The Work/Life Balancing Act

How a spouse can doom your work life balance success

 

 

Sheryl Sandberg, the outspoken COO of Facebook, repeatedly has said one of the most important career moves you make is who you marry. I see that played out, over and over, sometimes in a positive way, and sometimes not. 

Just as lack of consensus around finances can doom a marriage, lack of support from your husband or wife can effectively sink a career. For decades, it's been wives who have supported their husbands careers -- emotionally and physically. But now that most couples are dual earners, the whole dynamics of career priority are changing in marriages. Men are being asked to do more at home as women do more at the office.

Earlier this week, NPR Morning Edition featured a stay-at-home dad for its "The Changing Lives of Women" series.  Jonathan Heisey-Groves and his wife, Dawn, a public health analyst, didn't exactly plan for Jonathan to be a stay-at-home parent to Egan, 5, and Zane, who's 4 months old. The Heisey-Groves were both working full time when he lost his job as a graphic designer.  Jonathan stayed home at first just to save money on child care. But then, Dawn got a promotion.

 "She took a position at her company that involved a lot of travel, last-minute work, late nights and so forth," he says. "And I have some understanding of how it feels to be in that position, so I try to be as supportive as I can."

You might not be married to a Jonathan, who is willing to give up his career to raise the kids, but are you married to someone who wants you to succeed in your job? Are you showing your spouse the physical and emotional support that he or she needs to succeed? 

Think about that before you answer....

A friend of mine complained for weeks that her husband was going to accept a promotion that involved more travel. For her, it meant she would need to leave work earlier to pick their kids up from after school care. But instead of talking it through, she informed him he can't take the promotion. Now they're both resentful. 

Monique Valcour, a professor of management at EDHEC Business School in France, has just published a great article on the Harvard Business Review blog called the Dual-Career Mojo that Makes Couples Thrive. She gives suggestions for how to be more supportive of each other's careers. They're so good I'm sharing them with you (edited a bit with my own comments added in) 

Communicate priorities: Talk early and often about what matters most to both of you. In other words, you want to avoid realizing too late (e.g., when you've already called a divorce lawyer) that there is a big gap between what you say you care about most and how you actually invest your time and energy.

Talk about work at home: Look for solutions together that will reduce career-related conflicts and maximize opportunities for career enrichment between the members of the couple. Valcour says,  "My husband and I routinely help each other decide how to approach issues we encounter in our careers by listening, asking questions, and offering a broader perspective."

Think like a team. This often means taking turns. Dual career couples who are movie actors often take turns being away on set and home with the kids. Valcour notes that many dual-career couples confer with each other before accepting travel commitments to ensure that both parents are never away at the same time. In  less successful dual-career partnerships, each partner's interest in the other's career is often more self-referential — as in, "How will my partner's work demands or rewards affect me?" as opposed to "How do we meet the demands and enjoy the rewards together?"

Ask for help. Your partner may be willing to let you sacrifice some family time to do what you need to do at work or to go back to school. This takes open communication and the ability to help the other person overcome guilt.

Be open to change.  Modern careers don't typically follow a predictable path; the road is ever-changing. That's where a spouse's support is critical. Let's say your business suddenly takes off or your boss offers you a promotion. That inevitably impacts your home life in a way your spouse might not have expected. Valcour notes that few people make it all the way through a career without experiencing an unexpected company event that affects their career prospects, a significant failure, an apparent success that turns out to be unsatisfactory, or a desire to make a significant change. As changes occur, remember the upside of dual career marriages. Having two careers takes the pressure off either person to be responsible for all of the material support of the family unit. Of course, both spouses have to believe that to be true.

Readers, has your spouse been a powerful resources in helping you work through career and life challenges? If not, in what ways has a lack of support created havoc in your personal and professional success?

Moms who save children's lives

Is there any work life balance for moms in medicine?

Linda Brodsky, an pediatric otolaryngologist, has received a grant from the American Medical Women’s Association to study the experiences, attitudes, and work habits of women physicians. She told me the health care system is not readily adapting to how men and women work differently. 

Being a physician is extremely difficult, particularly for moms, she says. "If you go into it, expect a tough road. Being overwhelmed is the nature of every day life as woman physician. To think otherwise is naïve or romanticized."

Yet, 13 percent of all physicians are women, and they are expected to be 50 percent of the doctor population by 2040. "Women are going into medicine despite barriers and challenges because they want to be part of an exciting field," Brodsky explains.

 Today, in my Miami Herald column, just in time for Mother's Day, I featured doctor moms and learned how they juggle saving children's lives and raising their own families.

Help at home is critical for doctor moms

By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN

The Deeter family is shown in the living room of their plantation home on Sunday, May 5, 2013. Dr. Kris Deeter gets help at home fro her mom and husband.            Gregory Castillo / Miami Herald Staff

 

By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN

For Kristina Deeter, a hard day at work could include resuscitating a toddler who nearly drowned, adjusting medication for a child who is struggling to tolerate a new heart or setting up a premature baby on life support.

Then, after an intense 12-hour shift, Deeter, a 41-year-old pediatric intensive care physician, will go home to her own children — and try not to be a hyper-sensitive mom. “My job makes me very aware that anything can happen,” she says. “I think that makes my relationships with my own kids more special.”

Many working parents — and mothers in particular — tread a delicate line between demanding careers and the needs of family. But for mothers in medicine, the stakes are particularly high.

 

“It’s a critical job and I can’t just run out the door if something happens at home,” says Deeter who is part of an 9-doctor team with Pediatric Critical Care of South Florida, which operates the pediatric intensive care unit at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood and North Naples Hospital in Southwest Florida. “I say I’m sorry to my kids and husband a lot. But when it’s really important, I’m there.”

To help her children understand why she works such long hours, Deeter has introduced her children to patients and even brought them with her to bereavement ceremonies.. “I don’t want them damaged by my job, but I do want them to have that compassion to help others.’’

As women have come up the ranks in the male-dominated field of medicine, they have changed the practice, taken a more nurturing approach to interacting with patients and families and made it more acceptable to openly talk about challenges of many years of schooling, training, a high-stress environment, long and unpredictable hours — and motherhood. Today, nearly 13 percent of physicians are female, compared with about 8 percent a decade ago, according to the American Medical Association.

Toba Niazi, 34, is the rarest of women in medicine: a neurosurgeon. Only 200 — about 7 percent of the nation’s roughly 3,300 board-certified neurosurgeons — are female. On a given day, Niazi might meticulously remove a tumor from a child’s brain or skillfully repair a baby’s spinal cord. She operates as part of the three-person department at Miami Children’s Hospital and serves as a voluntary faculty member at the University of Miami, which means she sees children who are pediatric neurology patients at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Niazi also is the mother of a 2-year-old and an 8-month-old. Pregnancy was difficult. She spent eight to 10 hours at a time on her feet in the operating room — without a bathroom break. Of course, motherhood is a challenge, too. “It’s hard to leave your 2-year-old when you’re going to work and say, ‘I’ll see you in 12 or 16 hours,’ especially when you leave them with a caretaker that is not family,” she says.

After long emotional days at work, Niazi says she wants to be the one to tuck her tots into bed at night. That doesn’t always happen.

Like many doctor moms, Niazi’s husband also is a physician, a stroke neurologist at Baptist Health South Florida. A full-time nanny cares for the kids during the day, but dad’s schedule allows him to be the parent at home at night when his wife is on call or works late. “He gets what I deal with and understands when I have a sick child I have to take care of and can’t come home,” Niazi explains. “I don’t think anyone else would tolerate it.”

Support at home is essential. So are the right workplace partnerships or teams who share responsibilities and support motherhood.

Positive outcomes are critical not just for moms in medicine, but for the nation at large. Amid a potential physician shortage, an increasing numbers of doctors — mostly women — are deciding to work part time or leave the profession.

Setting up a system that works can take some trial and error — and staying power.

“It’s a long road and at times during that road, you think ‘wow can I do this?’ It’s your passion that gets you through it,” Niazi explains.

Ana Russo, 33, says she can go from shuttling her child to school to keeping another child alive within the same hour. She’s a nurse who is on the frontline when a child with a traumatic injury arrives at Jackson Memorial Hospital Ryder Trauma Center in Miami.

As a mother of two boys, 6 and 2, she says it’s almost impossible to not to relate to the heartache parents endure when their child is critically injured riding a bicycle, swimming in a pool or crossing the street. It has made her a much more cautious mother, maybe even overly cautious. She insists her kids wear elbow and knee pads and a helmet when they ride their bikes. “It’s hard to not keep my kids in a bubble with everything I see at work.”

Russo says some days, she gets emotionally attached to saving a young patient, feeling a sense of responsibility. As a mother herself, “you care for that child like your own.” Her days can stretch into night without an opportunity to check in at home during her 12-hour shift. “That’s why you have to have a good support system at home.” She relies on her husband and aunt to be there for homework, afterschool activities and dinner.

Lynn Meister, 52, worked full days and many nights as a pediatric hematologist/oncologist while raising two children, now in their 20s. She says she relied heavily on her husband for help at home and never once felt the personal sacrifices outweighed the rewards.

For years Meister would get asked, “’As a mother, how can you do that kind of work? Doesn’t it make you afraid?’ But I wasn’t afraid. I always felt like I had so much to offer because I am a mother.”

She, too, experienced the medical nightmare as a parent, when her then 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor. That daughter now is an eight-year cancer survivor. Meister says the experience made the balancing act that much more important to her and led her to become an even better doctor.

Yet, Meister says her biggest battle was with imperfection, a common struggle among working mothers. “I felt like I never was doing quite as good a job as I could as a doctor or mother.” Today, she encourages other women to stick with medicine. “My son and daughter are fine adults, and if I can cure a child of cancer what can be better than that?”

Teens plan to rely on parents: Fitting money lessons into your work life balance

 

Have you ever been so busy and distracted that your teen asks you for money and you hand over a few bucks just to get them out of your hair?

I'm 100 percent guilty of this.

But that's about to change. I just saw a statistic that startled me: Nearly 60 percent of teens said they don't expect to be ready to financially support themselves by age 24 -- a far cry from the same survey by Junior Achievement two years ago, when 75 percent of teens felt the same.

Am I one of those parents who hasn't been making enough time to teach my kids to be financially responsible? Are you?

 

"Parents continue to be the No.1 influence on teens when it comes to money, so helping their teens set financial goals and take steps to meet them should pay off financially for both teens and their parents," said Don Civgin, president and chief executive officer of Allstate Financial.

AOL poses this question: Whose job is it to teach kids how to manage money -- teachers or parents?

 

For a while now, I've been on a rampage, arguing that high schools should require a mandatory class on personal finance. It may be the most important skill a teen learns and I can't understand why schools aren't teaching it. But the reality is, they aren't teaching it and even if they did, it likely will take both teachers and parents to put budgeting and managing money on our teens radars. 

 

April is financial literacy month and it is a good time for you and me to make time for money lessons. 

Here are the five financial lessons experts suggest we take the time to teach our teens before they head off into the world on their own. 

 

 

1. Credit. Teens need to know what it is, what responsibilities come with it, and how credit can increase cash flow but has to be paid back … with interest. (click here for more on how to teach your children about credit)

2. Credit Score. You will need to explain what it is and how the car you drive, the house you live in and the job  you have can all be affected by your credit score

3.  Loans. Explain good versus bad credit by pointing out important entries that have helped you establish a financial identity, such as your  mortgage or car loan.

4. Spending habits. Your kids “are going to be learning by watching you,”  says Sarah, founder of RaisingCEOKids.com and co-author of “The Parents’ Guide to Raising CEO Kids. Use teachable moments to explain why you make certain spending decisions and the consequences of your spending mistakes.

5. Savings. Now that your child is a teenager, you will want to show them how to open a savings account. While your teen may be enthused about earning money from work, you also have to teach him or her not to spend it all, an important lesson in financial management. This will take a bank visit together. You will need to consider fees and requirements, location of the bank, and amount of interest paid on a savings account.

 

I often hear parents say it's  hard to choose between financial security and a decent work life balance. If we teach our kids good money management at an early age, I'm hoping some of those choices we parents confront will be less of an issue for our kids in the future.   

Readers, do you think parents are taking enough time to teach our kids about personal finance? If not, do you think the schools should step in and do it?

Work life balance is like a visit to the cafeteria

 

 

Not long ago, someone in one of the many work life groups I belong to posed this question:

What's your #1 work life tip?

There have been great responses, but today, someone posted a response that I absolutely LOVE and had to share with you. 

Sheryl Nicholson writes:

 

Recognize Life is a Buffet Table of Choices and always ask "What's the price?" and be willing to pay for any choice you make.

 

To me, Sheryl's advice is profound. How many times have you heard people groan about work life balance being a myth. It's not a myth. It's possible. But it takes making choices that have a price attached. Sometimes that price of a choice is high and can cost you a marriage, a promotion, a larger family, a lifestyle or even retirement savings. 

Sheryl's comment speaks directly to what Penelope Trunk said in her blog post earlier this week. She was addressing Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new ban of remote working at her company.

Penelope writes:

The message here (that Mayer is sending) is that if you want to work at a company where people are doing big and important things, you have to give up everything. It’s okay to say that. Telecommuting is for people who don’t want to give up everything for their company. Mayer doesn’t want to work with people like that.

The workforce divides into two halves: people who try very hard to decrease the conflict in their life between work and home, and people who try very hard to get to the top of the work world. You can’t do both. 

The reality of today’s workforce is that if you want to have a big job where you have prestige and money and power, you probably need a stay-at-home spouse. Or two full-time nannies. Which means most people don’t have the option to go on the fast track, because most people have not set their lives up this way.

So let’s just admit that most of us are not on the fast-track. Stop bitching that people won’t let slow people on the fast track. Stop saying that it’s bad for family. It’s great for family. It means people will not continue operating under the delusion that you can be a hands-on parent and a top performer. People will make real choices and own those choices.

This is true for men and women. Today anyone can rise to the top if they give up their life to do it.

If you want to parent—really be there for your kids—then you need an alternative career track. You can telecommute, you can work part-time, you can freelance, you just can’t work with people who don’t need those same accommodations.

So today, people have choices, people have more control over their lives than ever, and people have good information to make intelligent decisions.

 

I think it's critical to take all information at your disposal and be realistic with yourself when you ask, "how much am I willing to pay?" for a choice you are about to make.  The balance "myth" comes when you underestimate the price and become surprised or disappointed at check out.

Have you ever felt you paid too high a price for a choice off the buffet? Do you think most of us are realistic about the cost of their choices?

 

What career advice would you give your kid?

Recently, at Media Day, a young Asian enterntainment reporter told high school students how disappointed her parents were in her career choice. She said they wanted her to be an engineer or scientist, a path more Asians take. She explained that her parents finally came around when they saw that she actually got a job in her field, and they realized she was happy.

Her story got me thinking....It's so hard to advise our kids on career paths today because industries are changing so rapidly. I am in the thick of guiding my daughter on what colleges she should apply to and how her career choice plays into that decision. It led to today's Miami Herald column.

 

 

Work/Life Balancing Act

Dear daughter, let me give you some career advice ...

By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN     

Preparing for the New Economy requires a focus on developing skill sets rather than navigating rigid career paths.

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John Swartz is regional director of career services at Everest College.

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By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN

balancegal@gmail.com

            My daughter, a high school junior, wants to be a teacher. That doesn’t sit well with my husband, who worries about the state of education and the job outlook. He and I regularly debate whether we should encourage her to pursue this interest, or strongly steer her in another direction.

Today, coaching our kids about career paths is complicated. Many of my reporter and editor friends who witnessed an overhaul of the media world are highly opposed to their kids becoming journalists. Where parents of the past pushed their kids to follow in their footsteps, we want the generation of college-bound kids we raise to go where the jobs will be.

American workers’ experiences during the recession and the uncertainty of the global economy have made many of us more opinionated about what careers our kids pursue. We have witnessed job loss and burnout. We have seen highly educated professionals such as lawyers and bankers lose their jobs. And worse, we have seen college graduating classes face an overwhelmingly tough employment arena. While it’s true that a college degree usually guarantees better wages, the mantra of parents clearly has become: Can you land a decent-paying job with that degree?      

      As parents, we’re just beginning to understand that the next generation will have to navigate the workplace differently. Experts forecast that workers starting out now will switch careers — that’s careers, not jobs — an average of more than three times during their lives. Should parents, then, worry less about guiding our kids into careers and focus more on helping our kids identify skills to succeed in the new economy?

Whether my daughter becomes a teacher or an engineer, her success likely will come from a mastery of technology, languages and communications skills. Most importantly, she will need the mindset to be a problem solver, innovator, risk taker and self marketer. She will need to be prepared to continuously acquire new skills, a lesson my generation has learned the hard way.

“We are fooling ourselves to think young people will get a degree and spend the next 20 years at a single company or in a single industry,” says John Swartz, regional director of career services at Everest College, which has campuses in 30 cities including Miami. “They will have to be more focused on dealing with change. In this new world order, they have to follow the jobs in demand, acquire the right skills or at least transferable skills, and know that the skill set needed might change.”

Read more...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/20/3106772/dear-daughter-let-me-give-

Rea

you.html#storylink=cpy

Working parents speak out about homework overload

I am a parent who believes kids today get too much homework. Although I'm all for giving homework, I just believe in moderation.

For working parents, ensuring homework gets done is just another item on their to do list. When jobs demand longer hours, arriving from work to a second shift at home that includes hours of homework supervision is exhausting.  I wonder if teachers understand this?

In my Miami Herald column today, I let readers have their say about homework insanity. By the way, parents, besides Google, here's a book that can help you when you're trying to help your kids with homework: The Parent’s Homework Dictionary

Column on homework overload brings flood of responses

By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN     

A column about homework overload on kids and their parents drew a flood of response.

        Debbie Regent, 48, center, assists her children Haley, 10, left, and Brooke, 14, with their homework at their kitchen table.    

By CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN

balancegal@gmail.com

            After putting in much more than her eight hours at the office, Julie Price returns home for a long night of supervising her daughter’s homework — a process that often lasts for hours. “It’s exhausting,” she says.

She’s not the only parent with this routine. Reader response came flooding in from all over the country after my recent column on whether homework is preparing the next generation for the workplace of the future. The message: Excessive student homework has become an overwhelming burden on working parents.

Price, a single mom in Coconut Creek, says she and other parents are confronting the perfect storm of work-life challenges — increased work demands and longer hours resulting from pared back office staffs, competitive pressure on students to achieve more and school budget cuts that have forced more learning to be done at home.      

“We’ve overstretched and overtaxed the family unit,” Price says.

In my prior column, Debbie Regent, a mother of two in Weston, said homework stress is ruining her home life. After a day of work, she arrives home to several hours of homework supervision. “There is a value to reinforcing what you learned that day through homework. There is not value in torturing a kid with five pages of math problems when they have other classes with homework assignments as well.”

Parents wrote to tell me their home lives have turned into a burdensome flow of homework, tests and projects. Nagging about homework and kids’ stress over it looms over the evenings and weekends, infringing on family time. In some households, it has even led to marital discourse, short tempers and a child’s need for anxiety medication.

Other parents wrote to say they had to quit jobs, change work schedules, even sacrifice career advancement to deal with the homework insanity. A mother of triplets says she left her job as a receptionist when she and her husband decided even dividing and conquering wasn’t enough to get all the homework done at night and allow their girls to participate in sports.

Read more.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/02/3031330/column-on-homework-overload-brings.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/02/3031330/column-on-homework-overload-brings.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/02/3031330/column-on-homework-overload-brings.html#storylink=cpy

 

How to Copy Working Mother's 100 Best Companies

Have you ever wondered, "Why doesn't my employer get it?"

The good news is that some employers do get the concept that a business can turn a profit while still making life more manageable for working parents.

Working Mother just came out with its list of the 100 Best Companies and they are offering some very cool benefits. Some of those benefits, guaranteed to help with work life balance, are easy to replicate, even by small employers.

Check this out: AOL’s New York City office recently gave employee parents a break by babysitting their kids for an entire Saturday. That's an easy perk for a small business to offer.

Here's another cool program: At First Horizon National Corp. they have a Working Parents Network: “It gives those of us who are caring for others the chance to exchange ideas, share photos and cry on each other’s shoulders,” a member says.

The “top” companies on the Working Mother best list offered paid maternity leave, telecommuting options and on-site lactation rooms. This year, the winners have shown their commitment in new ways like elder care referral and legal assistance to help busy parents manage their responsibilities. Those two perks aren't expensive to offer and mean a lot to those who need them. 

Some of the best companies even offered back-up child care, adoption assistance, health screenings and smoking cessation programs. Twenty-three percent had on-site nap rooms. Does that make you jealous, or maybe a bit sleepy?

Many on the list, such as Valassis Communications, offered flexible work hours. I see that as a family-friendly benefit an employer of any size could provide to its workers. 

Valassis also offers child care reimbursement, a complimentary car seat for newborns, college care packages and convenience services like on-site fitness centers, family rooms and dry cleaning services. It also offers an adoption assistance program,  up to $5,000 toward the adoption of a child.

The interest in fitness to help with work life balance is increasing. At Abbott,  at least 75% of employees are enrolled in the LiveLifeWell initiative, which features 12-week exercise challenges and 10,000-steps-per-day walking competitions. I bet even a small business could engage its employees in an exercise challenge.

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/09/18/4271590/valassis-named-as-working-mother.html#storylink=cpy

Here is a full list of Working Mother's 2012 100 Best Companies and some key statistics on their performance.

What one “family” benefit would you most like to have at your office?

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/18/4829686/2012-working-mother-100-best-companies.html#storylink=cpy

Does homework insanity lead to future workplace success?

I was sitting on the soccer field, reading a story in the Wall Street Journal, when I commented to a dad sitting next to me that somehow, this woman I was reading about had managed to get her kid out of doing homework.

"Wouldn't that be nice?" I sarcastically asked.

His answer surprised me. "I think homework helps with work ethic and career success." This dad, who sells printing services, went on to tell me about how much work he brings home and how he must respond to client calls and requests at all hours. "In our workplaces today, we bring work home and our future workers need to be prepared to handle it."

Hmmm....that got me thinking....below is the column that resulted from our discussion. I mostly hear from parents who consider homework a burden. I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether you think volumes of homework has benefits for future workers of America.

Coping with homework insanity

 

Does homework overload or help shape the next generation for what’s ahead? Or should we be providing some balance for kids (and their parents), too?

Debbie Regent, 48, center, assists her children Haley, 10, left, and Brooke, 14, with their homework at their kitchen table. Weston resident Debbie Regent, 48, working parent with two girls, supervised her children homework for several hours in Weston on Sunday, September 16, 2012. 

CARL JUSTE / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

BY CINDY KRISCHER GOODMAN

BALANCEGAL@GMAIL.COM

The words slip off the tongue of the dad who triages a math assignment from his corner office or the mother who darts home from work to review dozens of spelling words: Stop the homework insanity!

I’ve uttered those words myself, often late at night after my daughter is melting down from hours of math problems on top of essays and chapter outlines. Ask almost any parent and they will tell you that the volume of homework that fills their kid’s agenda is overwhelming.

To rebel, books and websites have been dedicated to the Stop Homework movement, urging letter writing campaigns and teacher confrontation. Last week, I read about a woman who bragged that her grade school daughter had never done a lick of homework. Each year, the mom sits down with the teacher and principal and explains that her daughter will pay attention, get stellar grades and perform well on tests but she will not do homework. She tells the school they can alert her if intervention is required. Somehow, this has worked.

Yet, I’m wondering if we’re taking the wrong approach. Is the homework insanity we complain about as working parents the key to preparing our kids for the workplace of the future?

One father I know convincingly argues that homework, even volumes, is critical preparation for career success. “It’s not realistic for us to raise kids to think they’re going to work 9 to 5, leave and they’re done,” he said. “These kids are going to need to be well prepared to handle all the meetings and projects and emails that come at them in the workplace.”

Clearly, there are new rules we play by in the workplace today. If you want a decent job that will lead to a decent life, you have to work harder and smarter. Workplace experts say the next generation of workers will need to be innovators, problem solvers, open-minded risk-takers with the ability to learn new things, adapt to new work situations and maintain high productivity.

“The onus will be on workers to structure their time,” says Lynn Karoly, a senior economist with RAND Corp. who has studied the future workforce. From her own kids’ homework experience, Karoly says she’s seen a shift, with teachers giving short and long-term assignments, team projects and verbal presentations. “That’s indicative of the way students are expected to learn and the skills they will need in the workforce.”

Tell that to Debbie Regent, a mother of two girls, 14 and 10, who says homework stress is ruining her life. After a day of work, she arrives home to several hours of homework supervision. “There is a value to reinforcing what you learned that day through homework. There is not value in torturing a kid with five pages of math problems, when they have other classes with homework assignments as well.” Regent, a campaign executive with the Jewish National Fund, asserts that homework, much of which is just busywork, not only keeps kids from needed down time, it burdens parents, too.

Read more...

Teachers offer back-to-school advice for working parents

A friend of mine met her daughter's teacher for the first time a few months before school started -- at Walmart. In the check out line, she learned about reading resources that could have helped her daughter had she known about them earlier in the year. She has vowed to meet her daughter's teacher this year within the first few months of school.

Regardless of what grade your child is in, "contact your child's teacher or schedule a conference early in the school year to establish an open line of communication," says Joan O'Brien, a middle school math teacher in Davie, Florida.

In today's Miami Herald column, I asked additional teachers for their best advice for how working parents struggling with work life balance can stay involved in their child's education.

Posted on Tue, Aug. 21, 2012 Back-to-school basics for working parents By Cindy Krischer Goodman balancegal@gmail.com C.M. GUERRERO / EL NUEVO HERALD   Families scramble on the first day of school at Devon Aire K-8 Elementary School in South Days on the first day of school for Miami-Dade County on August 20, 2012. This school year, some working parents are changing their game plan. Felicia Alvaro, vice president of finance at Ultimate Software, is one of them. Last year, her teenage daughter was secretive about grades and attendance. But a phone call changed that: Alvaro was called in to meet with her daughter’s guidance counselor and a concerned teacher and learned her daughter’s grades had slipped and she had skipped classes numerous times. “If I’d met with them after the first time, it wouldn’t have happened again. I was busy with work and it was easier to naively trust my teenage daughter,” she said. In the new school year, Alvaro plans to meet with teachers proactively, every few months, and she will drive her daughter to school every morning “just to open the door to communication.” Clearly, most of us know parent involvement can make a difference in a child’s education. But at a time when the literacy rate has plummeted and the SAT reading scores were the lowest on record, are working parents too busy earning a paycheck to take an active role in their children’s learning? With that in mind, I turned to teachers for advice on how working parents with heavy job demands can best stay involved in their children’s education. Their suggestions are aimed at parents of all income levels and all grade levels. The consensus among teachers is that parents don’t need to spend hours volunteering in the classroom or sitting on the PTA board. Involvement, they say, starts with a simple gesture: finding out a teacher’s email address and using it to communicate — from your desk, business hotel, home or nearby library. In elementary school, where a teacher can be the reason a child looks forward to waking up, meeting that person should be considered a parent’s priority. Kim Milov, a fourth-grade teacher at Hawks Bluff Elementary in Southwest Ranches, believes parents should try extra hard to attend open house/meet-the-teacher night. “That way, even if you’re at work you have a visual connection with your child at school. You can imagine him sitting in his chair.” Milov also suggest parents consider taking one day or night during the school year to show involvement. “Maybe you could come for field day, or chaperone a field trip or participate in an evening program like family night.” Donna Rabinowitz, a first-grade teacher at Central Park Elementary in Plantation, says three key moves will make a difference when your child is in the first few years of grade school. First, look through your child’s work folder on a regular basis to see what he or she is doing in school. If you see your child is struggling with something and you don’t have time during the week, put it to the side. Then, take a half hour out of your weekend to go over that skill. Second, read with your child, even if it’s just 10 minutes a night. Lastly, review your child’s homework every night. If the child did poorly on something, know the reason. Showing your child you care about what they do in school is important: “We only have one short year to mold them. You have many years to mold them.” For young children, parent-teacher conferences are critical, teachers say. Carolina Garcia, a kindergarten teacher at Coral Park Elementary in Miami, says teachers realize that parents, sometimes, can’t afford to miss work for a conference. But most teachers are willing to set up a phone conference. “Just having that one-to-one conversation with your child’s teacher is important.” In between conferences, she advises parents to read the weekly newsletter teachers usually send home. “If parents are divorced, we can send each a copy.” Abbi Stoloff, a fourth-grade teacher at Fox Trail Elementary in Davie, says talking to your kids about school, regardless of their age, shows involvement. “If you can’t be involved during the work week, be involved on the weekends.” Rather than grilling them about their day, spark a casual conversation, she advises. “Listen, guide them and be a presence. Ask questions about what they’re working on at school. Good communication makes the day-to-day easier. That’s involvement.” Unlike grade school, teachers expect more independence from middle school students. But that doesn’t mean parents should back off, teachers say. Lori Goldwyn, a math teacher at Tequesta Trace Middle School in Weston, suggests regularly looking over your tween’s agenda and making a routine of checking teachers’ websites. “Bookmark them and communicate with the teacher.” Goldwyn says one of the simple steps working parents can take is to spend 10 minutes on Sunday nights talking about the week — what’s due, what needs to be signed, what tests are coming up. By high school, some parents back off completely. That’s a mistake, teachers say. Daniel Muchnick, a U.S. history teacher at Miami Norland High School, says working parents of teens can become stay involved with a few keystrokes on a keyboard. Parents should be aware that many school districts use online grade books, he says. “Grades, attendance, assignments…everything is available online.” Parents can also establish alerts so they can be notified by e-mail or text if their child is absent, if an assignment is missing or if a grade point average drops. Muchnick recommends checking your teen’s grades at least weekly, and if you see he isn’t doing well, email the teacher. “We welcome communication from parents. When parents are involved, grades are better. There’s definitely a connection.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/21/v-print/2961928/back-to-school-basics-for-working.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/21/v-print/2961928/back-to-school-basics-for-working.html#storylink=cpy

 

The best back-to-school organizing tips I've collected

 

 

 

Today, I dropped my youngest off for his first day of middle school and watched him walk excitedly into the building. It hit me that I'm moving into a new phase in my life. As I usher my son along the path of being more independent, I can pull back a little from homework supervision and packing his lunch. For most parents, the new school year involves changes in routine that require we reorganize and readjust.

From what I've discovered, ensuring life runs smoothly is a good goal but most of us have made mistakes and forgotten an orthodontist appointment or to sign a permission slip for a class field trip.  

Over the years, I've had lots of experts weigh in and I've decided today I'm  going to share some of the best back to school organizing tips that I've collected:

* Calendar everything. Get the school calendar for the year with days off and early release. Incorporate that into your work calendar so you can plan ahead. Write down the date of the meet-the-teacher night and the schedule for tryouts for school sports teams. Do it now!

* Schedule vacations or time off. If you are entitled to days off at work, find out now when there are school holidays, awards ceremonies, field trips and put in your time off requests. If you wait until the last minute, other working parents may already have requested those days off.

* Stock up. At the beginning of the school year, buy extra report covers, poster boards, glue sticks and markers. It will save you from making a mad dash to Wal-Mart after a long day at work.

* Hold Sunday night planning sessions. As the week approaches, sit down as family and discuss plans for the week. Who has late night business meetings? Who has SAT prep class or soccer practice? A ten minute discussion on Sunday night can save unnecessary meal preparation, and schedule clashes.

*  Provide back up lunch money. Has your child ever had to eat bread and butter at school because he forgot his lunchbox? Mine has and  it made me feel like a horrible mother. A good mother (or parent) sticks money in the kids' backpacks or school lunch accounts at the beginning of the school year to ensure they have the option of buying lunch if needed.

* Clear the clutter as it arrives. I don't check my kids' backpacks every night. I never have, but I know I should. However, I do try to check them at least every  few days purge school papers as often as possible. I use the advice organizer Diane Hatcher of TimesaversUSA.com shared with me: If something that comes home from school has meaning to you or your child, save it; Otherwise toss it.

* Remember not to forget. I got this tip from Simplify101.com and I love it because I'm kind of forgetful. Create a simple system by the door to help you remember your new routine or special items you need to take with you each day: gym shoes on gym day, violin on music day, and snacks on snack day. Hang a bin or basket by your door to corral the items you need to remember.

If you have any back-to-school tips that have worked for you, I'd love to hear them. Good luck all of you in the new school year!