Ode to working parents

Professional, steadfast, accurate. These are just some of the words that can be used to describe the working professional. But how can you describe the working parent? Dichotomous, contradictory, and overall, someone with the ability to have a split personality.

As a part-time working mother of a reception age school child, a normal day could involve anything from client meetings and dealing with media enquiries to communications strategy work. But come school pick-up time, I’ve morphed into ‘school mum’. At this point the day takes a twist where anything can happen.

Diplomatic skills come to the fore when being forced to provide answers to nonsensical questions and providing sympathy when told the latest woe of the day. Acting skills brim to the surface when presented with the latest artwork from school which resembles, well nothing really. And ‘fun mummy’ is created when trying to fill the gap between home time and dinner time without resorting to two hours of television, the best babysitter of all. Of course, it’s a duplicitous fun mummy who tries to insert in a good dollop of learning into the playtime without being noticed, or else a tired fun mummy who is actually no fun at all.

Often while crawling round the room trying to impersonate a diplodocus, or when grossly overreacting to some minor misdemeanour I have one thought, which I’m sure must be shared by working parents the world over, ‘if my colleagues could see me now’.

Nikki


Nikki Cheung is a Senior PR Consultant at The Bridge Group. Follow her on Twitter @tbgnikki.