Last night my children waged war in my living room. As they fired Nerf guns in a battle against each other, stopping every so often to prevent the puppy from eating the bullets, I sat on the couch trying to maintain feelings of Zen by reading shopping catalogues. Some call those pamphlets junk mail, but in a world full of chaos what’s more soothing than checking out the discounts at your nearest supermarket?
The pamphlets were a coping strategy. As the chaos of my children swirled around me, I was also coming to terms with the fact that these kids are now on holiday. In fact they will be on holiday for most of April as this month there are only seven days when students will be at school. Talk about an April Fools’ joke that lasts all month.
My first thought was how will I get work done? As a foam bullet whizzed past my head that thought changed to – will it be possible for me to get any work done? I’ve just come out of a whirlwind few months since I launched my new book and I am due to go to Victoria for a writers’ festival this month (although thankfully that will coincide with the few days the kids are actually at school). Thoughts of my own personal schedule, along with how I could formulate a calendar of play dates, holiday camps and roping in family to help started swirling in my head.
The mental load of juggling work, life and everything in between, which often falls to mothers in heterosexual relationships, means that this month the toll will be even more severe than usual. So what is the solution?
For me, the answer is to embrace the chaos. With two children in primary school and one in high school, I have no choice but to roll with whatever life throws my way (and yes, sometimes actual throw-up is involved). This is perhaps why I can read supermarket catalogues and sometimes even books while my children play around me. It’s a careful balancing act of knowing what to focus on. Not to mention having lightning-fast reflexes so that without actually thinking about it, your hand juts out just in time to stop a child from falling – or a Nerf bullet from hitting you in the face.
I’m lucky that freelancing allows me to be flexible. This is not a choice afforded to many parents but, as the previous years have shown us, businesses have found a way to run their workplaces while negotiating a worldwide pandemic. So hopefully flexibility, especially in terms of work-life balance, is something that is still on the cards for many organisations. And if you’re at all in the position to make the life of any parent easier this month (or any month), please do.
Another thing I’ve found that really helps is keeping a sense of humour. There is nothing that helps break the tension like a good laugh. It helps not only you, but your children too. Yes, shit happens, and in the case of young kids, it might be actual shit. Which, when you’re trying to work is, y’know, tricky. But keeping a cool head can stop a bad situation from getting to a point where you’re blowing your top off. And as someone who has also done that, I can confirm that it usually just ends up exacerbating feelings of parental guilt – even though you should be allowed to blow your top off occasionally, because after all we are only human.
Other things that help me get through are to keep expectations low, have a snack cupboard that’s full (I don’t know why but children seem to eat way more during the holidays) and if you need to, go into survival mode, doing just the basics that need doing to get through the day. The laundry can wait.
There is joy in it too. Despite the occasional Nerf battle in the living room and navigating sibling conflicts, I very much enjoy having my children around – especially when they give me a couple of hours of peace in the middle of the day.
Just kidding, they never do that.
• Saman Shad is an author and freelance writer. Her debut novel, The Matchmaker, is out through Penguin Australia
