Parents reflect & feedback
Hi 
This self-interview is for you to reflect, and optionally to share back with me!
If you choose to share your input with me, you can do that in one of the following forms (most preferred first):
written text (send to sarhan.alaa@protonmail.com )
In which case, you get as reward:
life-time access to any solution that I end up building based on the insights in your input**
Now let's get to it!
Tip: quickly read through the 3 tasks below before you start thinking them through.
1. Free form thoughts
Describe how you have been doing as a parent overall.
The following questions may help get you started, but don't limit yourself to them.
- How / why have you decided to become a parent?
- What was your initial criteria for being ready for kids? what was "it's a good time now" moment, if any?
- How big of a shock was it, in terms of expectations and demand, after the first few weeks of becoming a parent?
- How are you doing? how are you getting sleep, me-time and away-time? how are you enjoying the on-duty parenting time?
- What are you worried about the most today? what keeps you up at night?
- Who are you raising the child(ren) with? what kind of family and support structure (village) do you have?
- Where are you getting support, guidance and confirmation/reassurance from?
Then think of the following questions:
- how happy are you overall?
- what 1-3 things you wish you can change tomorrow, for you to feel happier?
2. A walk-through
Describe, in as much detail as you can, one or more of the following:
- a typical week day
- a typical weekend day
- a challenging task
Then think of the following questions:
- what is the best and worst part of your typical week day and weekend day?
- what parts of the current solutions you use for your challenging task is the most inconvenient?
3. Closing questions
- Are you raising your child(ren) ...
- alone (single-parenting)?
- with your current partner (can be the other biological parent or not) as a family?
- with their other parent, separated (co-parenting)?
- within a collective community (communal living)?
- Are you parenting ...
- as a full-time job?
- part-time, next to another part/full-time job?
- barely with very limited time, due to other job(s)?
- Do you have (extended) family and/or friends who offer direct support in ...
- direct parenting with the child (care-work, education, sleep over)?
- adjacent tasks to parenting (pick-up / drop-offs, scheduling appointments, researching vacations etc)?
- taking off the load of work or other responsibilities so you have more time for parenting?
- Which of the following is the most demanding (rank as 1) and least demanding (rank as 4), in terms of stress / mental load:
- future planning (financial, education, state of the world)
- day to day routine (commute, food, play time, hygiene, development)
- short-term planning (vacations, clothing, school performance)
- your own well-being (health, growth, rest, me-time, fun, friends)
- Which of the following is the most demanding (rank as 1) and least demanding (rank as 4) in terms of effort:
- keeping all involved people informed (calendars, shared documentation, messaging)
- planning child-care costs (independently or as part of house-hold cost management)
- getting quality time with the child(ren) out of every day/week
- dealing with the child(ren)'s access to screens and their digital sphere
Whether we talk or not, hope this helps you, too.
Cheers!
* limited to the first 20 submissions
** free of charge, up to reasonable usage quotas