Ask For Help When You Need It!

How are you doing about asking for help?  Do you ask your family for help when you need it?  Or do you go into martyr mode and get grumpy? (I know I do sometimes…)

What is it about our human nature that thrives on being self sufficient?  We love doing things ourselves, and we take great pride in the sheer number of things we can get done in a day.  Before the pandemic hit, when I asked my friends how they were doing, the most popular answer was “busy”.  We just love to do it all!

Productivity Without the Breakdown…

It is fine and dandy to take pride in our productivity.  That is, until we can no longer do it all.  We all have our breaking point.  There is a finite end to our self sufficiency, and when we reach it before the day is done with us, it is plainly obvious.  We haven’t asked for help when we need it, and then we end up paying for it, usually at the end of the day.

I have had lots of days when I just fall apart during the dinner preparation time.  It is almost always after a day that I have stuffed full of too many things.  It can be too many errands, too much homeschool, too many phone calls, an overwhelming amount of chores, or not enough sleep.  I can plug away and power through in my self-sufficiency until it comes time to cook.  That is when I can no longer hold the emotions and the stress in.  The kids are full of questions, energy, or problems, my husband is still working, and my feet are hurting.  I no longer have the stamina to be kind.

So, I’m in the kitchen, yelling or crying while chopping the vegetables for dinner (which can’t be safe).  The mood of the home goes from peaceful to a war zone, and we are all hungry.  Instead of sitting down to a calm and enjoyable family dinner, we all end up sitting down grumpy and irritated with each other.  My husband, who has just finished a long day of video calls, is then indoctrinated into our chaos and he proceeds to detangle the mess that I am.  It does not make for a calm family dinner, that is for sure!

Breast Cancer- I Needed Help!

For years, I have thrived on my ability to get most of the household tasks done myself.  I stay home with the boys, so the division of labor is a bit more clear for our family. I take care of the household management tasks, and the school supervision, while Dave does his job to support us.  That all changed this past fall when I got diagnosed with breast cancer.  

I could no longer do all the things.  In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to unload and load the dishwasher because I might dislodge my stitches or my steri-strips.  I couldn’t do the laundry, or cook any meals.  It took a tremendous amount of energy for me to get showered each day, let alone come close to performing my normal role as a homemaker.

It was hard to let the tasks go.  The men in the home didn’t appreciated my “couch coaching” about the correct way to do things, so I either needed to keep my mouth shut, or stay away and recover in my room.  

I learned some very important things during my recovery time which I hope can help you here.  

Ask for Help When You Need It!

The key lesson for today is that it is OK to ask for help.  You don’t have to be alone in your journey.  When we seek help, we enable others to serve us and take some of the burden off of ourselves.  The family gets stronger because there is shared purpose.  And, there will be fewer dinners which are preceded by afternoon chaos.

Who can we ask for help? 

1. Spouse/ Significant Other 

This is ideally where you would start looking for help.  You have decided to share your life with your spouse and with that comes shared responsibility. So, your spouse should be the first person you ask for help from!

Be Specific in your Ask For Help

  Each of you has come into the relationship with different ideas of home management.  Perhaps your spouse had parents who both worked and lived in a home where the housework got done on the weekends when everyone was available. Or, maybe your significant other had a stay at home mom who would do everything in the home, from cooking, cleaning, to folding the laundry. 

The funny thing about beginning a life with someone is that you are not always aware of how your patterns of living impact your spouse.  I grew up with a dad who worked in a printing factory.  He left for work at the same time every day and got home before 5 every day.  I was accustomed to his regular schedule.  Because he got home so early, it was not uncommon for him to change into work clothes and begin tinkering on his latest home improvement project, or go out and weed the garden.  I thought this was how all families worked.

Turns out, I was wrong. 

Beware of Unconscious Expectations

When I got married at 22, I had an unconscious expectation that if my husband loved me, he would stop working before 5. However, he does not work a job with set hours.  He works at home in the tech industry.  This is a job which has some flexibility, but doesn’t enable him to stop working every day at the same time!  Oh, can I tell you how many fights we had about this!  I had a misplaced expectation that he would be able to stop working and help me out with the home by 5 every day.  That was just not the reality!  

That is just one example of how our unconscious expectations can impact our home life.  Asking him to stop work at an arbitrary hour was not reasonable.  However, this doesn’t mean there was no room to ask for the help I needed.

Be Creative to Solve Problems

Here is one way I found that he could help me as an exhausted new mom.  When our oldest son was born, he was a lousy sleeper.  I didn’t get a good night’s sleep until he was 16 months old!  Additionally, I was nursing, so all the feeding duties were on me.  

By the time we hit 9 o’clock, I was exhausted and falling asleep watching the TV show.  I was ready to go to bed.  But Dave, who wasn’t feeding a baby the night before, wasn’t ready to sleep.  We devised a strategy where I would feed the baby before going to sleep around 9.  He would take the baby in his office and hold him with one hand and respond to emails with the other hand.  Then, when he was ready to come to bed, he would wake me so that I could feed the baby again.  I was able to get just a few hours of extra sleep, and Dave was able to contribute significantly to my well being by caring for the baby during that shift.

If I hadn’t made my needs clear to Dave, we never would have come up with this solution. So, ask for the help you need, and then work with your spouse to design a strategy that works for both of you.

2.  Kids

Kids should help out with the family management as soon as they are old enough to do tasks safely and reasonably.  All too often, we will get stuck in “maid mode” where we are cleaning up after our kids all throughout the day.  

Stop it!  Part of our job is to raise responsible adults.  Responsible adults know where the dishwasher is and can be expected to load their dishes into it. You should not be the only person in the home doing the household chores, especially if your kids are old enough to attend school.  

So, how do you get the kids involved?  It is easiest to start this when they are still in elementary school and easily motivated by incentives like gold stars and praise.  You can expect the middle and high school aged kids to push back against chores, especially if this is a new thing for your family.

I would recommend you establish daily chores for each of the kids, as well as teaching them how to do their own laundry once they are old enough to work the machine.  These don’t need to be time consuming chores, but they should be expected to be done on a regular basis. 

Chores Aren’t Optional

I do not pay my kids for basic chores.  If they go above and beyond and do extra cleaning or gardening, then they can earn money from those jobs. Here are the tasks my high school aged kids have responsibility over.  They divvy up some of these chores and may alternate responsibilities on different days of the week. 

• Make their own breakfasts and lunches and clean them up
• Set table for dinner 
• Clear dinner table
• Load dishwasher and clean kitchen after dinner
• Pick up the dog poop
• Wipe down the downstairs bathrooms with a Clorox Wipe
• Empty the kitchen trash and recycling
• Keep common areas picked up
• Keep their room picked up
• Do their own laundry
• Clean their shared bathroom
• Keep their desk and school area picked up
• Walk dogs when asked

These basic tasks are not paid.  These are requirements for living in the home with us. The great thing about having them do these chores, is that I don’t have to do them!  

Do they like doing these jobs?  No, not really.  But they are things that need to be done.  I am convinced that they need to know how to do these things in order to be a functional adult.  So, we teach them, and then make sure that they are done consistently. My oldest son will graduate next year, and I know I will miss having him around, and also miss his contribution to the household management.

Don’t be afraid to ask your kids for help.  They may not always do everything exactly the way you would do it, but that’s ok!  Train them on how to do the job, establish some standards, and then let them help you!

3.  Other Sources of Help

If you need more help beyond the people living in your home, or perhaps you live alone, there are other places that you can look for help.

Our extended families can be an excellent source of help when we need it! Whether it is a phone call or a visit, let us not forget that we may have help that is just an ask away.  There was one night that my second son wouldn’t fall asleep.  We had done everything, and we were exhausted.  We called Dave’s parents and they were quick to come down and give us a break.  They told us to leave the crying baby at home and go get a coffee. It was wonderful to have a break, and the baby was fast asleep, under the Christmas Tree when we got back home.  We could have suffered in silence, but because we reached out, we were able to get the help we needed at that moment. 

Do you have friends who you can call?  When I was recovering from cancer, one of my good friends would always check on me to see if I needed her to pick something up at Target for me. It was such a huge help!! My friends have been there for me when I needed someone out of my family to talk to about a problem I’m having.  They are there when I need to have some “girl time”.  Building a network of friends can be a source of comfort and help to us when we are having hard times.  

What about your neighbors?  Can you help them out and build a supportive community?  I was thankful for some of my wonderful neighbors who would drop off supplies at my door when I needed a quick item at the store.  I had another neighbor who would pick up ground coffee for me at the coffee shop during my cancer recovery.  He had asked me how he could help, and I took him up on the offer.  Building a supportive neighborhood community can really help us feel more connected and less alone. Whether we are pulling the trash cans out for a neighbor who is traveling, or walking a dog, there are many constructive ways we can help our neighbors, and build a local community network.

If you are a part of a church family, can you reach out to them for help? Throughout the years we have enjoyed fellowship through Bible studies, church orchestra ministry, and family activities. We were blessed during my radiation treatment  to have meals brought to us by our church family.  It was such a relief not to need to cook dinner when I was exhausted. 

Maybe you can outsource some of your jobs.  Can you get your groceries delivered?  Could you hire someone to help you out? I have been using grocery delivery for over a year now because it is so helpful ! I can focus on staying home and being there to help my kids with their school.  Sometimes letting one of your jobs go and spending a little bit of extra money to pay someone to do a chore you usually do can ease your stress, and increase the time you have available for the really important things! 

It can feel weird to ask for help, but it can really make a huge difference! When you are doing better, you can reciprocate. We really don’t have to do all the things, all the time.

4.  External Wisdom

We can also seek help by asking others! Sometimes we are just out of ideas, and we need help from the outside. 

The miracle of our modern age is that advice is just a quick internet search away.  Do you have a parenting problem?  Just type a few words into a browser window and you can find blog posts, books, videos, and podcasts on the subject of your choice.  

There are many times that I have been stuck with a problem. I don’t know how to move forward and I feel frustrated and disorganized.  What I like to do is to find a few good books, take the time to read them, and then I pick and choose the ideas which work best for me.

A word of caution:  Do not let the plethora of “perfection” discourage you.  Find authentic voices who will encourage you, not make you feel bad because your home is not cleaned on a rigid schedule!  If you find yourself getting frustrated reading a post or a book, then find another voice!  

There are so many wise voices out there who have walked in similar shoes. Do you have friends that you can call for advice? If not, what could you do to seek out other like minded individuals?

When I was a new mom, I was in a Bible Study called MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers).  We met once a week, and it was a fantastic time for me to talk with other moms.  Additionally, we had a Mentor Mom at the table whose children were grown.  She offered a perspective and advice which was so valuable.

Prayer and Bible reading have also been a source of wisdom and comfort to me, especially during difficult times. Just knowing that God has a plan for me can help me get through a tough day.  

When we end the day with frustration and exhaustion, that is a sign we need to seek help.  Please reach out, and ask for help. Feel free to ask me questions in the comments if you need some help from me!  We are in this together, and help is out there, you just need to be willing to ask.