A healthy work-life balance is often something adults stress over and battle day in day out to get right and often come up short. The reality is as with most things, the earlier these lessons are taught the sooner you will adopt them. In fact, there is never a better time to teach the importance of a healthy work-life balance than when children are in school. So often children get up and rush to school, or start homeschooling, are expected to perform all day, come home, do homework, and/or attend various after-school activities or commitments all of which are prioritized over downtime. While this may not be wrong the importance of balance should not be overlooked to help promote your child’s physical and wellbeing that could serve them well into adulthood.

Here are some ways to help teach a work-life balance to children.

Work Is Important

First and foremost it should be remembered that working is important. If you want to achieve anything be it financial success, professional pride, a certain standard of living then you will have to work for it. Yes, play is important too but ultimately putting in the work must be understood and appreciated.

Work Can Be Fun

Just because work, be it school or professional is high up on the agenda does not mean it has to be boring or laborious. Work can be fun and every effort should be made to make it so. It could be that children use fun and engaging online resources such as studentreasures.com to alleviate some of the monotony of working or that they are encouraged to pursue passion projects or areas of work that excite and interest them.

Doing What Needs To Be Done vs Doing What You Love

No matter how hard you try you are still likely to come across elements of work that are not fun but that still need to be done. Here the lesson to impart on your children is that they may have to do an element of work they don’t enjoy, that it simply needs to be done but that this can be balanced out with doing something they do enjoy or even love. It may be that they spend the first most concentrated 30-minutes on their math homework that they hate, followed by a bit of time doing the work they get the most from and enjoy.

Build-In Time To Rest

A great way to teach the habit of rest and relaxation is to build it into a schedule at an early age. Help to teach your children not to overburden themselves or take on more than they are able to by encouraging plenty of play, fun, and rest.

Discuss Failure And Quitting

These topics can be daunting when discussing with young children but there are ways you can go about it that may help ease the stress felt by children. Firstly, viewing failure as an opportunity to learn and develop can take some of the stigma away and encourage them to preserve through failure. When it comes to quitting there will be times where it will be ok to quit or take a step back, if it means putting their mental or physical health first for example. This should not be viewed negatively but rather encouraged and welcomed.