We finally made it to the end of 2020   What a relief! It’s been a particularly challenging year and I honestly don’t know how we, as working parents, managed to muddle through. 

It was some kind of magic! The good news is that while we were spinning ALL the plates, employers were making changes to make life easier for working parents. Long may it continue. 

With that in mind, let's take a moment to reflect on the year and look at some of the positives:

  This year showed us how resilient we are - and our children too. A lot was thrown at us, often all at once, and we surprised ourselves by how much we can manage. Our children showed us how to get on with life during a pandemic, and kept us distracted and entertained (as well as busy and tired). 

  We acquired new skills. Some of them were digital and tech related, like how to navigate the complexities of Zoom and other conference calling services. Others were communication skills, like how...

I am honoured to share this story with you today from working mother Gemma Bateson. She has been incredibly honest and brave and I know her story will help so many others navigating the transition to parenthood. 

One of the biggest takeaways for me is the advice to stop pretending. It doesn’t do you or anyone else any favours to pretend that you’re managing and being the perfect parent AND employee. Be honest, get the help and support you need, and you will perform better and be happier at work and at home! 

If you would like to share your feedback with Gemma, please email me at [email protected] and I will pass it on. You can also leave a comment on any of our social media channels. 

Here’s Gemma’s story… 

What was your biggest fear about work when you found out you were expecting and how did you overcome it?

My biggest fear was losing hard won ground in terms of my career progression. I was worried that someone might do...

September has arrived, and most working parents are sending children back to school or childcare after the longest extended period we’ve ever experienced.

We are over the shock of lockdown now. We have done what we do best - adapt. And now everything is about to change again. 

Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions. 

Think back on the last few months and notice what feelings come up... 

• Relief at the idea of things getting back to normal again?
• Concern about how your child is going to cope with the big changes that lie ahead?
• Excitement about getting things done that you’ve been putting off since March?
• Worry about a second wave and what that will mean?
• Love and happiness for the quality time you’ve spent as a family and the memories you’ve made?
• Sadness that this unique time of closeness is coming to an end?
• Motivated to step things up at work with better focus and renewed energy?
• Dread over getting back into a strict routine and getting...

By Ian Dinwiddy, Thriving Parents Coach and Founder of Inspiring Dads.

You might be wondering how you’re going to survive the emotional upheaval of becoming a new dad.

I know exactly how you feel. 

In fact, I felt the same way when my daughter Freya was born in 2010.

It can be a really brutal learning curve, especially first-time round. In fact, I think it’s worse than most people believe it’ll be. In hindsight we Dads are painfully ill equipped to deal with the emotional and practical complexity of fatherhood.

Of course it doesn’t help that almost as soon as we’ve got used to creating a family, we’re plunged back into work as if nothing has happened in our lives.    

My name is Ian Dinwiddy, I‘m a Thriving Parents coach, I specialise in supporting dads, and I know what it is like be a stressed new dad. 

I wasn’t always a coach – when my daughter was born, I was a management...

The last few months during lockdown have been life-changing, and we do not say this lightly. For working parents, it has been both a challenging and enlightening experience. 

There has been a lot of much deserved praise and appreciation given to the key workers who kept us fed, nursed those who were sick, and provided essential care during this time. 

But we have even more to be grateful for as working parents. 

Side note: We are painfully aware that not all of these thanks are owed by some working parents, but this is a positive article about the things many of us are grateful for. If you have a comment you’d like to share about your personal experience (good or bad) please email [email protected]. 

To our children…

You have proven that young people really are the most resilient of us all. We underestimated you. Your lives were turned upside down, you could no longer see your friends or close relatives, and there was a lot to be fearful...

Since the lockdown, working parents have been streeeeeeetched. For those of us having to work remotely with kids in the mix and no option but to stay home, it’s been a rough ride. 

We have gone from shock and disbelief to panic and worry about how this situation could be remotely possible to manage. Life was enough of a juggling act before, right?

As the weeks go by, new challenges seem to emerge.

Whether you’ve been highly organised with a rigid schedule for your weeks at home, taking it day by day,  or even bouncing from one strategy to the other, it seems every day of working / parenting / homeschooling is different. 

One thing I think we can all agree on is that we have changed, and life after lockdown won’t be the same as it was before. 

Let’s look for the silver linings. Challenging as it has been, lockdown has taught us many things about ourselves, our children, remote working, work-life balance, and much more.

Following...

At Thriving Talent & Thriving Parents, we have a goal to empower 1 million parents by end of 2020. As we come to closing 2019, we’ve looked back at some of the reports and stories in the news that either delighted or disappointed us! 

January

In January 2019 a study was published by the CIPD, Megatrends: Flexible Working, which concluded that flexible working had plateaued. The research found that opportunities were being missed because of unsupportive manager attitudes, limited available options and the negative assumptions of some employees about flexible working, for example that their job may be at risk if they seek to change their working patterns. However the report also highlighted the various benefits to business of flexible working hours.

Also this month, we published a new case study on diversity and inclusion consulting, featuring Philip Morris International. We shared details on how PMI embraces difference as a vital element of its business...

There’s a good reason you often hear people say they need a holiday to recover from their family holiday with young children. It’s meant as a joke, but it’s sometimes true…

As we return to work after the summer we tend to feel a range of things - relief mixed with sadness that the children are back in school, overwhelm at the amount of work that’s piled up, and one other thing…

Exhaustion. 

The end of summer is a difficult time of year. We had plans to relax and recharge, but that’s often not the reality. A holiday with kids can be a wonderful and cherished experience creating memories to treasure, but often they are rarely relaxing. 

What is a holiday? 

The definition of a holiday is an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or travelling. 

Unfortunately for working parents in particular, a holiday often means taking time off from just one type of work and not necessarily from...

During Men's Health Week (10 – 16 June in the UK), we read many of the excellent articles and personal stories shared by men. In our work at Thriving Talent, we hear daily how stress manifests itself when working fathers are trying to juggle personal and professional lives.

Working fathers often cite feelings of overwhelm, guilt, failure at work and at home and working 4 shifts: shift 1 being the morning pre-creche/school, shift 2 being at the office, shift 3 being back at home hopefully in time for children’s bedtime and shift 4 logging back on. None of which tends to leave space for taking care of oneself. Every time we run “New Fathers” workshops, men exchange on the challenges they face and how sports/friends/health/fun becomes a distant memory. As we remind them, if they don’t take care of themselves and have a ‘full battery’, they are unlikely to be the father/partner/professional they want to be.

Organisations are starting to...

This return to work case study is a great example of how crucial flexibility is for retaining new mothers in the workplace. Here we share the story of Louise, an advanced nurse practitioner in a hospital emergency department and mother to a baby boy.

When Louise became pregnant she knew that after having her baby, she would eventually want to return to work in the career she had worked hard over many years to build as an advanced nurse practitioner in a hospital emergency department.

Her story is neither an outright success nor failure on the part of her employer, but there are many parts to it that we can learn from. Ultimately, it shows how vital flexible working is for retaining new mothers in the workplace. Rather than share the interview in full, we have highlighted some of the key themes and outlined key learnings from the perspective of both the new mother and the employer:

The Paperwork

“When I told my employers I was pregnant, they were very helpful and seemed...