You’ve made it to the last part of our 4-part return to work success story interview series! I’ve loved sharing insights with you from my good friend and successful career mom Danielle Dobson. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.
In this final installment, you’ll read about her most difficult challenges returning to paid work, as well, as taking care of yourself and raising children to value women who work.
-------------
Anna: You mentioned it was hard to return back to paid work. So, what was the hardest thing once you started working that you had to manage?
Danielle: Managing my own expectations. So, in my career, I always thought, “100% or it’s not good enough.” So, I wanted to operate back at that level again in my work. I thought, “If I’ve decided to do this working thing again, it's got to be hundred percent.” But being a 24/7 parent, flying solo, that wasn't possible. So, it was the expectation of wanting to do my best possible job and feeling I couldn’t meet it.
I kept telling myself, “You’re exactly where you need to be right now. And being a parent as well, and being present with that, will help you with work. It won't be as quick, but it will help. Doing these two roles well will, overall, be beneficial. Just throwing yourself back into work is not going to work. That was in the past. This is a new world that you’ve stepped into where it's not sustainable to operate like that.”
Managing my own expectations was the hardest thing—managing my own ambitions and being ok with where I was at.
Anna: And do you feel like you've made a big difference between then and now?
Danielle: Yeah, for sure. This is the whole thing with it. It’s a slow build. It's a bit-by-bit, daily moment-by-moment build. And it's been building capacity in the boys. Slowly building, not just parachute dropping them in and they’re latchkey kids, but a slow build of leaving, getting them to do more around the house, getting them to get dinner or something, stretching out the time when they're home alone. And just normalizing all the stuff that needs to be done around the house like a big group mission. I was getting frustrated one time, and I just sat there at dinner, and I wrote down all the jobs, all the human flourishing jobs. It was a couple of pages of them. And I asked, “So how many of these do you guys do? And they were like, "Oh, one or two.” So, just normalizing all that stuff, especially around the gender stuff that I’m doing. I want to make sure that everyone just sees everything that needs done around the house. It's just part of our jobs.
And self-compassion, my way isn't the only way, and it might not be the best way, but it's the way that I've been doing it for years and years. It's okay. Because you've been training your brain to do it this way. You built efficiencies, you built those muscles really strong, Danielle. Others haven’t yet. So, they’re building that now. You’ve got to be patient.
Anna: And I remember also talking with you several years ago, and you were saying that what you needed was to work out. So, knowing what you need, first, but then also managing to figure that out. When you're a single parent with three boys, how do you get to work out? And I remember you figuring out the ways to do that. Whether it was going swimming and, since some of your older kids were old enough to stay with the younger ones, just telling them, “I'm going to be gone in the morning to go swim. I'll be back.” And also having the kids hang out at your lacrosse games, and I remember you saying to them, “I hang out at your lacrosse games, you can hang out at mine.”
Danielle: Exactly. It comes back to that thing at the center. So that's where I used to think it was health and well-being. I start my day with exercise and a morning routine. So, I get up early. Because it's important to me, and I know how I'm going to feel afterwards. I tap into that. But I think it's actually about human flourishing, because for me, working out is working time out for me.
I'm training to get my kids to get themselves ready for school in the morning. And a lot of parents won't do that. And that's totally okay. But for me, it's what's important. And that's where I make my decisions from because I know how much it's going to benefit me. Because it's so important, I’ve done what I've needed to do to be able to put that in place. So now I work here. I do something every morning.
And it’s interesting, I had a conversation with a friend, and she told me her husband had been cheating on her for four years, and she knew about it for two years, and she stayed with him. At one point she told me, “I just wish he’d put me first for a change.” And then we're talking a bit more about other things, and she said she's not happy with her body, and she wants to lose weight. And she said, “I’m not like you. I’m not driven like you. If something’s going on with the kids or someone else, I’ll put them first and I won’t work out.” And I said, “Did you hear what you just said? You said that if something comes up, you put the kids first or someone else first. If you're showing everyone else that you come second, you're modeling how you want to be treated. So they're going to treat you like you're coming second all the time. Because if they think you're okay with that and you're modeling that, it’s going to keep happening. And she's like, “Whoa. You’re right.” And I see it all the time.
So here, it was around working out, but for other people, it might be around other stuff. And I think we all do it. We all set everyone else up for success first. Even with my workout, I get up early so that I can get all this stuff ready for them to pack the lunches and make breakfast. They pretty much do it, but I have to get it ready for them. So, I have to put them first somehow so I can do the thing. So, I'm still doing that. But I am modeling to them that my health and well-being is important to me and that I feel it's important for them to know and to respect. That’s what keeps me going with it, too.
It's funny, sometimes they get to the stage where I feel like they're getting too entitled around things. My thing with that is okay, so we've got to build into people gratitude, so I'll just take something away. Not being punitive or punishing them, but to build that gratitude instead of expectation. And also, the book I’m writing is called Ditch the Cape, so I have to do it first.
Anna: And you do it. Like, you do really live this. And I think that's what's so amazing and inspiring. So, thanks for doing that. And for raising three boys to know that, you know, this is the way things can be done. And this is the way a family works.
Danielle: I don’t want to send them out into the world looking for another mum to do things for them. I see the consequences of that in my work with women, that men aren't pulling their weight at home. It's still on the women. And because we don't have any girls, we’re a more gender-neutral family with one gender only, we don't get as much of the gender differences. So, work around the home isn't distributed along gender lines. It’s just work to be done. The difference, I’ve found, is all to do with the parents because the mother and father act along the gender lines. If the mom’s doing everything for the boys or girls, then the gender code plays out, in marriages and beyond. But if the parents just put jobs in a big pot, the more you can do that, the more you don’t see that.
This is a 4-part interview series with Anna McKay, Founder of Parent’s Pivot and Danielle Dobson of Code Conversations. If you are interested in learning more about how you can successfully pivot to paid work, contact Anna today.
