Becoming an Agile Mom
I grew up with a family whose motto was we can do it all! I had heard it so many times growing up that I never stopped to considered what it meant. As I moved through life, I simply did what I saw everyone around me doing before; so I precariously juggled a full-time shift job, a side business, studying as a three-quarter-time university student, and a family. Technically I was doing it all, but it was a clumsy juggling act and it didn't take much for it to fall apart.
In 2012, one of my children started to show signs of developmental delays, and for the next two years, I dug in, and threw everything I had at solving the mystery of my child's delays. Side businesses, University classes all became secondary, and my family entered survival mode. We were doing just enough to keep our heads above water and functional.
Eventually, we got an ASD diagnosis, but it wasn’t the comfort we needed. An ASD diagnosis doesn’t come with a cure or medicine that makes it better. Instead, you are now assigned a continuous set of unforeseen setbacks sprinkled with the joy of small achievements. My life became a fog of therapies, meetings, and planning for his education a year in advance, only to change and adapt to the emergence of new behaviors.
At some point, I realized I was stuck in a cycle. There would always be new challenges for my son, and while he is important, it wasn’t healthy for him to absorb all of me. I needed to adapt! So, I used what I knew.
I took agile techniques that I had used in projects and broke my goals and life management into small increments. The trick was changing my mindset, reminding myself that I wasn't failing if I didn't have all the answers in that moment. In fact as long as I kept working and embraced small victories, that was a part of success too.
Eventually, I didn't need reminders I could see the small changes were starting to add up to a measure of success. And by removing the unnecessary pressure from expecting flawlessness execution, parenting became much more fun!
The change in mindset and ability to adapt made me realize, that I didn't have to compartmentalize my life. I could borrow work skills to use in parenting and vice versa and have success in that moment I allowed myself to embrace becoming an Agile Mom.