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School holidays hit New Zealand next week. For working parents everywhere, the weeks leading up to the school holidays tick along like a time bomb. You know it’s coming and you know it’s not going to be pretty. It’s definitely not going to be a holiday! Frantic dashes across town dropping children at different locations all before you turn on your laptop at 9am. Budgeting for holiday programmes that can range from $50 a day to $290 a day. The endless negotiations, debates and circular conversations on what your children do and do not want to do. Co-ordinating schedules, pick-ups and drop-offs with friends. Juggling your leave allowances even though it is never going to be enough for the 10 to 12 weeks a year where you need a solution for how your children will be cared for. It is exhausting. It is another thing on the heap in your mind that is the mental load that working parents carry.

It got me thinking. How might we reimagine the school holidays for a society that supported working parents? What would they look like? Would it still feel like a ticking time bomb every 10 weeks? What positive difference could it make to their and their family’s lives?  Lets reimagine the role your employer could play and lets change the conversations happening at home about who takes the lead in solutioning for school holidays.

There are a few ways an employer could demonstrate that they support working parents. School holiday programmes could be provided on-site at your employer’s offices. You bring your children with you to work every day and they then go into an on-site programme. Easy and effortless. IAG in Australia already run something similar. This would be one of the biggest talent retention and acquisition tools you could have. If I had primary school aged children again and my employer provided this, I don’t think I would ever leave!  Term Time Contracts are another innovative way of supporting working parents. These are employment contracts that only operate during term time during the year and your salary is pro-rated to account for this. These are becoming more common in the UK and it would be good to see them take off in NZ. The key thing here is to ensure that role outcomes are re-scoped so that they can be delivered in the reduced days available. But they can and they do work. They are another fabulous way of keeping working parents in the leadership pipeline.

Reimagining school holiday programmes is easy. They need to be better value, be in more convenient locations, and provide fun learning experiences. I don’t know about anyone else reading this, but I used to have to drag my children kicking and screaming to some week programmes. And I did feel guilty leaving them in a large, cold, gymnasium with a lunchbox and drink bottle. The cost associated can also be crippling as I have written about before. While reimagining these programmes is easy, fixing them is complicated. We do not value caregiving in our society and because of this, these roles are not well paid and the organisations not well funded. Rock and hard place.

As the time bomb ticks on, are you the only parent who is thinking about what the solution is? If you are co-parenting, this is a good time to start the conversation on who will take the lead in planning, researching, booking and the daily logistics for your children during the school holidays. Each one of those tasks are significant in themselves. Divide up who is going to take the lead on these tasks and own them from that time forward. The load of the school holidays needs to be equally shared between parents. Note for beginners: don’t under estimate how challenging it is to get agreement between a 7 year old, a 9 year old and an 11 year old on what school holiday programme they want to do. You might want to block out an afternoon for it.

One of the biggest barriers I often hear from parents who are either thinking of going back to paid work or who want to progress their career is that they cannot see how they can do it when they think about school holidays. The pain point of finding quality, affordable solutions for childcare for 10-12 weeks of the year is real. Until we do re-imagine school holidays, are we ever going to see real gains in gender equality at work?

When it comes to working from home when you have young children at home, the famous Dolly Parton song doesn’t really cut it. It is more like 9 to 9.15am, 9.25 to 9.50am, 10am to 10.35am through to the late evening. Not as catchy is it?

Remind yourself that being a stay at home parent is hard work just by itself. There are never enough hours in the day, it is relentless, important but mostly invisible work. Add into the mix your paid job that now needs to be completed at home, home schooling and the caring responsibilities you may have for older parents. If you feel exhausted and stretched – it is not surprising!

It sucks that we have gone into Level 3 again. It is ok to feel your feelings. That is how you will move through them. When we push down our feelings, we start to lose our inner voice. Our truth. So if you are feeling like this whole situation sucks, feel free to turn up the volume on the “A Star Is Born” soundtrack and have a good old singalong to the Lady Gaga song “Shallow”. These tips that I have collected through my online workshops and clients might also give you some inspiration:

From “Working from Home” to “Working With Children”

• Talk about how you are feeling to your people leader and be realistic with them on what you are able to deliver. Full stop silence. This is not a statement on your capability, it is the reality on the additional responsibilities you have as a working parent.
• Set expectations in advance in your meetings – eg: “I might be walking outside during this meeting but I am still engaged. (And just admiring my 2 year old’s sandpit play at the same time)”
• Normalise the times that your pre-teen bursts in demanding to know why there is no food in the house or the noise that your 18 month old makes as she stands outside your spare bedroom (now an office) door and thumps on it continuously until you let her in. This is life now.

Share The Load

• If you are solo parenting during this lockdown, then I take my hat off to you. Doing this by  yourself is next level. This is a hard time in your life but you can do hard things. If you can, carve time out for yourself to re-charge and take it one day at a time.
• If both you and your partner are at home, then take your lead from the word “partner”. A partner by definition, shares things equally so ensure you are sharing equally the load that comes from being at home –  caring, cooking, cleaning and planning each day. For your children, seeing both parents take an equal role at home (regardless of how more “important” one parent’s job might be compared to the other) will feed their normal for how they will parent.

What Has Been Helpful For Families With Under Fives

1. Involve Them. If you can set up a table with an old keyboard, colouring in and toys near your workspace so they can see you working. If you have school children, talk to them about how days are going to work and when you will be in meetings.
2. Plan In Quality Time. Small humans can get frustrated if they do not get good quality time, so if you can, plan things throughout the day like some Wiggles TV in the morning, puzzles, play dough, baking, online music sessions, walks etc
3. Relax Digital (or all!) Rules. It is ok that they are watching more TV and using apps on the iPad. And what is not to love about Emma the Wiggle?  Remember that your number one job as a parent it to keep your children calm and settled.
4. Forget What The House Looks Like. Just focus on getting through this. If that means you set up a blanket and cushion fort in the kitchen, then so be it. If that means your hallway is turned into a permanent “the floor is lava” game, then so be it. Your kids will remember this forever.

These are strange times we are living through, and to paraphrase Nigel Latta, It is like flying an plane, you know you need to land but you have to plan for the landing.  And just like we do with cabin crew, your children will look to you for reassurance that it is going to be alright. Sometime we can’t always land at the time we think we will or at the airport we think we will, but we will land this plane!

There is so much that is outside of your control right now but you can remain in control of how your days work in your family. And keep connected with others who get you – we will get through this together.

In the lead up to International Womens Day on March 8^th, here are the two books that I keep on my desk at all times. They have equally inspired me to lift my game and boosted my confidence.

Winging It

by Emma Issacs

“Stop Thinking, Start Doing: Why Action Beats Planning Every Time”.  

Emma Issacs is the Founder and Global CEO of Business Chicks – a global enterprise operating in two continents and eleven cities as well as being Australia’s largest community for women. This is a book for everyone that is restless and thinks there is something more out there for them. It draws on her life and the lessons she has learnt by not waiting until she is ready but instead taking action now and figuring out the rest as you go along.  In other words – you’ve got to learn to ‘wing it’.  The energy that Emma has for inspiring others just jumps off the pages as you read it. The book is action packed with practical ideas on running a business, cultivating relationships, managing people and turning your dreams into plans. She also talks about the career/family juggle with great pragmatism and humour which resonates even more when you learn that she has five kids and another one on the way! If you are ready for your next step – read this.

The Coaching Habit. Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever

by Michael Bungay Stanier

“Harlan Howard said every great country song has three chords and the truth. This book gives you seven questions and the tools to make them an everyday way to work less hard and have more impact”.

Without wanting to repeat the book title, I’m going to do it anyway. If you buy one book that will change the way you lead forever, then this is it.  Without a doubt, the biggest pain point I hear from leaders that I coach is managing people. In this book, Michael Bungay Stanier offers a staggeringly simple proposition – it is the act of asking questions that is critical rather than having all the answers. For some leaders, it is a relief to know that they don’t need to know the answers all the time and they can tame the “advice monster” that lives inside us all. Through real life examples and a workbook format, you will become the expert in the seven questions that will help you build a coaching habit. And it will all make so much sense. With recommendations from Brenè Brown, Daniel H. Pink and now me, this book will ensure you’re in good company.  😊

Day one of the school holidays and I have already had a text from the school holiday programme that my children are reluctantly attending. It appears that there was a handstand gone wrong and a small injury has occurred. Luckily, nothing an ice block won’t fix when I pick them up later today. But it was a reminder to me that as a working parent, school holidays and working really don’t work that well together.

In the lead up to the school holidays, there are a number of loads that working parents carry. First the mental load of “what am I going to do during the holidays with the kids?”. This starts processing in my mind well before the start of the holidays and sits there like a stubborn gorilla refusing to move along. And with an average of 12 weeks of holidays a year compared to the 4 or 5 weeks of annual leave, that is a lot of gorilla time. 

The financial load of school holidays can add up quickly when you consider that the cheapest programmes are around $50 per day but do range up to $150 per day for Robotics & 3D Design. For three children, it could add up to $9,000 annually out of your post-tax salary. A significant amount and not a surprise that the WEF reports that NZ currently has the most expensive childcare costs in the world. 

Then there is the logistics load. How do I get to the holiday programme location for drop-off and then to work for the 9am team meeting? How much time do I need to factor in for realising that they needed spending money for an excursion that day and then locate a ATM with parking en-route to the programme?

Finally the most painful of them all, the load you carry when your children complain about having to attend these costly, logistically complex programmes. The protests of why they can’t just stay home during the holidays and how no one else needs to go to school holiday programmes. These complaints can start well in advance of the holidays but only for parents that give their children advance notice. These days, mine usually only find out the night before. Tip for young players.

The lack of quality, accessible and affordable school holiday solutions adds another layer of pressure into the lives of working parents. Pressure that is often invisible to others but very real to them.  

If you are able to get some time off with your family these holidays, I do hope you enjoy it. As my friend Gretchen Rubin says – “The days are long but the years are short.”