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I stumbled across this post over on Ririan Project today about the 7 habits of highly successful fathers.
Funnily enough, when we first started a family, I picked up that book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families. While it was an interesting read, I never got to the end of it. It's on my to-do list for when I start working from home.
Ririan's post borrows heavily from the Covey formula, and it's an inspiring read. However, I do disagree with his first point, keeping stress to yourself. OK, it's one thing to not let your mood impact your family, but I try to talk to our children about what's going on in my life.
I came home quite tired from work the other day and explained that I'd had a hard day at work. We briefly chatted about why my day had been so difficult. While it's important to let the children get on with the business of being kids, part of being in a family is sharing your emotions, and I'd like to think the kids can come back to me and talk about their lives too.
I wrote this post back in 2005 on my first blog, and our then 3-and-a-half year old daughter asked me what I did at work that day...
At the ripe ol’ age of 28, I’ve grown accustomed to thinking of myself as a highly skilled IT Manager and a not bad programmer and web designer. When asked, I describe my job as the management of ALL aspects of the network. From the day-to-day support and troubleshooting to the future IT strategy, you’ll find me there, making it all work….
So, you'll know from Gerard's previous posts that we have decided to go full time on our business. When we made the decision I was full of excitement, so much so that I could hardly sit still. But now the magnitude of our move is starting to hit me.
Everybody we've told about what we have planned thinks we are crazy. People think its a bad time for us to be placing our family finances on the line like this and day by day I am wondering if they have a point.
One of our goals in becoming self-employed is to increase our focus on our family. Lisa and I are both concerned about dividing our time properly between the business and our home life. And of course, working from home has the added opportunity for us to devote more time to the family. If we plan it right.
As I see it, with two of us at home, we should be able to more successfully manage the household workload and plan better meals, time with the kids and stuff like that.
My own personal goals for working from home are:
I did a bit of an exciting thing during the week. I quit my job.
Now, there were a few problems in the office that I wasn't happy with. Nothing to do with the work or the people who worked there, but more issues I had with my managers that have come to a head. Although I have decided not to divulge too much, the thing is that those issues led me to decide that working for an employer is too much trouble.
If you've been a long-time Family Of Five subscriber, you'll have noticed some changes in the RSS feed and on the site recently.
First - we've changed the name (and the domain) to familytastic.com. The reason for this is that we wanted to reach out to other parents and bloggers. We wanted to create a community of mums and dads and a place where we could share experiences and advice and the ups and downs of parenthood and family life.
Does taking the kids to a restaurant or public place fill you with dread? Me too.
Our lot tend to go nuts in public places. I mostly blame Rachel, who is a force of chaos when the mood takes her. Either way, when we're in a place like Burger King, they'll run around like crazy and talk at the top of their voices. OK, shout.
I found myself in Burger King alone with the children recently. As I stood in the queue, the kids started out at one table and started running around. I called them to me and asked them to settle down, issuing that classic parental threat - OR ELSE!!!
Did that stop them? Hell no.
So, on a couple of occasions I take Jake and Daniel and make them stand beside me in the queue. After a few moments I'd let them go back to the table and within minutes they were running around again.
Other parents will be familiar with the feelings of frustration and despair when your kids just won't listen to you. I looked around the restaurant, at the length of the queue and the people whose kids were behaving. And then it hit me.
I stepped out of the queue and called the children to me. I simply told them "You blew it." and walked out of Burger King. They slowly twigged on what was happening and followed me out with promises that they'd be good if I gave them one last chance.
Kneeling down, I explained to them why we'd left and why them running around wasn't acceptable. In my head, I was trying to balance my need for food with the need to teach them a lesson. I'd like to say I stuck to my guns, but hunger won out and they looked sincere, so we went back into the restaurant.
But...
All three sat still while I ordered the food (Daniel stayed at my side) and behaved impeccably while they ate their food. I hope that this sets a standard for future jaunts out, but if not, I may have to follow through next time and leave the restaurant.
Jake's about to turn 5 in a few days. I've noticed over the last few weeks that he's getting a cheeky wit about him. He likes to spar and joke with us, but because it's the holidays, he's easily bored and frustrated. Sometimes he gets grumpy when he doesn't get an answer he likes.
He's a huge fan of science fiction stuff. Sitting in front of the TV right now, he's rewound the same scene in Doctor Who loads of times now, just to hear him say "Are you my mummy?" referrencing one of Jake's favourite episodes, The Empty Child. He's obsessed with Iron Man at the moment - not because of the movie, but because of the old cartoon series running on the satellite channels. You know, the one where Tony Stark looks like a big sleazy pimp on steroids? What a hero...
Still, Jake's one of the most pliant children. Ask him to do anything for you and he does it without hesitation. I'm not joking. I asked him this evening to pick up some cushions from the living room floor, and he did it immediately. No grumbling, no wasting time.
I just wanted to record a few thoughts about Jake as he approaches his 5th birthday. A sweet, intelligent boy. Still quite shy around new people, and withdrawn when he wants to be. I can see little signs of him maturing and developing his wit.
We're working at the moment on getting him used to more reading and we definitely need to spend more time with him writing and drawing to prepare him for pre-school in September, but we'll get there.
There's not much to say in this post except that Friday was an exceptionally bad day in work. Without naming names, I had a run-in with my line manager, who I feel is either misdirecting me or downright lying to me.
In the first instance, I moved jobs on the agreement that I'd start on the same salary as my last job, then be reassessed after 6 months and salary adjusted accordingly. I've spent the last year (no, it didn't happen at 6 months!) working very hard to bring our IT up to speed. Not only was there a gap in service between the previous IT manager and myself, but the time I joined was a period of massive upheaval for the company.
So, I expected my salary to be reviewed and to be compensated accordingly toward the upper end of the salary scale for my post. But I've been chasing this issue for the last few months without success. Eventually, I was told by my line manager that someone in our global IT had vetoed the increase. However, the same manager had implied some months earlier that if I could stop my flexible working arrangements, we might be able to swing something on the salary review. Seriously? What happened to my performance review?
And at the same time, a preparatory audit generated a list of actions that need to be carried out to bring our IT procedures in line with new standards being implemented. Which means the job will become even more intensive over the coming months.
My feeling at the moment is of rage and frustration. Why should I commit even more energy to this company when I've obviously been screwed over? I love the job, and the people I work with are fantastic, but the further up the corporate ladder you look, there's a lot of slimy double-talk and backstabbing to contend with.
I guess every barrel has a few rotten apples. I just need to work out where to go from here.
Those of you who've spent time in any of our homes over the years will already know this - neither Lisa or I are remotely houseproud. Life's too short for housework, so we generally do the bare minimum and occasionally freak out at just how untidy the place gets.
How many times we dreamed of having someone else come in and clean the house down to save us having to do it? At least once a week. Sometimes daily.
So Lisa went away and found a cleaning company (given the title of the piece, you were expecting that news, no?). She arranged for them to come out to the house today and give us an estimate for a one-off spring clean.
They visited the house this morning and showed Lisa all the services they carry out. So impressed was she that she signed them up for a monthly visit at £100.00 a time. And to be honest, that's not bad. It means that once a month, these people will come in and clean the house to a certain standard, leaving us to maintain that level of cleanliness between visits.
Worth every penny as far as I'm concerned. It'll be nice to have someone take care of the dirty work, and it'll also save Lisa a fair bit of time and worry about keeping the house up to standard.
But I'm wondering - how many of you have used (or are using) a cleaning service to help out with the housework?