Finding a balance between taking care of your kids, taking care of your spouse, and also finding time to take care of yourself can be difficult. In this video, social worker, mother, and podcaster, Christina Im, gives a couple of examples of things that have worked for her to balance her time with her family.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
I get this question a lot from new parents. They say, “Christina, how do you make time to keep your children alive – not even that – just to keep them fed and to take care of yourself and then to take care of your spouse?”
Those are really good questions, guys. So I’m gonna share a couple of things that have really worked well for our family.
First of all, it is to make time for each other. I mean, literally, there are going to be times where you have to open up your calendar with your spouse and say, “Monday at 8 o’clock PM when the kids are in bed, we are going to spend time together.”
And that doesn’t necessarily mean just sitting on the couch watching TV, even though that may be something that y’all do. Sometimes you might want to be like, “Hey, honey, we really need to leave the house. I don’t want to just have an indoor date. I want to dress up, feel really good, and step out.” And that’s okay.
Number two is that, guys, life is expensive. And so sometimes you can’t necessarily book the babysitter and then spend the time and spending on food and parking and all of that. Maybe even a movie if you’re feeling really fancy.
So this is what we’ve done. We have traded babysitting with our neighbors and our friends. So, I’ll say, “You know what, this month we’re going to go over and watch your kids so y’all can go out. And then next month, can you guys come over and watch our kids so we can out?” So there you go. That’s like $60 right in your pocket that you can either save for a rainy day or you can spend on yourselves.
Check out the IMbetween podcast that Christina and her husband, Daniel Im, host the that provides conversations on marriage, parenting, faith, and everything in between.