Home School Diaries of a Working Mum

by Saira Tahir

Life is a mess. Period.

Like every other day, my day has 30 listed chores. Oh wait, I forgot to fold that laundry yesterday, so yeah make it 31. Another team meeting… add another 10.

Every day I feel overwhelmed, almost over taken by the powers of nonstop increasing work load. Every day I almost give up.

O.K. that’s my daily dose of depression. The fact is, that as a working mom of a home schooled child, or Wom-Hom as I like to call it, I don’t have time for this kind of negativity. I did, when my kids were going to school achieving single directional, minimal, calculated information. I had all the time in the world to feel depressed, wasted, and sad.

Yes I feel over whelmed, when I come home tired and have a pile of house chores and two kids who grow on a never ending supply of not just love, but empathy, encouragement and a DASOGE MAXIMA of all my brain. Like all other mothers, I have my own magical abilities to handle this situation.

First of all, I can IGNORE. Like big time. I can ignore the mess, ignore the fact that a lot needs to be done and just focus on my not so tiny tots. I listen to them before I listen to my urge of cleaning up. I know every second of their day before I waste the rest of mine in tidying up the living space or cooking or laundry. The focus of my time at home is not providing the family with the cleanest, cosiest home, but with the strongest bond of trust. I am guilty of not following a special routine with my kids, but I do make up, by making the learning more effective.

Two years back, my house was spotless and my personality was all stained with the feeling of nothingness. The hustle of day starting from waking up the kids and rushing and hushing them into getting ready. This kept on going till they went to bed all grumpy and I finally got time to kiss them.

Now, my house is… clean (to some extent) and my kids have the wildest grins on their faces. And I have an ongoing career in Islamic Finance. I gave up the nonstop urge of being a perfect home maker, and exchanged it with happy kids, a passion perused and growth not just on a personal scale, but as a family as well.

I do not mean to just leave the home and husband alone. All I say is to sort out the priorities. I do not come last. My husband does not come after the kids. The kids do not come after the perfect house. It’s the family as a whole that comes first. Everything else is a second, third and so on. And the need or desire to be the perfect mother or wife or home maker, does not even come last. It does not exist.

The wisest advice I once received and implemented was to make the kids go to bed happy and to wake them up happy. I let my kids sleep those extra five minutes, but wake up happy. MAKES MY DAY SO MUCH EASIER.

Alhamdulillah for everything.