CARE AND FEEDING OF A DUAL-CAREER FAMILY

With so many women working outside the home - out of necessity or interest - family roles have had to change to accommodate the need to keep the house and family in working order. With careful attention to the demands of dual-career parents, families still can thrive and nurture each other, in spite of busy schedules.

Adopt these strategies for successful family life:

Put first things first. Reprioritize your life. Put your children ahead of a perfectly manicured lawn or an opulent house and spend time with them.

Put your work behind you when you walk in the door and concentrate on your child. Don't allow yourself to fill your evenings with extra activities. Especially when both parents work, the evenings must concentrate on family.

Make dinner special. Dinner should be a time of family sharing with less attention to food consumption and more attention to connecting with each other. Working parents buy a lot of "take-home meals." Don't throw it on paper plates. Add some fixings of your own and serve it on nice dishes with real silverware.

Make shared time a priority. Make sure that when you are with your children the focus is on the child and not on the activity. The purpose of shared time is not to finish a project, but to enjoy the act of doing. Quietness is important - especially for small children.

Get rid of distractions. Community projects, social clubs, and sometimes even excessive church work can keep you from being tuned to your child. Turn off the TV and the stereo, and unplug the phone.

Make bedtime better. A predictable bedtime routine will help you avoid many of the bedtime battles. When children get into a comfortable routine, each step along the way reminds them of what comes next, and they unconsciously begin to settle down.

Be sensitive. Sometimes the amount of time parents spend with their children is not as critical as how they react to their child's verbal and nonverbal signs. Your child needs to believe that Mom and Dad know and understand them better than anyone else.

Establish daily routines of talk time. Ask questions that draw out feelings and thoughts. "What was the best part of your day?" Concentrate on communication.

Maximize mornings. Make the best use of morningtime by taking care of necessary details the night before, or by getting up 30 minutes before your children. View the morning routines as opportunities to interact with your children and express love. Resolve to keep the tension out of your time together.

Have on-going projects. Begin an activity in the morning, and finish it in the evening. (E.g. begin building a Lego house at breakfast and finish after dinner; or begin playing a board game that can be continued later in the day.) This is a way of providing security and the promise of the parent's return.

Choose professions wisely. If at all possible, choose careers that allow you to work around your children's schedules. Jobs that demand less time away from home, or the flexibility to take vacations when your child has school vacations, are ideal.

Dr. Paul Faulkner and his wife, Gladys, have been married more than 40 years and have raised four children. He holds the chair of Marriage and Family and is professor of Bible at Abilene Christian University as well as having a private practice in Marriage Therapy. He serves as president of Resources for Living, a counseling and consulting service for businesses, such as Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Kroger, and a consortium of financial institutions. He has authored Making Things Right When Things Go Wrong and co-authored What Every Family Needs with Dr. Carl Brecheen.

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