By Jamie Woolf, Author Mom-in-Chief
Motherhood is tough. It’s tough even in the best of times, when the school-job-homework-dinner-bath-bedtime juggle is at its absolute smoothest (which, face it, is rarely all that smooth). But throw in a financial setback—you or your partner lose a job or your house gets foreclosed on or a salary cut forces you to cancel a much-needed family vacation—and the whole house of cards threatens to collapse.

Yes, our tanking economy yields plenty of opportunities for mothers to break down. Not a lot can be done about that. But what is important is that we have the resilience to snap back. Every mother falls apart sometimes. The question is how do we rebound and find the resources to deal with whatever life throws our way?
 
Here are some business-inspired strategies for what you can do for yourself and your kids to boost resilience during the economic downturn:

What Moms Can Do for Themselves

1.    Clarify your big picture goal or purpose: With their desired result clearly in sight, leaders focus on what they can control to move them closer to their goals. Decide what your goal is—staying out of the poorhouse? Reducing stress at home while you experience extra stress at work due to staff cutbacks? Making your kids feel emotionally secure while you’re financially insecure? Identifying your goal will help you stay on course to achieve it.
2.    Convene your support team: Don’t suffer in silence. Talk to your friends, extended family, therapist, minister, or rabbi to express your feelings and worries. But be selective: Don’t call up doom-and-gloom downers and glass-half-empty cynics. Whom do you know who maintains a healthy attitude in the face of misfortune? These are the people to reach out to in challenging times.
3.    Prioritize the challenge into small and manageable steps: Focus on what you have control over and leave the forces outside your control alone. Figure out what you can cut back on. Create a budget and stick to it. If your goal is reducing your debt, commit to paying $10 more per month on each credit card, stop using credit cards for anything but absolute necessities, or, if you want to really remove temptation, cut them up. Find actions that yield quick, high-impact results.
4.    Transform crisis into opportunity: Getting your family to work as a team to get through the downturn can help take the load off you and can bring everyone closer together. The silver lining of having less disposable income to spend on going out is that you spend more time at home. Maximize that newfound family time by getting entertained the old-fashioned way: by playing board games, reading books, and watching TV together. Come up with creative ideas for outings that cost very little: hikes, picnics, walks on the beach. Deprogramming your kids from addictive consumerism is a gift that will last a lifetime.

What Moms Can Do for Their Kids

1.    Develop caring connections: Display kindness, empathy, and compassion for your kids. If you’re feeling extra vulnerable these days, your kids may be, too. So make an effort to make them feel loved and secure at home. Be careful not to take your frustrations out on them—it’s a trap that even the most loving mother can fall into, especially in tough times.
2.    Create motivating conditions: Express your faith that things will get better and help your kids shift from discouragement to optimism. When you cancel a planned family ski trip or vacation, assure them that they’ll be able to go next year, when the economy is in better shape.
3.    Set an example: Model resilience when you confront challenges. If you get laid off and don’t fall apart, or if you have to start taking on extra work but still manage to get dinner on the table at the same time every night, this tells kids that no matter what happens, Mom can get through it, which will give them  confidence that they can, too.  
4.    Focus on the big picture: If your goal is to provide a happy, healthy home for your children, don’t feel bad that you can’t buy them an iPhone—or go further into debt to get one! The importance of the basics has never been clearer. When the Sharper Image went out of business this year, it showed that maybe people realized they didn’t need an endless supply of high-tech gadgets to be happy. The most precious commodity is time. Figure out a way to give that to your kids and it will pay big dividends.


The most important lesson to keep firmly in mind—and to share with your kids—is that the hard times won’t last forever. They never do, because change is life’s only constant. And it’s that knowledge that lies at the heart of resilience itself.

Jamie Woolf has over twenty years of experience consulting to business leaders. Based on her work inside dozens of organizations, Jamie lays out her “best practices” to enjoy more success at home and at work. She founded The Parent Leader to help mothers and fathers gain the self-awareness and leadership skills to transform their daily parenting challenges into desired results and co-founded Pinehurst Consulting, an organization development and training consulting firm. She blogs on www.mominchief.com and has a weekly feature on workingmother.com.


Jamie Woolf holds an M.S. in industrial/organizational psychology from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two daughters.
 
About the Book:
Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom from the Workplace Can Save Your Family from Chaos (Wiley, February 2009, ISBN: 978-0-4703813-1-1, $22.95) will be available at bookstores nationwide, from major online booksellers, or direct from the publisher by calling 800-225-5945. In Canada, call 800-567-4797.

For more information, please visit www.mominchief.com or www.theparentleader.com