A Game of Four Square
My six-year-old cried yesterday because she lost her position in a four-square game. Uncontrollable wails of accusation rang out, and her small shoulders shook with each sob. The adults and other children tried to explain that she had missed the ball. They imparted profound life lessons about rising up from failure to try again. They tried to calm her with messages about resilience. I’ve said many of the same lines during a meltdown.
But, as usual, those words could not penetrate through the emotional tumult that accompanied my daughter’s sense of injustice.
I knelt beside her. I tried to listen to the words stammering through her wails.
“I hear you,” I said to her gently. “I hear you.” She looked at me and started to speak in streams of words and emotions.
I repeated the words each time she spoke. “I hear you feel like you shouldn’t be out.”
“I hear you feel like you worked hard to get to that spot. I hear you feel the others played too hard.”
She stopped shaking. She took a breath. She softened.
“Let’s see if you can work your way to the top again,” I told her. “I’ll stand right beside your square the whole way.”
She got back in the game.
The Game of Motherhood
What incredible power it is to be a mother. I am my daughter’s person – the one she turns to when she needs someone to hear her. I am my son’s guide – the one he asks questions about morality, history, and friendships. In ordinary moments, I help shape how they interpret the world and themselves in it.
But for every moment that I am present enough to know what to say and do, there are other moments when my mind drifts to a work problem, when my inner calm is shattered by the outer chaos of our lives together, or when I feel stretched thin between what feels like competing responsibilities.
And that is what this post, and many others on my blog, is about: how to navigate the game of life with all its many rules and expectations, and how to have fun while we’re doing it.
Because sometimes life as a working mother can feel like a game of four-square.
The balls keep coming right back, each with their own challenges. I move through the different squares, playing my role in each as well as I can. Work square. Home square. Community square. Inner life square.
I miss some of the balls and have to start over, scrambling my way back in.
The game does not pause just because I am tired. Even if I’m not fully ready, the ball is served.
Maybe you feel that way, too. Maybe you feel like my daughter, who worked so hard to get to the top square, and now it’s lost. The endless cycle of the game starts again, just as each morning we wake to begin the next round of tasks.
Maybe we all need a reminder that playing the game of four-square and the game of life is supposed to be fun. Most got into motherhood as a way of completing our lives, but, somehow, along the way, our lives feel more incomplete than ever as we struggle to balance all the myriad tasks.
I Hear You
Being a working mother is hard in ways that are difficult to explain to someone who isn’t living it.
It’s the mental tabs open in your mind while you sit in a meeting.
It’s answering emails in the school pickup line.
It’s the ache of missing your son’s school musical.
It’s entire days of not sitting down to rest.
It’s guilt.
It’s profoundly raw.
I hear all of this and more. I hear moms everywhere who are doing their best and striving so hard in each square of life. Like many moms, I often feel a tension between working and mothering. Until we have children, work is often the driving force in our lives. As most of us grow up, we’re asked what we want to be. As adults, we meet new people and immediately ask, “what do you do?” Our professions often become part of our identities.
Then we have kids, and values begin to shift. Work used to have its place in life, and there was time outside of it for everything else. Neat, segmented lines separated our work and private lives. With kids, the time outside of work never feels sufficient. Our exhaustion from parenting bleeds into our work, our lack of time has us running errands on lunch breaks, and our calendars fill until there’s no time left.
This blog space is about the changes that happen with our values. It’s about the changes that happen with our sense of time and space.
It’s about saying to you what I said to my daughter:
I hear you.
I hear that you are sometimes profoundly tired.
I hear that you feel pulled in different directions.
I hear that you worked to build your career.
I hear that you love your children fiercely.
I hear that it sometimes feels like you’re dropping the ball.
I hear all of this because I feel it, too.
But we are not tired because we are failing. We are tired because what we carry is meaningful. It’s big. And it’s worth it.
When my daughter was able to name her feelings, she gained power over them. Let’s name the chaos of our lives. Let’s define it as the tension we feel as working parents. Let’s gain control over it by recognizing that while what we’re doing may feel huge, it’s tremendously meaningful to our lives and the world.
But Why Is It Sometimes So Hard?
Motherhood asks for presence: eye contact, listening, repetition, patience.
Work often asks for performance: productivity, decisiveness, results.
Motherhood is about forming young people through small, daily moments.
Work moves at the pace of deadlines and projects.
At 2:45, you might be solving a complex problem at work.
At 3:15, you might be listening to a child recount a playground injustice in painstaking detail.
The shift is abrupt. The demands are different.
Many of us are raised to be workers, not mothers. We’re taught to value the product, not the process. That sometimes leaves us putting to-do items on our mothering checklist. Do art with Sally; practice baseball with Sam. We give kids to-do items as chore sheets. We spend so much time focused on productivity that we struggle to calm down and just be, especially when there’s so much on the list: never ending dinners, dishes, laundry, and cleaning that seems to run our lives.
Sometimes we add big items to our list, such as a big birthday party, a vacation, or a grand gesture, but we spend so much time stressing about it that we forget to be present with our children during the process.
For years, women have been told to pursue balance. Sometimes we thrive in our navigation of work-life balance, and sometimes our lives feel like fragmented messes.
Balance sounds appealing, as though work and family have equal portions, neat categories, and tidy distribution of time and energy.
But working motherhood hardly ever feels truly balanced.
Asking Better Questions
I wonder, instead, if we might shift our understanding of balance to one more of integrating our values and our lives into something that feels more cohesive and more whole?
The question moves from:
“How do I divide myself more effectively?”
To:
“How do I live as a coherent whole?”
How do we become more present and aligned with the lives we are meant to live? How do we navigate the changes motherhood brings as gracefully as possible?
Just as our children are growing, we, too, are becoming. We are becoming the mothers we want to be. Just as we support little ones when they cannot yet walk, we need to have grace when we ourselves fall down. No one judged my six-year-old for losing her place in four-square, and no one should be judging us as we learn how to play the game of parenting.
This blog space is about growth, about becoming more as parents.
It’s about standing in the game and playing gracefully, even if we don’t always feel like we’re winning.
Thank you for joining me in this game today as you’ve read my experience with parenting. As we leave, I want to share five beliefs that can help us become better versions of ourselves as mothers.
Five Beliefs to Carry Into Working Motherhood
If the ball keeps coming, we need something steady inside us. These beliefs can anchor us when the game feels relentless.
1. Presence Matters More Than Perfection
My daughter did not need a perfectly reasoned explanation about fairness. She needed to feel heard.
Your children do not need flawless execution. They need responsiveness. They need parents who are off their phones and able to answer their questions. They need parents who can, at times, put work away and just be with them, whether it’s taking a walk, cooking dinner together, or reading a book. The activity doesn’t usually matter; the attention does.
Five fully attentive minutes can outweigh an hour of distracted proximity.
When you are working, work with focus. When you are with your children, practice presence. Release the expectation that you must excel in every part of life simultaneously and instead just be present in the space you’re in.
2. Work and Motherhood Can Align
New mothers often face social pressure when it comes to raising their children: “Do you plan to keep working after you have the baby?” “Who watches your children when you’re at work?” I once struck up a conversation with another mother on a playground as our young children were playing, and when she found out my child went to daycare, she immediately called her child away from mine and went to another area of the park. Instances like these leave vulnerable working mothers feeling like they’re doing something wrong.
The narrative that mothers should individually raise their children is actually quite new. In past cultures, mothers had households with extended family and servants or, in some cultures, village networks to help raise children. The village now has shifted. Instead of unpaid family help, parents often seek paid daycare (though the unpaid family help is often welcome). Being away from children is common in most cultures, as long as we ensure they have quality adults (and sometimes older children) stepping in, whether they’re paid or unpaid.
Work can teach children through example. Your children observe as you problem-solve, persevere, communicate, and contribute. They see how you handle stress and integrity. They observe your ambition and your boundaries.
Work can model adulthood for them. In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Michaeleen Doucleff suggests parents involve their children in work whenever possible. She argues they need to see the adult world to learn how to behave in different settings. Our adult lives and our children’s lives are not two separate things. The United States seems to separate the worlds. Even our menus have an adult and kid section, but restaurants in some countries do not assume kids and adults have different tastes. Instead, kid food and adult food are the same, perhaps with different portions. We wonder why our kids are such picky eaters. We train them not to want what the adults are having. Just as we train them that work is not for them and then wonder why they’re not ready for work when the time arrives. Work is part of life, and it can benefit all ages.
An incredible example of bringing children into work is Licia Ronzulli, an Italian member of the European Parliament, who brought her infant to Parliament and continued to do so as the child grew. She drew international attention to the situation of women as they navigate their careers and family responsibilities.
I’m not saying you should ignore all workplace policies – or your own sanity – and bring your child to work every day. What I am saying is you can determine how to integrate the roles of work and motherhood in creative and new ways depending on the type of work you do and the values you espouse. You can align the work and family version of yourself in a way that feels right for your family.
3. Guilt Is Not Always a Reliable Guide
Guilt often arises simply because expectations are high in our society and resources like time, money, and energy are limited, but we feel like we should do more or be more. Many working mothers feel guilty for not giving more to work. Others feel guilty for what they have to miss at home. Sometimes guilt signals misalignment. But often it reflects cultural pressures that expect women to be endlessly available and endlessly productive at the same time.
Sometimes, this guilt comes from the expectations we feel others have of us. If so, perhaps we need to reconsider if those expectations are ones we actually have or if they’re ones we’ve picked up without meaning to.
Instead of asking, “Do I feel guilty?”
Ask, “Am I living according to my convictions?”
Those are not the same question. Do not feel guilty because your life doesn’t align with someone else’s values. Understand your values, visit them often to ensure they’re the healthiest values for you and your family, and live accordingly.
4. Seasons Change the Game
There will be seasons when work demands more, and there will be seasons when your children need extra attention. There will be seasons when your own health or growth requires space.
The game keeps shifting, and we need to shift, too. You do not have to dominate everything at once. You need discernment for each season life brings.
That’s where wisdom comes in. We must have the wisdom to recognize what season we’re in and adapt. We must have the wisdom to seek grace and compassion not only for ourselves in our season, but also for our children and others we meet in the world. Perhaps another mom’s season looks different than yours. That’s okay. I’ve known moms whose deepest regrets are not paying attention to the seasons of their children’s lives. They chose work during the precious years when their kids were young, or they gave up a career they loved because they thought it was the right thing for their family.
All seasons are temporary. Mothers who understand their values and recognize the season they’re in will have an easier time navigating the seasons of life.
5. You Choose How to Play the Game
The ball will keep coming. You don’t control that.
But you do have a say in how you respond. Viktor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Frankl survived a holocaust labor camp and still believed that he had a choice in how he responded to the circumstances of his life. If he can do that, then I have to believe I can choose my attitude and my response to the situations in my own life.
You choose what matters most in your home.
You choose how you show up at work.
You choose the values that guide your decisions.
The world will offer you scripts for what a working mother should be.
You do not have to accept them.
You can play differently.
You are allowed to participate fully in your own life.
And here is the another truth I hope you carry with you:
Working motherhood is not a problem to solve but a life to steward.
When we treat it as a problem, we chase hacks and perfection.
When we treat it as stewardship, we pursue wisdom.
Stepping Back Into the Game
The ball will keep coming.
Emails. Deadlines. Sick days. School forms. Spirit days. Performance reviews. Laundry. Conversations about fairness and friendship.
You will miss the ball sometimes.
You will feel overwhelmed sometimes.
But you can step back in and start over the next day, even the next minute.
The deeper work of being a working mother may not be perfect coordination. It may be learning to redirect the ball without losing yourself — learning to listen, to recalibrate, to choose again.
Mothers shape atmosphere. We shape identity. We shape memory.
And if you need someone to say it to you:
I hear you.