What job is right for me now if I want to be a stay-at-home mom later?

I am a twenty-five-year-old ISFJ working as an administrative assistant in an insurance agency. I help the VP of Risk Management with everything and the HR Generalist with various projects. I’ve been here for a year and a half (a little longer than that), and it has been a great first job, but I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with the attitudes of management (the egos and greed are unbelievable) and am looking for a change.

I came across your blog recently, and since you seem responsive, I thought I would take a chance and ask for your input. I see very little on your blog about the right career for an ISFJ, other than being a stay-at-home mom. I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, but I have yet to find a husband, so in the meantime I need to support myself. I have always done well in administrative assistant roles, but have a hard time with motivation if I don’t appreciate the goals of my superiors. How can I find a job that fits me?

Thanks for any help or encouragement you can provide!

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How can I tell someone they have Aspergers?

I am a police supervisor and I have an officer that I truly believe has Asperger’s. I also have a nephew that my wife and I strongly believe has Asperger’s. The problem is: neither my officer nor our brother/sister-in-law will admit nor knows that Asperger’s is the likely issue in their lives.

With my officer, who is young and new to the job, at first his behavior was just annoying. I want so badly to yank him up and ask him “What are you doing?”, but reflecting on it for a second leads me to see that he’s doing the RIGHT things, it’s just the way he goes about them.

Example: Every call that goes out, he has to respond to. Even with the presence of the beat officer, Matt will take over and apply his own problem solving to resolve the issue. On the one hand, many people wouldn’t mind at all if someone else stepped in and took over their problems, but it seems as if he thinks he’s needed everywhere to solve the problems that we all have to deal with, but his is the only “right” way and if he doesn’t take care of it, it won’t get taken care of the right way.

I, as the supervisor, usually direct the troops to take certain actions at a scene and I will look into specific information or details to determine further actions that we as a squad or the department as a whole will take to resolve the situation. If I radio that I’m going to go talk to a certain person or look into a certain thing, Matt has to beat me there and do his own looking into or talk to the person I need to talk to.

Is it WRONG? No. Is it inappropriate? Kind of. Is it NOT what I wanted to happen? Yes. Do I have specific reasons for wanting Matt to maintain or continue on the path that I’ve set him on (stay here, watch that) while I go and investigate further? Yes. I have specific questions and information for the people I intend to talk to that Matt hasn’t considered and doesn’t have the experience or knowledge to know to ask or know what to do with the info when he gets it.

I can’t outright say, “Matt, you have a personality/emotional disorder”, and I can’t deal with him in his present state, and I most certainly can’t deal with him the way I WANT to deal with him. His typical response to criticism is to shut down, tell others that “Sarge doesn’t want me to (do whatever I criticized him for)”, and then he manufactures an emergency to have to leave without dealing with the problem.

I really like your examples and your perspective and I really need some advice on effectively dealing with this instead of chopping his head off (figuratively) and rendering an officer with good intentions and ability ineffective.

Can you help?

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I can’t manage my job and homeschooling

I have a 5 year old and a 3 1/2 month old baby and this is our first year homeschooling and I’m having a horrible time managing it.

A bit more about our family:
Both my husband and I work. My husband has to travel away from home 1-2 nights per week and sometimes more. But his job does allow him to often schedule around my commitments. I am an instructor at a community college and I have classes twice a week for half the day plus 2-3 random hour long meetings per month. The rest of my classes are online, so I can do the work when it suits my schedule. I have a month off in December/January and all summer off. Hubby watches the kids one of the days I go to work and the other day we hire a babysitter.

With the new baby and homeschooling, I am having a hard time balancing my work and the kids and I’m worried that I’m not doing enough for my kids, especially my oldest.

I’m torn because a part of me wants to quit my job, but I know that would be extremely unwise. I make a decent amount of money for the number of hours that I work, I have fantastic medical and retirement benefits and my “commute” is 5 minutes. Plus, this is my last year of tenure and assuming I make it through, it will be almost impossible for me to get fired. I also make more money than Hubby because of my education and years of experience. And I do like my job. It is interesting and engaging. If I quit, it would be almost impossible to get this job back. Ever.

But, even if I quit my job to be here for my kids, how do I choose which homeschool activities to do? All of the activities are so fun, I suspect that I would fill all of the “extra” time I would have I would just fill up with more activities for the kids and I would still feel like I was spread too thin. And we wouldn’t be able to do all of the things that we do now without my income. I worry that I would regret quitting my job.

Hubby and I have considered having him quit his job (which I would love because I would have someone home to help me get things done and to spend more time together), but I think so much of his identity and self-worth comes from his job, that he would be miserable being a stay-at-home dad. So this option is off the table.

So, what are your thoughts? I am an INFJ, if that influences your advice.

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