Tips for Working from Home with Children
I am no stranger to working from home with children. In fact, I’ve been working outside of an office setting since going full-time with my business back in 2015. During that period, I also had my children at home at least part of the time. It was only last fall that my youngest finally went to Elementary School and I got something like 6 hours to myself during the day (that all ended in March when Coronavirus hit this area and everything shut down, of course).
So how does working from home actually work when you have two slightly wild boys running around the house?
We don’t have a separate office as we bought our house to be big enough for our family and no bigger. My husband has taken over my official working desk since it’s the only room downstairs that has doors that can be closed. This left me and my laptop to the mercy of my children and their inability to be quiet and calm for longer than 5 minutes.
And if you have young elementary-aged kids (or younger!), you know what I mean.
While not being able to work face to face as much as I have in the past, I’ve still been able to maintain a solid work output despite all of craziness. Am I getting as much done as I did before, when the kids were in school? Definitely not. But am I able to work efficiently and quickly in order to keep my business going while essentially being a full-time parent? Yes!
In this post, I’ll go over some strategies and tips I use to get things accomplished during the day, how I structure my schedule, and how everyone can coexist in a household with two working parents and kids who are at home or doing remote learning. We currently live in a 3-bedroom home that’s less than 2,000 square feet. The sound carries, and there’s no place to get away, so if you’re working within a small place yourself, you will probably be able to relate!
Have a dedicated spot for everyone, and then be flexible
You’re already ahead of the game if you have a home office to work out of. There’s no such luck in our home, so the only room with doors that will close (with some hope of dampening sound) went to my husband, who set up his external monitor, web cam, keyboard, and mouse in my photography printing area. His “office” is also our family room, so during the day, the kids are definitely not allowed to play their video games in there (this speaks to the flexibility part).
As for me, I have a laptop, so I can essentially work from anywhere.
We have a desk set up in every bedroom, which is essential for when the kids have to do their own Zoom meetings during the day, but was definitely not the intention even a year ago. I will often work from the living room, sitting in one of our wingback chairs. Or I will hide in one of the kid’s rooms as they play video games and jump on my bed (since the master bedroom is the only room upstairs with a TV screen). Or I will take a Zoom call from my older son’s room, because his room is the most useful for that sort of thing. My husband and I cannot be on the same floor of the house and do calls at the same time, because you can definitely hear everything. So he closes up his “office” doors and I hide in a room upstairs, and that’s how we make it work.
Working from home tip: Make sure everyone has their own space to do their work, but also be flexible about where they actually end up during the day. One day might mean working at a desk, and the next day they can be working from their bed - either one is OK!
Determine parental roles
Who’s going to watch the kids most of the day? Who will make lunch? Who will feed them breakfast? And what about dinner, grocery shopping, cleaning up, and bath-time?
If you think you know who’s doing what, consider how different things are now than they were just a few months ago. With kids going back to school, you now need a dedicated parent for driving them and picking them up (my kids never did well on the bus to begin with), as well as, a parent who will set them up with their video meetings and the remote assignments they’re responsible for.
The new school year and ‘everyone working from home now’ changes everything. And everything needs to be re-evaluated as a result.
This means a parent might take on a role that they weren’t able to do before, or step in to help where no help was needed previously. In short, tasks have to be divided anew and responsibilities need to be allocated with nothing being taken for granted.
Working from home tip: Talk with your parenting partner to make sure you’re on the same page as to who is doing what and divide roles in a way that works for both of you. If you need to work at a certain time, make sure your spouse can take over as needed.
Schedule EVERYTHING
If you’re not already scheduling every task that needs to get done into your calendar, now is a great time to start. The best system I know is to sit down on Monday morning (or Sunday night) and write down everything that needs to get done that week. Then use a paper or digital planner (calendar on the Mac works perfectly for this) to put in every single to-do item into your week, filling up your schedule with as long as you think each task will take. Put in anything that’s a non-negotiable first: things like drop offs and pick ups, classes, meetings, and personal time (yes, time that you’re not working, this is important!).
Scheduling all your tasks means you always know what you should be doing and there’s a much higher chance that things will actually get done. This works better than endless to-do lists or simply hoping that you’ll get things accomplished. And yes, emergencies will pop up and schedules will change at the last minute, simply move things around and accommodate the changes (this is where you can also sacrifice some of your personal time in order to finish up your work).
Having a solid schedule also goes hand in hand with setting goals (both personal and business) and extracting your tasks from the bigger objectives you want to accomplish.
Working from home tip: Employ shared digital calendars to make sure you and your partner know what’s coming up for the week. My husband knows when I’m out doing a photo session because it pops up on his calendar automatically.
Allocate alone-time for yourself
As I alluded to earlier, scheduling time for yourself is kind of important. It’s even more important when everyone is home 24/7 and there’s no escape from the noise, demands, and general mess that comes along with it. If you have a hobby, like to exercise, or simply need time to read a good book once in a while - schedule it in! This will probably mean getting up earlier than before since that might be the only time that the house is actually quiet nowadays.. or it might mean enforcing a ‘no electronics after 7pm’ curfew in your home (I do both). The fact of the matter is, we all need time to recharge. Especially if you’re an introvert like me. The irony of the whole stuck-at-home thing is that I've been surrounded by more noise and people than ever before, and it definitely takes a toll on my mental wellbeing!
Working from home tip: Wake up before everyone else and spend some quiet time doing what you love: yoga, meditation, reading a book, having your coffee in peace, etc.
Let the Kids watch TV and play video games
We have all heard about how bad TV is for children, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I personally feel that watching TV or playing video games isn’t going to completely destroy my children’s brains. They are active watchers, tend to do a lot of jumping when they’re watching or playing (which actually kind of intense exercise!), and seem to pick up vocabulary and words simply from watching shows. I remember when I used TV as a 10 year-old to learn American culture, not to mention, English as a language. So much of what we learn from a social standpoint is shown in TV shows. Especially when kids can’t really go out and interact with their peers, at least they can learn about the world through television.
That being said, we also don’t have TV in a standard sense. There are no commercials. We use iPads with Netflix or Amazon Prime and do monitor what the kids are watching to make sure it’s age appropriate.
The key is, when kids are watching a show or playing video games, they are entertained enough to be quit (hopefully) so that you can get some work done. I know, it’s not ideal, but we also don’t feel comfortable bringing in a babysitter right now, so we do what we have to do! We balance out the TV watching time with outdoor walks, kayaking, and reading in the evening, which seems to be working out pretty well.
Working from home tip: Turn on subtitles for when your kids are watching shows (especially if they’re at an age when they can read) so that your kids can learn some new words while they watch. My 6-year old is very proud of himself whenever he can spell a word in the search bar on his own.. it’s the little things.
Banish mommy guilt
This is no time to feel guilty about the fact that you need to get work done while taking care of your children. As long as everyone is alive, you have done your job. Obviously, try not to create deep psychological trauma for your children if you can help it, but we simply don’t have the luxury of sweating the small stuff anymore. It truly doesn’t matter.
If kids want pizza for both lunch and dinner today, so be it. If they get to watch their favorite Pokemon episodes for 3 hours straight, that’s totally fine too. If you end up yelling at them because you’re simply too stressed to take it anymore, take a few minutes to yourself (a time out, if you will) so that you can come back with a calmer approach. Nobody remembers all the times that their Mom yelled at them when they were younger. And we are all probably way better (and more understanding!) parents than our own parents were to us, and we turned out just fine.. so our kids will too.
Feeling guilty that you’re not 100% adhering to whatever the current society’s notion is of a “good parent” isn’t going to help anyone get through this. You have my permission to be selfish, do things that you want to do, and tell your children to get their own apple juice for once.
Working from home tip: Notice how much time you’re spending being upset that things things go the way you wanted them to, wanting people to act differently, and ruminating. These are all time-sucks you don’t need right now. Choose to realize that you’re doing the best you can and stop feeling guilty about all the things you simply can’t accomplish right now.
We are all doing our best right now. This is such a great learning opportunity for us as parents and for our children to discover what’s really important in our lives - what makes us happy and fulfilled - which usually isn’t working at a desk all day. It’s all about balancing the scales to finally make family as much of a priority as work is for most people, and I think that’s a good thing!
