Should Moms Really Stop Volunteering?
Moms are over-committed with more volunteer requests than they can handle, and I am telling them to stop. Just Say No.
That was the title of a post I write back in the Spring on the LA Moms Blog, and it has clearly resonated with some and touched a nerve with others. Hilary Stout, of the New York Times, interviewed me and several other moms who were all over-volunteering and forced themselves to stop, for an article that appeared in yesterday’s issue. Then today on CNN’s American Morning, Kiran Chetry interviewed me and VolunteerSpot.com founder, Karen Bantuveris, for a story on the story as well.
Like the other moms interviewed by Ms. Stout, I was doing so much for others I had neglected myself and my family. Ostensibly I had set out to help my kids by helping do things for their school, but I ended up doing so much my kids came to resent it; they only saw me as a stressed-out woman who was either dragging them along when I went to volunteer or leaving them with a babysitter so I could do it alone.
There are horror stories of husbands leaving wives who volunteer too much, and while my husband was not thrilled with all the volunteering I was doing, my personal wake-up call was when I realized my son was falling behind in learning to read. It meant I had missed the signs because I was paying more attention to the PTA bylaws than I was to whether he was struggling in school and needed help.
That was when I knew I needed to pull back.
But for me, pulling back to a reasonable amount of volunteering just wasn’t going to work. I’d start with a little and then kept getting pulled in to more and more. I needed to go cold turkey.
Truth be told: If I hadn’t stopped doing so much, no one else would ever have stepped in. It’s not like I was in a power struggle for control of the PTA. Believe me, no one wanted my job. I made it look horrible with all the hours I was putting in.
And I needed to stop in order to be able to give again some day. I have come to believe that giving from a place of bitterness and resentment is no good for anyone. Once I can re-group, recover from my over-volunteering and find my giving spirit again, I am sure I’ll offer to help do some projects at school.
But it won’t be today.
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