. If you can afford a nanny use one, if you have retired grandparents that have a lot of time don’t be afraid to utilize them. I find these days there’s a lot of stigma for new parents that people say you alone should bring up your child and they need to get the best and most amount of time from you. In my opinion this is far from the truth. The reality is that your kids need to have a lot of people around them to socialize and learn how to adapt. Each person also teaches them new things (well if they are only letting them eat candy and watch TV obviously avoid them) but overall if you trust someone with your kids it means they are good for them.
• Find sometime to spend with your partner every week. This is where a lot of people go wrong and trust me it’s very easy to do that. It’s imperative I can’t stress this enough to have a few hours a week that’s just you and them. If you don’t have a partner obviously this doesn’t apply to you but for those that do make sure you put the time and effort even if it sounds pointless and exhausting.

Conclusion

If you found How To Balance Life As A Parent useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.

If you have any questions, comments please post them below I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in. Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.

What’s your favorite thing to do as a parent to maintain a healthy lifestyle?

Again this is entirely personal but I think the most important thing is to take it one step at a time and allow yourself to make mistakes.

You can enjoy similar articles in the links below:

• How To Prevent Spreading Sickness In Family Home
• How To Travel With Toddler In A Plane
• Complete Guide For Cycling With Toddlers/Kids