Working From Home With Kids, How Do We Do It?
As one of the major consequences of the COVID-19 situation we are all facing, working from home has become the new normal for many of us. For us at D&I, we have been working from home for more than a year already. Now, we are still working at home, but with our kids being 24/7 there with us. Yes, balancing work, home duties, and… parent duties. How do we deal with it you ask? Well, let us tell you about our experiences up until now.
First, we have established that it's different for our colleague with a 2-year-old, our colleague with a 6-year-old, and another colleague with a 10-year-old. Not to mention, the need of each family is also different, based on whether it’s a single parent or co-parents. But in general terms, here are some tips we found to be applicable to all of us.
1. CREATE A SCHEDULE TOGETHER WITH THE KIDS
The first tip is to create a schedule together with the kids. For the family with a 10 y/o daughter, our colleague has a family meeting every evening to plan the next day and together they discuss what everyone is doing and also agree on the times they will be together. For younger kids, it still is relevant to keep them informed and set expectations for each other. Make sure that the kids feel that they have a say and their needs are being catered to.
2. EXPERIMENT WITH WORKING IN THE EARLY MORNINGS OR EVENINGS
Experiment with working in the early mornings or evenings. For all of us, working when the kids are sleeping has proven to be a great solution, specifically for those tasks that require complete focus. What we have seen is that completing those difficult tasks early in the morning or later in the evening, provides the feeling of accomplishment early in the morning and still no guilty feeling of sacrificing the time spent with our kids.
3.CREATE A DEDICATED WORKSPACE
Set up a workspace at home. It’s essential to assign a place in your home as your workspace. Inform everyone in the family, set rules, and agree on what it means to have a workspace. For example, being silent when someone has a headphone on, or not playing or eating at or around the workspace. This also helps us maintain the separation between work and home.
4. TAKE REGULAR BREAKS
Being at home with the kids provides the chance to bond further and keep on building on the amazing family relationship. In order to do so, we need to take regular breaks. Schedule your time in specific focus blocks of 1-2 hours. Take a break afterward and get away from your workspace. Agree at what time these breaks will be in order to have breaks together with your kids.
5. MAKE IT FUN
Enjoy these times together with the kids. Even though we may be in a difficult time due to the forced changes we are all dealing with, there is also a positive side. The positive is that we have the chance to spend quality time with our loved ones, specifically our kids. Try giving them the time they are seeking to spend with you and enjoy these moments with them. One way of doing this while still being productive with your work is to make it fun for the kids. Gamify working for them. Create games where we will see who can finish their work first (prepare homework for them if they are not getting from school), or play office with the kids; you have meetings with them and they are the employees working for you.
I know, I know. You are probably wondering if our kids are robots, cause it can’t be that easy right?
You are right! It isn’t easy at all. We are still facing some struggles. For example, creating or preparing enough homework for the kids to do independently so that we can focus on work. Or feeling guilty whenever our kid wants to show us something but we are in a video conference. This all can be very challenging at times but finding the right balance can help greatly in some ways.
How about you? How do you balance it all? And what struggles are you still facing? Share these with us and let’s together figure it out.
