Tag Archives: working parent

Partner

Veracity Founder Talks Parenthood & Prioritizing Selfcare

Allie Egan is the Founder and CEO of Veracity Selfcare and member family of Bell Family Company. In our Q&A she talks about life as a working parent and the story behind Veracity. Learn more about her impressive journey below.

Let’s start with hearing about your experience as a working parent!

Q. The question we all want answered is how are you juggling being a woman start-up business owner and a mother of two young children? What’s the biggest challenge from your perspective and how are you overcoming it?

A. The struggle is that you’re always working! I love my kids dearly and would not give them or my business up for the world, but as soon as I walk in the door after a full day of work I’m right back on the clock. This leads to two main challenges 1) carving out time for your own mental clarity and 2) trying to nurture your relationship with your partner behind schedule management. I don’t have all the answers, but the two main things I try to do are 1) being fully present in each job (aka mom at home, CEO at work) when it’s time for that job and 2) making time every day for at least a moment of joy. For me this can be a run, a dance party with my kids or a glass of wine with a friend post bedtime.

Q. What are the top 3 things you’ve learned about yourself being a working mom? 

A. 1) You will never have time for everything. 2) Don’t hype moments to be too perfect in your mind. You never know when a cold or fatigue or just a grumpy mood might set in with kids so give yourself grace that what you plan may not turn out as planned. 3) I love leaning into fun kids stuff like jumping on a trampoline, playing hide and seek or coloring bring me simple but real joy.

Now tell us about Veracity! 

Q. What’s the philosophy behind Veracity?

A. At Veracity, our mission is to empower women by providing them with the knowledge, tools and support they need to understand and balance their hormones effectively. We believe that when women are equipped with the right information and resources, they can unlock their full potential, both in terms of physical vitality, glowing skin and emotional well-being.

Our products are designed to create a healthy body and skin ecosystem for results that last. We only formulate with clean ingredients, free from hormone disruptors and toxins — a health first approach with clinically backed results. Our skincare is also safe for all life stages, including pregnancy and breastfeeding. You should never have to compromise results for your health.

Q. Why is it important that women keep track of their personal hormone levels?

A. Hormones influence every aspect of your health — from skin, hair, nails, mood, energy and metabolism to sleep and sexual health. More than 80% of women have a hormonal imbalance. At Veracity, we believe that if you have the knowledge and understanding of the state of your hormones, you can uncover the root cause of your skin and health issues — big and small — and unlock the best version of yourself.

Q. What are 3 things every woman can easily do today to protect herself from harmful everyday toxins?

A. When it comes to looking and feeling your best, what I’ve found is it’s less about what you add to your routine and more about what you remove from it. Endocrine disrupting chemicals, or chemicals that interfere with your hormones, can wreak havoc on your metabolism, energy, mood and skin. The easiest way to remove them is by using EDC free skincare, like Veracity. Next, eliminate plastic products where you can (e.g., food storage, plastic packaging, plastic baby bottles). Then, maximize your gut health with whole foods, breakfast in the morning and a probiotic (I’m obsessed with our BioEvolve Probiotic) which will help rid your body of toxins and excess hormones.

Looking to hire a babysitter or nanny? Bell Family Company provides fully vetted & FULLY VACCINATED on demand babysitting, including full and part time nannies, baby nurses, temporary care, help with virtual learning, and more! Learn why BFC is the best childcare agency, with childcare providers available across the U.S. (on-demand service available in the tri-state area). Contact us today to hire!

Childcare

What Is FSA and How Can It Be Used for Childcare?

Did you know you can get reimbursed for your BFC membership and the BFC nanny placement fees under your FSA (Sometimes called a Dependent Care Assistance Plan (DCAP))?

Ask your employer if they offer FSA. If they do, ask for the form to fill in. Email the completed form to BFC and we will sign, attach a letter and invoice with the amount. Then you will need to submit the completed paperwork back to your employer. That’s it!

What is a FSA?

Some U.S. employers offer their employees a flexible spending account (FSA) or sometimes known as a Dependent Care Assistance Plan (DCAP). This is an employer-sponsored plan that allows you to set aside a portion of your income on a pre-tax basis and then use that money to pay for eligible, employment-related dependent care expenses incurred for a qualifying individual. 

What is the advantage of participating in a dependent care FSA?

Your contributions to these accounts are tax-free, saving you money on federal, state income taxes and Social Security taxes. These FSAs can help you save money on healthcare and dependent care expenses such as childcare.

*Ask your employer how much they will reimburse towards your FSA before you begin. Ask if there is a use it or lose it policy. Many FSA expire by the end of the year, even more reason to use those funds now towards childcare! BFC does not guarantee reimbursements, all reimbursements are determined by an employer.

Dependent Care FSA Information

Looking to hire a babysitter or nanny? Bell Family Company provides fully vetted & FULLY VACCINATED on-demand babysitting, including full and part time nannies, baby nurses, temporary care, help with virtual learning, and more! Learn why BFC is the best childcare agency, with childcare providers available across the U.S. (on-demand service available in the tri-state area). Contact us today to hire!

Parenting

Childcare During a Pandemic: What Moms Are Doing Across Different Regions

In today’s day and age, there is no one clear path when it comes to childcare. Parents have had to be flexible in completely new ways, and every parenting situation is different based off of their children’s ages, work schedule and area they live in. We talked with three different moms in three different regions across the U.S. to see what their current childcare plan is. Here is what they said.

Lindsay, southern mom with 3 children (ages 6 m/o, 4 & 5)

Work scene: Full or part time depending on the week. I work from home in my home office downstairs (adult zone) and the upstairs is a full blown kid zone. I keep my computer open throughout the day and have set ‘office hours’ four days per week; I ad hoc work as needed. I try to get out of the house and work in a coffee shop once a week, but do most of my work at home. 

Childcare scene: I have reoccurring sitters four days per week (hours vary each day depending on my schedule) plus at least one date night every two weeks. Babysitters and kids stay upstairs so I can try to separate work and family, but that doesn’t always happen. My two oldest are in school full time M-F and the baby is home. The biggest challenge is sickness, and trying to care for my babies and my business at the same time. Sometimes I have to surrender and reschedule all my work for the next day. Balance is always a work in progress. 

Katie, midwest mom with 3 children (ages 2 , 3 & 5)

Work scene: Work from home full time. I didn’t have one week of work in December without a kid home and me working at the same time.

Childcare scene: My oldest is in kindergarten in person full time, while the other two mix daycare and a part time nanny. I watch them at home when sick or needing to quarantine, which serves up the most challenging days.

Jamie, east coast mom with 1 child (age 8 m/o)

Work scene: I went back to my full time job in late September (after four months of paid family leave). I’m typically in the office two days a week and WFH the other days. I work as a Director for a large biopharmaceutical company and have thankfully been able to do a hybrid schedule, which has been great for me as a new working mom (hopefully that flexibility stays)!

Childcare scene: My husband WFH part time and is the main caretaker of our daughter during the work week. I try to cover a feeding, diaper change or squeeze in a stroller walk in between meetings when I WFH. Every week is a busy frenzy of multi-tasking. We’re currently looking to hire a consistent part time nanny to help balance our work and parenting duties.

Nothing like a good kid cameo in your meeting.

Looking to hire a babysitter or nanny? Bell Family Company provides fully vetted & FULLY VACCINATED on-demand babysitting, including full and part time nannies, baby nurses, temporary care, help with virtual learning, and more! Learn why BFC is the best childcare agency, with childcare providers available across the U.S. (on-demand service available in the tri-state area). Contact us today to hire!

Parenting

Ways Your Organization Can Help Support Working Parents

A great article, as originally published by Harvard Business Review, shares ways on how the workplace can support working parents and help offer what employees everywhere search for; a work-life balance. 

Below are a handful of approaches pulled from the full article that are said to be some of the most effective in getting results.

  1. Start with the facts: Before launching any support programs for working parents, gather the relevant data: Where do parents sit within the organization? What are their attrition patterns? What information can you gather from annual performance reviews or culture-survey data — or simply from informal conversations?
  2. Define the demographic: Most companies concentrate their efforts on “visible working parents” — e.g., new biological mothers — focusing all programming on lactation rooms and other relevant supports. While these are positive, laudable steps, they address the problem too narrowly. Working parenthood is an 18-year job, and it is done by both men and women, biological and adoptive, gay and straight, in all kinds of family structures. Aligning your organization’s programs to this reality better targets the issue.
  3. Acknowledge and foster peer-to-peer learning: Providing basic guidance, even simple talking points, to these internal “peer coaches” enables them to deliver the right messages when it matters.
  4. Become a market maker: Leverage your organization’s existing infrastructure to connect working parents and to make practical aspects of parenting easier. Goldman Sachs’s “Help at Home” intranet bulletin board allows any employee to trade tips and leads on child care.
  5. Focus the resources you do have on key transition points: Coming back from leave, welcoming a second or third child, or accepting a change in role or schedule are just a few of the transition points that can derail or strain the most competent working parent employee. That’s why concentrating benefits and programming on these critical points can yield significant return on investment.

 
Read up on the few additional ways your organization can help support working parents, by reading the full article here.

Uncategorized

How Working Parents Can Feel Less Overwhelmed and More in Control

Revise budget numbers. Parent/teacher conference Wednesday. Edit the marketing overview document. Finish summer camp applications. Give candidate interview feedback to HR. Grocery run — we’re out of everything…

If you’re a working parent, chances are excellent that at any given time, your to-do list looks like the one above — and that it stretches on, and on, and on — an endless, and eternally growing, list of deliverables. Is it any wonder that research shows that most working parents feel stressed, tired, and rushed? Or that when you look ahead, you feel more than a little overwhelmed?

As a responsible person and a hard worker, you know how to dig in and get things done. And since becoming a parent, you’ve tried various strategies to keep the ever-more-intense pace: moving paper to-do lists onto your iPhone, reorganizing your Outlook “Tasks” section, spending more and more time logged into work each evening, cleaning up the endless queue of unread emails, sleeping progressively less each night.

Yet you’re still haunted by the nagging sense of not getting enough done, of falling down in some way, of giving things that really matter short shrift — and feeling as if the wheels may come off the bus very, very soon.

The problem isn’t in your organizational system or work ethic — it’s in how human brains are wired. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed, with so much to do and so many demands on you.

But here’s the good news: There are simple and effective techniques for taming the overwhelmedness — things any working parent can do, starting today, to feel more competent, calm, and in control and to start shrinking that task list permanently. Here are four of the most powerful.

  1. Know your end game.
  2. Invest your time accordingly.
  3. Keep a “got it done” list.
  4. Schedule a regular power outage.

 

For details on the four above and the full article, click here.

Daisy Wademan

Article written by Daisy Wademan Dowling, Founder and CEO of Workparent.