Making more time for Bella
The common guilt of a working mom, if you ask me, is about making time. 24 hours seems to be never enough, even during the weekends.
During the weekdays, most of my hours are spent on being at the office. As for the rest of the day, the hours are filled with routines – waking up, getting dressed, sending Bella to daycare, picking her up, bathing her, cook, dinner, prayers, and sleep.
During the weekends, besides the same routine, I usually find myself busy with housework. Sheesh, there is ALWAYS something to be done at home. Always.
The feeling of not having enough time causes me to rush. I know it is unhealthy to rush on everything, but sometimes I could not help it. I always hear myself saying “Cepatlah Bella” (Hurry up, Bella) and sometimes I don’t even know what I am rushing for. That poor girl was just trying to absorb the world, and all I do is rushing her. That is so not alright.
Sometimes when I find time to think and reflect on myself, I always got caught with a remorseful feeling of not spending enough time with Bella. No matter how much I tried making time, I still feel that it is never enough.
Well definition of enough time may vary between mothers, but for me, despite being able to play around, read, bath and make her dinner most of the nights, it still feels inadequate.
I think Bella deserves more time from me. Not the lets-do-this-while-we-can type of time, but more of an intended, dedicated quality time. One when we can both relax and sit down and do something we enjoy together, without worrying about the next item in my never ending to-do list.
Recently, I was invited by Friso Gold to participate in a motherhood survey (which I honestly admit is very apt for me). The survey was intended to measure how much mothers in Malaysia (especially working mothers) spend quality time with their kids, and how do they cope and how do they feel about it.
And here are some of the interesting results from the survey:
• While the Malaysian mum spends an average of 6 hours 45 minutes with her children in a day and considers 60% of her time spent with her children as “quality time”, the working mums spends less time and consider a lower portion of her time spent with her children as “quality time”.
• More than half of the working mums surveyed also feel she does not spend enough time with her children.
• The survey shows a higher proportion of working mothers (about half of them) are feeling the tension to balance between work and family, agreeing that they always don’t have enough time in their daily life/routine.
Sigh. That is soo, so true.
One good thing about this survey though – I know that I am not alone. So here is my call to action – if you feel the same way with your children, and you think that they deserve more, let’s try to prioritize our time by doing this:
Our Today Moment is the time we set aside our daily to-dos and focus on “today”. To me, it is an effort to allocate a portion of our daily time as a real quality time with our children. For starters, be it 15 minutes, 30 minutes or more – it has to be of quality and enjoyable.
So here is mine:
There. That would do to start off don’t you think? I hope that I will be able to stick to it, In sya Allah. And as we go along, I hope to add more time for other things.
So what is yours? Tell me about it in the comment section. Let’s do this together!
Need help with how to create quality time with your children? Fret not, Friso Gold shares lots of tips on that at their Facebook page here:
During the weekdays, most of my hours are spent on being at the office. As for the rest of the day, the hours are filled with routines – waking up, getting dressed, sending Bella to daycare, picking her up, bathing her, cook, dinner, prayers, and sleep.
During the weekends, besides the same routine, I usually find myself busy with housework. Sheesh, there is ALWAYS something to be done at home. Always.
The feeling of not having enough time causes me to rush. I know it is unhealthy to rush on everything, but sometimes I could not help it. I always hear myself saying “Cepatlah Bella” (Hurry up, Bella) and sometimes I don’t even know what I am rushing for. That poor girl was just trying to absorb the world, and all I do is rushing her. That is so not alright.
Sometimes when I find time to think and reflect on myself, I always got caught with a remorseful feeling of not spending enough time with Bella. No matter how much I tried making time, I still feel that it is never enough.
Well definition of enough time may vary between mothers, but for me, despite being able to play around, read, bath and make her dinner most of the nights, it still feels inadequate.
I think Bella deserves more time from me. Not the lets-do-this-while-we-can type of time, but more of an intended, dedicated quality time. One when we can both relax and sit down and do something we enjoy together, without worrying about the next item in my never ending to-do list.
Recently, I was invited by Friso Gold to participate in a motherhood survey (which I honestly admit is very apt for me). The survey was intended to measure how much mothers in Malaysia (especially working mothers) spend quality time with their kids, and how do they cope and how do they feel about it.
And here are some of the interesting results from the survey:
• While the Malaysian mum spends an average of 6 hours 45 minutes with her children in a day and considers 60% of her time spent with her children as “quality time”, the working mums spends less time and consider a lower portion of her time spent with her children as “quality time”.
Sigh. That is soo, so true.
One good thing about this survey though – I know that I am not alone. So here is my call to action – if you feel the same way with your children, and you think that they deserve more, let’s try to prioritize our time by doing this:
Creating Our Today Moment with our children
Our Today Moment is the time we set aside our daily to-dos and focus on “today”. To me, it is an effort to allocate a portion of our daily time as a real quality time with our children. For starters, be it 15 minutes, 30 minutes or more – it has to be of quality and enjoyable.
So here is mine:
Every day I will spend at least 15 minutes to teach Bella about the basics of Islam – by reading to her, doing fun activities or just having a simple conversation.
There. That would do to start off don’t you think? I hope that I will be able to stick to it, In sya Allah. And as we go along, I hope to add more time for other things.
So what is yours? Tell me about it in the comment section. Let’s do this together!
Need help with how to create quality time with your children? Fret not, Friso Gold shares lots of tips on that at their Facebook page here:
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