How to work from home with kids around

Stay sane and make the most of a less-than-ideal situation

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how to work from home with
kids around. I've worked out of home offices for years,
but my cardinal rule has always been that work is work,
and so just as if I were in an office,

(00:25):
I need childcare for kids who are too young to
watch themselves. I make sure to tell people who would
like to try working from home that it's actually not
a great way to save money on childcare. I mean, yes,
you'll need fewer hours if you don't have a commute,
but you'll need another caregiver or family member to watch
your children, or you'll need to enroll them in daycare
or mostly use school hours. Otherwise you'll feel pulled in

(00:46):
multiple directions and constantly distracted. With many offices closing these
days due to concerns about the coronavirus, lots of people
are trying working from home. The problem with this is
that many schools and daycares are also closed, and so
these experiments in remote work are going to be far
from ideal. That said, it's also just life and we
need to deal with it. My kids are home from

(01:08):
school for the next few weeks, and there are a
few ways I've found and that maybe you can find too,
to preserve time to focus and spend time with your
kids and keep all of you from going insane. If
you've got young kids and you've got a partner who's
in the same boat, your best bet is to swap hours.
One of you gets up and works from six am
to noon, the other works from noon to six pm.

(01:30):
Given how distracting offices can be, my bet is that
if you truly focus during your six hour shift, you
will basically get a full day of work. In of course,
that assumes that your work can be set for certain windows.
If you can't control when video conferences get set, you
might compare schedules with your partner and see who is
scheduled for meetings at particular times. You can trade off

(01:52):
for the times that you aren't, And if both of
you have called simultaneously, well that's the time to bring
out the iPad or Xbox or pop finding Nemo into
the DVD player. There's absolutely nothing wrong with screen time,
particularly in these circumstances, but the problem is that if
the kids are on it all day, it can lose
its magic. If you use it strategically during the times

(02:12):
when no adult is available to interact with them, they'll
find it novel enough not to bother you. This is
harder if one of you is still working on site,
or particularly if one of you is a healthcare worker
or government official who's working longer hours these days. If
you are on your own with the kids and are
trying to work from home, one option is to get
up quite early, like five am, and try to get

(02:34):
two hours of solid work done before they get up.
Then spend the morning doing lots of active play with them.
With any luck, they'll be tired and somewhat tired of
you by lunch. Then you can put the little ones
down for naptime and give older children quiet time during
which they can read or watch screens. You can work
from one to three PM, or hopefully to three thirty

(02:55):
or even four, depending on your napper. Let's hope for
good naps these days. Then you can put in another
hour or so after the kids go to bed. And
if you've got a toddler and your boss insists on
a video call at ten am when you have no coverage,
well there's not much to be done about that. You
can try special toys that only come out during calls

(03:16):
so they seem novel enough to keep them entertained, but
it might be better to have everyone reach an agreement
that we are all just doing the best we can.
If you are a manager, being understanding about this situation
is going to go a long way. You will buy
incredible loyalty from your people by telling your employees that
it's cute when the toddler keeps shoving a Plato creation

(03:37):
in the parents face while she's on a video call.
It isn't sustainable long term, not by any means, but
this will eventually end and the productivity lessons we all
learn will stay with us, which is one silver lining,
and we really need silver linings these days. If you're
working from home with kids around, I'd love to hear
how you're coping. You can let me know at Before

(03:58):
Breakfast podcast at I heart media dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook,

(04:21):
and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod. That's B the number four,
then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media
dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all
the letters. Thanks so much, I look forward to staying
in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of I heart Radio.

(04:49):
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