Episode 3: My 3 Biggest Challenges as a Mom in Private Practice
Empowering Tips and Strategies to Help You Thrive
The journey of building and maintaining a private practice while raising kids is an exhilarating yet daunting adventure. In today's post, we're delving into three significant challenges I've faced as a mom in private practice and the strategies that have helped me navigate them. These insights might provide you with some valuable guidance and encouragement.
The Seasons of Motherhood and Practice Building
Understanding the concept of "seasons" is crucial. Life presents different phases—newborns, toddlers, school-age children, and beyond. Each season comes with its own set of demands and challenges that influence how we manage our practices. Recognizing and accepting these seasons helps in reducing stress and allows flexibility in planning. What might work—or not work—now can and often will shift as we progress through these different phases.
Challenge 1: Childcare Dilemmas
One major challenge is managing childcare while building a practice. Initially, financially, daycare or a babysitter wasn't an option, compounded by our military family lifestyle, living far from extended family. My solution was to get creative with my schedule using nap time as dedicated work time. My older son napped well, so I scheduled client sessions during his long naps. Additionally, I worked late nights once a week, seeing clients from 8 PM to 1 AM. This allowed me to establish a steady income before hiring a babysitter.
Key takeaway: think outside the box with your schedule. Use nap times, early mornings, weekends, or any blocks of time you can carve out. This setup isn’t permanent; adjust as your circumstances change.
Challenge 2: Finding Time for Admin Work
Face-to-face client time isn’t the only demand on our days. Building and maintaining a practice involves various administrative tasks, from setting up electronic health records to writing blog posts. In the beginning, finding time for these tasks led to many late nights.
Communicating with my husband about my work needs during intense administrative "seasons" proved essential. Setting firm boundaries helped, though it's an ongoing process. I've learned to prioritize finishing notes and admin tasks before stepping out of my workspace to join my family. The takeaway here is clear: set boundaries and communicate needs with your support system.
Challenge 3: Pivoting Based on Kids’ Needs
Another constant is the need to pivot based on our kids' needs. Dealing with sick children, unexpected doctor appointments, or new school schedules can be immensely frustrating. This requires significant flexibility and the ability to shift client schedules or administrative work around unforeseen changes.
With my husband’s military job offering little flexibility, we've had to creatively juggle our schedules and occasionally request time off or trade shifts. For fellow military spouses and working moms, it's important to have candid conversations with your partners about balancing responsibilities. Expressing how vital your practice is and collaborating to find flexible solutions is key. Effective communication and sharing the load can ease the burden.
Embracing the Journey
Growth and success come in different seasons. There might be times when you need to pull back, like during a PCS move or maternity leave, but remember these seasons are temporary. Pausing or pivoting doesn't signify failure; it’s part of the journey.
Navigating the challenges of being a mom in private practice is no small feat, but it’s entirely achievable with creativity, communication, and understanding. What challenges do you face as a mom in private practice? How have you managed to overcome them? Share your thoughts on Instagram or in our Facebook group.
If you found this discussion helpful, share it with your therapist friends and leave a review. Let's continue empowering and supporting each other through every season of our lives and practices.
Join our Facebook community at bit.ly/raisetoempower and follow us on Instagram for more tips and support!
Transcript for Episode 3
You are listening to the Raise to Empower podcast. I'm your host, Ashley Comegys, a licensed clinical social worker with a multi-state online therapy practice. I have a passion for empowering women and mom therapists to break free of the fear, overwhelm, and oppressive systems that hold them back from taking action and building the private practice of their dreams.
My goal is for you to boldly believe in yourself as a clinician and business owner. If you are looking for a place to learn, practice, building, strategy and skill, while also claiming your own power as a woman and a therapist, then you are in the right place. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the Raise to Empower Show.
Today I'm going to be talking with you about three of the biggest challenges that I have faced as a mom in private practice and ways that I've worked towards solutions. And I'm putting that in air quotes. Obviously you can't see because it's not really a great word. It's not like I have found this perfect fix, but it's what's worked for me.
And if it works for you or it helps to give you some ideas of, of ways that you can adapt these solutions for yourself. Take 'em. You know, there are definitely challenges that are universal to all of us as women, but there are also some unique challenges for those who are mothers or caregivers and they experience these when they're trying to build or grow a practice.
Sometimes it can be really hard when we look at someone who we see that they have this practice. And it seems to be thriving and we think that's what I want, but how am I supposed to get there? How is this gonna work for me? And so I want today to be a way of encouraging you. It's not to say, well, just because I've done it, you can do it, which I do believe you can, but it's to say, this is what worked for me.
Could this work for you in a similar way? Now, as we go through all of this, I really want you to keep in mind the word season. And I really wish that I understood and accepted what this means more when I was first starting out. That there are seasons of life. There are seasons of motherhood. There are seasons of building on growing a practice.
And like I said, I wish I understood that better at the beginning. And throughout this journey at times, so that I wasn't just trying to force certain things and make myself more stressed out than I needed to be. Seasons may be things like a newborn phase or pregnancy or trying to conceive or adoption, depending on the age of our child, if they're elementary age or college age.
It could be the season of the year. Kids out of school and you don't have childcare or seasons of life, that everybody is just sick right now. The seasons that we are in are going to have a huge impact on what we have time for, our bandwidth, our energy, both mentally and physically. So I really want you to just remember that, keep that as an overarching theme, as an overarching mentality as we talk about this today.
as I talk about my struggles, just remember that this is how I dealt with my seasons. It's not to say again that this is the exact way to do it, but this is helpful for me. So the first biggest struggle that I have faced as a practice owner and as a mom is childcare. This was a really big struggle, especially at the beginning when I was just starting out in private practice.
Now if you listened to episode one, you know a little bit more about my story, and I had been in private practice as part of a group practice before going out on my own, but I took some time off after having my first child. Before going in on building a practice by myself during that time, like many parents I'm sure can relate there.
Is this like chicken or the egg? Do I find a job or do I get childcare first? For me, the option to just put my son in daycare or to hire a babysitter right off the bat just really wasn't an option for me. I really had to find a way to work on building my practice without that childcare. Because we are a military family.
We don't live near family, and even if we did our extended family still works. We don't have parents who are retired and mom, if you're listening to this, no offense, but my parents are not ones necessarily that would be able to watch my kids full-time. They enjoy their life outside of work, and so that's not something that we can necessarily depend on them for.
And that's okay. and like I said, I didn't really want to, and I couldn't really afford to pay somebody until I knew that I was gonna have a steady income coming in from my private practice. The solution that I found that, again, this is what worked for me, so I had a very, very good napper. . I don't know how I got so lucky , but my oldest son was an amazing sleeper.
More so after he turned one baby age. He was a hard sleeper, like all kids, but really like once he hit one, he napped really, really well. So I was able to schedule like one to three clients during his nap time because he would give me, Anywhere from a three to five hour midday nap, depending on how that went.
And so I knew that for sure I could get two clients in during that time. That was how I started out, that during his nap is when I would block off time that on, not every day, but I think I did Tuesdays and Thursdays at the beginning that I had basically like four slots available that I could fit clients in during those.
At the beginning of my practice when I was solo, I was still licensed in Hawaii and I was also licensed in Louisiana and I had a lot of connections still in Hawaii because that's where we had moved from. Now we were on a five hour time zone deference, depending on the time of year or four hours, when it's time.
And so I worked it that I was able to still see Hawaii clients that if I saw them during that nap schedule time, I could get them on their morning time. So it worked for that. But like I said, most of my referrals. At that point, were still coming from Hawaii because I was really working on establishing myself in Louisiana as a private practice owner.
I had worked in a lot of organizations there prior to moving, and so I had a lot of connections, but I just didn't have the presence there at that time yet of being in private practice. The other solution that I ended up kind of having a workaround for, Some of you are going to think I'm crazy, but again, this is just what worked for me is I would have those two days where I would see clients during the nap time.
And then I had one day where I would work after he would go to sleep, so my husband and I would kind of put him to bed, and then I would see clients from eight o'clock at night till one in the morning on Central standard time. , and again, like this sounds really crazy, but the only reason that I was able to do that was because I knew that the next morning we did not have anything that we had to do.
I never scheduled early morning doctor's appointments. I also knew my son was going to sleep in, like he would, he would sleep till sometimes eight a 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM depending on the day. So I knew that like I could get a few extra hours of sleep that morning. That was how I was able to make that work.
It allowed me to establish myself and get that income coming in. So that once it was not working for me anymore, I was then able to hire somebody to come for the daytime so that I could shift my schedule to see more people during normal business hours. From me, . Once I was able to get that kind of consistent client base, I did hire somebody and she would come for a couple hours, twice a week I believe, and it was usually from like around lunchtime till four, five o'clock, and she would put him down for his nap and manage everything while I was working.
It made it a lot less on me so that I did not have to worry about if he would wake up early. That did start to happen as he got a little bit older that I can hear him crying next door and I still have 20 more minutes in a session. It allowed me to not have to worry or stress about that if I didn't have clients that were coming.
To see me during the time that she was there. I could also get admin tasks done, work on networking during that time, work on building out my E H R. It really just, Helped me to carve out really specific time that I was able to have dedicated to working on my practice. Now, once he hit about 21 months old, I enrolled him in a preschool three and a half days a week, which gave me even more time.
And so that was when I was really able to start filling my practice schedule more with clients. I was able to work in times that worked for me and really set those boundaries that, hey, you know, unfortunately I'm not gonna be able to see. Or at this time if you would like to continue working with me, here are the hours I have available.
So the tip that I would just give thinking about childcare, if you're like I was where maybe you're starting out and you're trying to figure out like how can I. Make this work while I'm also trying to be a stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home parent right now. Try to get creative, and I know that can be hard when we are in the depths of early parenthood.
If you have a child that wakes up late and you're able to wake up a little bit earlier, or if you're able to say, you know what, I can stay up an extra hour or two, one night a week. To work on my practice, whether it is in seeing clients or whether it is in working on the administrative pieces that it takes to put that practice together or during nap time.
Or weekend time when you aren't going to have to worry about hiring a sitter or having somebody come over if you have a partner that will be home again. Whatever the schedule is that you design at the beginning does not have to be set in stone for forever. This is where being able to be creative and being able to recognize, okay, this is the season that I'm in.
and that this doesn't have to be forever, but it's for right now. That time of seeing white clients until 1:00 AM really did work for that season. And I was able to take naps, you know, during the day leading up to it. So I knew that I had to work late at night. So that was for that season, it would definitely not work now with where my life is, but it worked for that time period.
So think about that. Are there creative ways to work around. The childcare that you have so that you can have that dedicated time for working on your practice. The second challenge that I have definitely faced as a mom in practice is having time to work on the practice outside of that client face-to-face time.
This was really a big struggle at the beginning, and honestly, it still is an issue at times, mainly because I'm just not good at. Keeping my own work boundaries, not necessarily with clients, but on doing the administrative stuff. , when it comes to not doing it outside of my work time, I have very strong, very firm boundaries with my clients.
But I need to get better about not working on administrative stuff outside of my own boundaries. So at the beginning when I was doing things like setting up my electronic health record, especially with building my website, I, I built my own website and that definitely took time, networking with other people, writing blog posts.
These are things that I'm not going to be doing during that face-to-face time. But they need to be done. They need to happen as part of having a practice, and especially when I was building that practice. And if you're building a practice, these are things that you definitely need to be, be working on.
And so it can be really hard to find that time again. When it's not that face-to-face with a client. And I've had to like, have some conversations with my husband, especially when I was in a particular season, like when I was in that place of really working to build my website, cuz I knew that that was gonna be a main source of marketing for my practice that I had to let him know like, Hey, it's not that I don't wanna sit here and watch TV with you, but this is something that I'm really.
Setting a deadline for myself, I really need to get done so that it can be up and running. My husband is very, very supportive of my work. But let's face it, , he doesn't work in mental health. He doesn't work as a social worker. He doesn't have the background I do, and so he doesn't always get it, and I don't fault him for that.
Like there's a lot of times people in our lives don't understand like, well, you just sit and talk to people. What else do you have to do? And there is a lot more. That it takes to run a business besides just talking to our clients. So having conversations with him about, again, this is a season I'm in, or I have this project I'm working on, you know, just so that way he understands that no, I'm not just in my business all the time.
And that he can sometimes help hold me accountable to that too, of, Hey, like you've seemed like you've had. A lot going on. You seem like you're kind of always having to work. Is this absolutely necessary? Are there ways to shift this? Are there ways so that you don't have to just be in work mode?
Because as we are building, as we are growing a practice, we can get into those seasons where we're like, I just, I've gotta do all the things that can sometimes become consuming. So I'm working to be more structured in what I'm using my time for, making choices to not do work unless it's absolutely a necessity.
I have set a goal so that when I am done with seeing clients, before I leave my office to go out into the rest of the house to engage with my family, that I'm finishing my notes so that I'm not having to like come back to those after bedtime or a couple days later. , and I know many of you can relate to that.
It can be hard when you hear the kids come home and you're, you know, been sitting talking to clients all day and you're like, I just wanna go see my family. But I'm trying to remind myself that if I put this off now, that I'm gonna have to still come back to it at some point, and it's gonna eat into another chunk of time later on.
So, Just really working on setting those goals to be more cognizant of when I'm in family mode and when I'm in work mode and trying to not let those two bleed over. The third biggest struggle I have had with building and growing my practice as a mom and a therapist is pivoting based on my kids' needs, and I have a feeling that many, many, many of you, Experience this as well.
It has been so hard, and as I've talked with many of you, I think you guys can relate because especially the last couple years we've had to do a ton of pivoting with health issues with the global pandemic. With the way schools and daycares have been structured, it's been a lot of pivoting. This one's been really frustrating for me at times.
I'm not going to pretend like, oh, this has been easy. It's been really hard, especially if I've been at a place where I'm like, okay, I'm building momentum in my business. I'm, you know, I've got my practice full, or I'm so close to this project that I'm working on being done. and then I get a call from the school and it's like, oh, hey, your kid has the fever and yeah, they can't come back tomorrow.
They have to come back after they've been fever free for 24 hours. So it's not just like, okay, you're coming home today. Now I'm having to look at what is happening the rest of this week. Or you know, one kid gets sick and the other, okay, great, they're able to still go to school or go to daycare and right when like that, Light at the end of the tunnel is shining through and that kid's gonna be able to go back to school.
The other one gets it, and it's just like this extended leave that is happening because the viruses just keep going around in your household. I, a challenge that I have had to face, with our family is I have a kid with severe food allergies. He has a lot of sensory issues and a lot of anxiety, and so he has a lot of different appointments that he has to go to.
Sometimes one a week, sometimes four. So that has been a challenge too, that when an appointment comes up, okay, this is like an extra one that wasn't just built into my schedule. How do I fit that in? That is one of those seasons that I've had to kind of pivot and. It is part of the reason why I only see clients three days a week because I need room in my schedule that if we're having to see a doctor, that I have options.
you know, some doctors are like, well, we only see patients on these days. And I'm like, well, that's not the day that I have off, so how am I supposed to make that work? So having two days that I don't see clients just gives me a little bit more room for some flexibility in. , there are times when it's not gonna just neatly fit into those days.
And so those are conversations that my husband and I have to have about how do we make this work? At times when I've had to make those shifts canceling sessions, whether it's because, hey, my kid is now home sick, or I have this sudden appointment that cannot be moved to any other time, I'm gonna have to cancel or reschedule you.
In the past, especially when I was growing my practice, I think I was way more accommodating to trying to get that client fit in somewhere, because I, if I'm honest, like I think there was a fear of like, oh, I don't wanna be a burden to them that I'm moving and shifting this time. . And so I would offer these really odd times that didn't really work for me, right?
I would offer that after bedtime time or I'd offer that weekend time and some clients would take me up on it because I was offering it, and now I'm not doing that. I'm much firmer on what my availability is, and I don't really apologize for it. And that's been a lot of work for me on my side. The reality is clients are totally understanding.
They really are. And if you have a client that's not. We can talk about that in another episode. Life happens. We are humans. We are not this perfect person that is going to never have a disruption in our life. I have to be mindful for myself that my family, my kids, they come as top priority for me. Yes, it is so frustrating when I have to pivot and make shifts and cancel and reschedule things.
I also have to be mindful of that time where I may be trying to move this client into this other slot may not actually be beneficial for me. If I am running on fumes, if I am eating up time, that is just supposed to be for family and I'm not gonna get that back somewhere else. So it's. A thing that you can say, I can never move clients to odd times, but to just be mindful of in what ways am I compromising my needs just to accommodate for them.
With my husband and I, we've definitely had to have some challenging conversations about what does it look like when we have these things come up, and there has to be this constant pivoting or constant adding of things to the family's schedule, like doctor's appointments. His job is one that does not have a ton of flexibility in the military.
If you are a military, Spouse and you are listening to this, you get exactly what I'm saying. There's not a lot of movement. We've been fortunate with our current duty station that there have been times when he's had the ability to work from home, but that was not an option for us before. And it's not an option that works all the time for him.
There have been moments where I've had to ask him, Hey, I really need you to take this day off or talk to your boss about leaving early. The school called and this kid has a fever, and so I'll go pick them up. But like, how do we make tomorrow work? We've had to shift a bit, find. That we work around doing things where maybe I am canceling my morning appointments and I will hang out with the sick kiddo until they go down for their nap after lunchtime, or he gets home at lunchtime and then we switch off and I go into work mode.
Being able to kind of find ways that we can both pivot and look at our schedules of how this can work. If you're a military spouse listening to this, I really want you to hear this because one of the challenges of military life that we face is that the family is oftentimes forgotten. And I know this is so cliche to say, but it's so true that, you know, they say like, when the service member serves, like we all serve, the family serves.
And it's true, the, the military doesn't. Remember that if the service member is not there, that there's another partner at home, shouldering the majority of stuff, doing it all. A lot of times as spouses of those who are in the military, we just accept that like, well, there's no room for them to, you know, there's no way that they're gonna be able to do X, Y, Z.
They have to do whatever the command. And I wanna just push back against that a little bit of saying, It is always okay to ask . If our military theaters don't understand the impact that that has on the family, then we can't have changes. If it's a matter of my kid is sick and my partner works, and. They also need to be able to not have their days just eaten up all the time by the kids' need.
And so I need to be able to leave work early, or I'm gonna have to be home tomorrow because my, my spouse has to work. There needs to be some conversations about that. So, I just wanna kind of put that out there. You know, and this isn't just unique to military families, like I know a lot of other families who are civilians.
It's a matter of, well, my job, maybe it's my job is a little more important. Sometimes there can be undertones of that. And I think having a conversation with your partner about the honesty of. I understand that your job is important, but my job is important too, and I need to have an active partner in this.
I can't just be the one shouldering all the changes, shouldering all the responsibilities when it comes to pivoting with the kids. So these, I mean, these are hard conversations to have, especially if the system has just been moving as it is for a long. . I do just wanna encourage you to kind of think about that is what you and your partner doing.
Is it working? And if it's not, what do you need? How can it be shouldered a little bit more evenly or equally between the two of you when it comes to having to make these pivots and changes to family life when it comes to, to the kids? Again, for me and my husband, it's really required us to have these conversations.
GE knows how important my practice is, and he's super supportive of that. I feel very fortunate with that. There are times I've had to remind him of, Hey, hey, look, I've spent X number of hours this week at an appointment. I really need you to do this, this other one. It's all about dialogue. It's all about communication.
Really examine like, how is this working for you? Are there things that we as a family can do a little bit differently so that you can either have that time to build the practice or to grow or be in your practice, in your business? Like I said before, the reality for each of us is there are different seasons.
Each person is going to experience this differently. For me, newborn phase, I could not have done what I did to build my practice. There's no way The, what I was doing during my son's nap times, that is a season of life that I could not have done it. As a military family, when we move or we PCs, those are times where I've had to pull way back in certain aspects of my practice, including seeing clients I've had to pull back or not accept new intakes, not be as active in some of the administrative pieces. When I had my babies, I took maternity leave, and that was a big pause in my practice. Those were seasons of life that I had to look at my business and do it differently. The thing to remember is that that is just a season.
There will come those times where you need to pause, where you're gonna have to pivot. And yeah, it can be really frustrating, but it doesn't have to mean that it's for forever. There isn't one way to just build or grow your practice. You are definitely not alone in these struggles. So many of us face these and so many of us are in need of caring from others that, Hey, I get it.
I understand what you mean. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about these three challenges that I have faced. Do these resonate with you? Have you found these things to be challenging? Is there a challenge that has been even bigger than these for you? With being a mom in private practice? Leave me a message.
You can do so over on Instagram. You can do so in our Facebook group. You can leave a review and put a comment in there. Let me know what you think and I'd love to hear your feedback on this, and I'll see you back here next. Thank you so much for listening to the Raise to Empower podcast. Check the show notes for all links and resources mentioned in the show.
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