Working from home. With kids. Wheeeeeeeee……..

My company has a completely distributed workforce, but we do not allow this when you are the primary care giver while working from home. However, for key employees, sometimes we all compromise during childcare emergencies. And after 20 years in the technology business, often as a key employee myself, while raising 4 children… trust me when I say compromise is KEY.

And right now, many of us have found ourselves in a situation where your employer AND your family needs you. As I’ve been watching my friends and colleagues stress, I wanted to share some tips and tricks that I’ve learned throughout the years as our family is transitioning into this time again.

There are really two challenges as a key employee. First, finding productive time to accomplish your workload. Second, keeping professional communication lines open and being available for customers and colleagues.

Tip #1: Early to Rise

If you are not an early riser… I suggest learning to become one. Quickly. The MOST productive hours of my stay at home life are 5 am to 9 am.  I was not always a morning person, and I still wouldn’t call myself that. However, when I REALLY need to accomplish serious work, the hours of 5 am to 9 am are my GO TO times. Yes, my children wake before 9 am. I have early rising children. Some of them rise as early as 6 am. BUT… they rarely need anything more than  a bowl of cheerios at that time. Even when I had infants, I would stop around 7 am for feedings, but often they fell right back to sleep. As they grew, they were more than happy to play in their pajamas, eat their cheerios and enjoy a morning cartoon until nine. I would get HALF my day knocked out before everyone was ready to go. If you cannot do early to rise, let me also suggest 8 PM to midnight. You can still do family hours and bed times, and then get a half day in after that. 

Tip #2: Meeting Blocks

If there are certain hours where you know your kids are MOST in need of your assistance, block these off your calendar right away. As a general rule, 1 PM to 3 PM is the BEST time to schedule meetings. THIS is nap time for most kids UNDER the age of reading, and a good time for kids at reading age and above to practice reading. It’s also a good slot for educational programming on TV. (Yes, we DO use TV to get through working from home. You cannot shame me… you can only try.)

Tip #3: Practice Waiting

This is going to seem silly, but honestly and truthfully, it works. Practice the signal to wait. Teaching children to be patient and wait for you to finish what you are working on, or the telephone call you are in is a lost art. So practice it before you need it. Pick up a phone, tell your child to practice entering the room. Give them whatever signal you intend to use that you are unable to help, then practice letting them walk away. Also, talk about interruptions for safety versus arguments they should resolve on their own. Over the course of a week, they will get better as you give them the TOOLS to resolve their own arguments between them. (And chores or extra quiet time when they don’t……. free tip there.)

Tip #4: The 5 Minute Rule

Your children NEED you. Not the half-interested, half-listening you. Not the one working knee deep in their computer. Tip #4 goes with Tip #3. Tip #3 only works when kids KNOW they will get their 5 minutes. Take a break at every hour for 5 minutes. You would do it at the office anyway to chat with a co-worker. Take the break and give 5 minutes of COMPLETE and TOTAL attention to your child. Listen to their story, look at the picture they drew, admire the play they created, look at the fort they built. FIVE minutes of time can save you both. It takes FIVE minutes to show them how much they mean and how important they are to you. This is the PRIMARY reason for most interruptions. If your kids are younger, or you are new at this, you may have to stop every 30 minutes for a while. But once your kids get used to the idea that you are available to them ‘frequently’, they can often wait for it.

Tip #5: Plan the Day…. ish

This is critical. Take a longer lunch when working from home and plan a project to do with your kids. This longer period of time spent together will enable you to more easily transition into nap time, reading time or what I used to call ‘Quiet Hours’ from 1 to 3 PM in our house. Quiet hours were times spent in rooms/spaces alone. Even when they were younger we had these hours. We had to TRAIN for quiet hours, but we got there in a week or two. They can sleep, do a board game, read a book, play a video game, but whatever happened, each child had a quiet place that was JUST their own to do that. (Sibling arguments are more difficult when they are apart, and they are more agreeable when they come back together afterwards.) In your first week or two at home, be VERY firm on quiet time. Go ahead and step away from your call to enforce it. But enforce it.

Tips for Infants/Nursing

Two hours on, Two hours off. Worked around a nursing schedule. Mine stayed by my desk and usually napped in the two hours off or enjoyed just watching me type or listening to music.

Tips for 1 to 2 Years Old

Same schedule as above, but this time, usually I would need to fill one hour from 9 to 10 with something to do. Typically, morning nap was from 10 to 11, and afternoon nap was 1 to 3 pm. So, I would let them watch TV from 9 to 10. I have also worked a modified schedule for this age group of…

• 5 to 9
• Request all meetings from 1 – 3
• 8 to midnight

For the modified schedule, I would answer emails from my phone or device, but would avoid doing any productive work until my spouse was home.

Tips for 3 to Before Reading

This is around the time they can begin to start entertaining themselves and morning naps are not really an option. My kids had a ‘work desk’ next to me with crayons and play dough and other kinds of activities. Paint with Water books are great. Additionally, we allowed TV during the 9 to 11 hours. We also had outdoors available to us most of the time and my desk was positioned near a window. Once or twice a week, I would work from the playground or park. (You could try a drive-way with sidewalk chalk and bubbles.) A mobile hot spot is all you really need. I suggest a lawn chair and a lap desk along with a good set of headphone speakers that block wind. Additionally, I suggest practicing your hand signals to grab attention and to signal time outs.

Tips for Reading age and above

For this age, it really becomes about independence and teaching children good techniques for getting along. The 2-Hour schedule can work above, but as my kids have gotten older, I have found that I can work pretty normal hours with them at home.  Particularly as the older ones have grown into excellent babysitters.

Common Issues for Employers…

Core Hours. If half the company works from 5 to 9 am and 8 to midnight, who is going to answer the customer call at 10:30 am when systems are down. Our company keeps core hours of 9 AM to 3 PM for all salaried employees. These hours are mandatory availability for phone calls, chat and/or email. Even if you are playing play-dough… pick up the phone.

Not all jobs can be done from home WITHOUT a primary caregiver at home while you work. Customer service and highly-focused engineering work for example. Mitigation plans need to be made for the inevitable interruptions. If your spouse or significant other is at home with you, stagger your meetings so one of you can head off any interruptions. Share your calendar with your spouse and book around each other. 

Use Meeting Etiquette. MUTE YOUR PHONE. ALWAYS. UNLESS YOU ARE SPEAKING. Children are a part of this world and interrupt things sometimes. If dogs can do it, I think we should all be okay with the occasional child. We are all going to have to be especially patient and forgiving during this time. They might interrupt a phone call or two… they MIGHT interrupt one particularly intense meeting to inform you that they ‘wiped their bottom’ for the first time. (Thank you.)

Support each other….

One of the most difficult things for me to overcome as a working parent was the ‘guilt’ of ‘leaving’ my child to go work. Children are supposed to be the ‘most important’ thing in our lives.  Queue ‘Cats in the Cradle’. However, one of the best pieces of parenting advice I received was that while it is important for my kids to know how much I love them, it is also important for them to know they are not the center of all things. Practicing the skill of waiting patiently for their needs to be met is critical to raising a responsible citizen. Understanding that their desire for corn flakes is indeed NOT as important as a client whose systems are down and in distress is a much needed skill set. I think we can all agree in THESE trying times that we would like PLENTY of more patient citizens who do not believe the world revolves around their needs. Don’t fear boundaries with your children and your work. They are training grounds for good citizenship.

Photo Credit: ID 139324154 © Jim Ekstrand | Dreamstime.com