I’ve had a number of requests in the new year for additions to the Morning Routine Checklist, so I did a quick update this weekend to add the images below. If you use any of the activities on The Trip Clip website and don’t find something you’re looking for let me know! I am constantly updating the images available for each activity and am happy to get feedback about how to make each collection more complete.
See all the Morning Routine Clipart
Announcing my theme for 2020: special needs families! All year I will be adding clipart to The Trip Clip to make it easier to create visual supports for common tasks. Visual supports (and more specifically visual schedules) can help establish a routine. Kids with ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, and other special needs will find it comforting to know exactly what’s coming next. Visual schedules can also be used to teach a new skill by breaking it down into smaller steps and helping your child stay focused all the way through the task while they learn the right way to do it.
You can read more about creating and using visual schedules here and here.
I added more clipart to the morning routine checklist activity! Customers have requested lots of helpful additions, and I worked on representing a more diverse set of kids for ‘Do hair’. You can see the full collection of morning routine clipart here!
I added more clipart to the Grocery List based on customer requests! See the full collection here.
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Raising kids is hard work! These lists are all designed to help make it easier, especially if you work outside the home, so staying organized, and getting your kids to do as much as they can for themselves, becomes even more critical.
Start with these lists, and find more ideas here on my Working Moms Blog.
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Agree with your partner how to divide up household and parenting responsibilities. There’s a handy chart here to work from. |
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Dads: Do nighttime feedings. |
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Use a joint email address for all kid and school activities. |
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Dads: Take paternity leave – alone. Read why this is a great idea. |
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Consider part-time work for both mom and dad. My husband and I have been doing this successfully for 15 years. Find out how we made it work. |
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Set up a shared online to-do list. |
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Use an online shared family calendar. |
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Dads: Volunteer at school. This is a wonderful, easy, and important way to share the unpaid labor typically absorbed by women. |
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Acknowledge that moms who work are 5 times less likely than working dads to have a spouse at home handling childcare and housework. |
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Encourage work places to offer flexible schedules with insurance, sick leave, vacation time, raises, and promotions. |
Studies show that motherhood is the biggest cause of the gender pay gap. Motherhood is why there are fewer women in government, fewer women running Fortune 500 countries, and fewer women in positions of power in our society helping to make the decisions that shape the world we live in. Men have kids too, but women disproportionately take on the the role of chauffeur, cook, and house cleaner, whether they work outside the home or not. They do this work for no pay, and at the cost of less influence on society. Many families choose these roles because our culture has a strong belief that having one parent focused on the home and the children, and the other focused on earning money, is the best way to team up for the good of the family. I’d like to see more families choose a more equal balance between the unpaid work men and women do inside the home so more women can have a bigger and more equal influence outside the home.
There are many things moms, dads, and businesses can do to help change this dynamic right now. Start with the items on this list, and read about more ideas on this blog.
I’ve helped a few moms write their first resume when they’re ready to return to work after raising kids. Figuring out how to address the gap is a challenge for both moms and dads who have taken time away from work to raise kids. There’s a lot of advice out there, so if you find yourself in this situation, definitely do some research about good ways to handle the gap on your resume.
One thing you can do early on, though, is avoid the gap in the first place.
The most obvious way to do this is to keep a foot in the door by working part-time. I’m a huge advocate of this for many reasons (read my article here). But here’s a short list of why this is a good idea:
Most of the moms I know who have stayed home with their kids have been active volunteers at their kids’ schools, and often elsewhere in the community too. You should absolutely list your volunteer jobs in the “Experience” section of your resume to address part of the gap.
I recommend taking it one step further, too. When you embark on your plan to stay home with the kids, be proactive instead of reactive about the volunteer work that you do. If you were working before you had kids, you probably have skills that you can bring to your volunteer jobs – so focus your energy on doing the volunteer jobs that match your skills to help you stay fresh, and improve your resume in ways that future employees will care about.
I know a mom who worked in finance before having kids, so she became the treasurer of the PTA which basically meant she was the CFO for a non-profit with an $80,000/year budget. Another mom who was a graphic designer made a new logo for the school, designed posters, helped with the new website design, and had ample opportunities to add to her portfolio during her years away from paid graphic design work. I worked at Microsoft before stepping away to take care of kids, so I used my technical background to take on volunteer jobs like completely revamping the school website and moving the PTA to electronic signups – something I can absolutely include on any future resumes.
Volunteering at school doesn’t have to be throw-away time, and you can do it consciously in a way that helps you keep and grow professional skills that are important to you and future employers.
Another great way to keep your foot in the door when you step away from your career to raise kids is with continuing education. One mom I know wanted to return to her accounting career after a long gap to stay home with her kids, so she signed up for some online accounting classes that refreshed her skills and also helped her become acquainted with newer software that would help her be up to date (a lot less of the industry was electronic when she left it!). Another mom I know was a therapist before taking time away to be with the kids, but she used some of her time away to do online training to become a life coach and could list the supplementary training on her resume. A friend of mine with a special needs child delved deep into the legal options available for kids with 504 plans and IEPs. She ended up taking classes part-time to become a paralegal and was hired by a local law firm that was familiar with her because of her work at her son’s school. For all of these women, they can include this training on their resumes to show their dedication and focus on increasing their skills at the same time they were staying home with their kids.
Depending on what your job was before having kids this may or may not work for you, but I know a number of moms who used their professional skills to help them raise their own kids. One mom who was a teacher and had a special needs daughter used her teacher training to help create visual supports for her daughter as well as others in the special needs program at her daughter’s school. A mom who was an event planner at local tech companies became a go-to parent for planning school and kid events, keeping her skills fresh and raising her visibility around town as an excellent event planner. I worked in software before I had kids, and ended up using my technical skills to create The Trip Clip. At first I was just trying to use my computer skills to address my son’s crazy behavior at the grocery store, but what I created originally just for him has since grown into an online business I run out of my home. For all three of us, we can show how we’ve continued to work in our preferred fields while raising our kids.
Seriously. No gap. A gap would mean that you were sitting around doing nothing, not ‘working’, when in reality you were doing the very demanding and important job of taking care of your kids and your household. This may not be ‘traditional’ work experience, but it’s not like you weren’t working. If you had spent the time doing traditional unskilled work (for example as a farm laborer, a cashier, or a janitor) you would absolutely list that on your resume and talk about the details about what you did day to day at that job. Being a stay at home parent is no different, except you don’t have a boss and you don’t get paid. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t working.
We all need to stop thinking of this as a gap. Unskilled labor, sure. But not a gap. You should put this time on your resume – proudly. Include the years and the work you did while raising kids. List your primary responsibilities – you can use this chart of all the jobs required in order to run a household and raise kids to give you ideas.
You can say that you were responsible for childcare, safety, and early education, schedule management, budgeting, event planning, and nutrition. Choose the tasks that map best to your skills and the job you’re applying for. You can also (or alternatively) include a list of the skills you’ve used (and gained!) during this time: computer and internet skills, written and verbal communication, organizational skills, negotiating, collaborating, multi-tasking, time management skills, ability to work under pressure, decision making, self-motivation.
This is also where you should call out your volunteer work, any continuing education you’ve done, and ways you used your unique professional skills during this time.
Someday, I hope that we get to the point where an employer who sees “stay at home mom” on a resume truly understands the depth and breadth of all that means – they will immediately recognize the executive functioning, coordination, communication, management, patience, and hard, exhausting labor that is required to be a stay at home parent.
Until that happens, I encourage anyone stepping backing from work to raise kids to think about how best to spend these years so that they can make a great case later that there is no gap. And then when it comes time to write that resume, never forget that you were working that entire time. Celebrate those years, and all the wisdom and experience you gained during them. Then go sell yourself!
