Whoever is working from home and having to deal with the kids at the same time please raise your hands up in the air, that is, if you still have the energy to raise them.
I think every single parent out there trying to make it work at work with kids at home, be it with homeschooling or not, younger or olders, hats off. What a time! You go through a 360 round of emotions on a single day from: “I can nail this” to “I have no idea what I’m doing, is 10a.m too early to start drinking?”. The truth is we live in blurred lines.
Pre-covid, most of us would commute to the office and have a clear physical separation between home and work, between which role in your life you were taking. In the office it was the professional you, then you had your commute back home where you could “enjoy” some me time, which for a lot of parents was the only me time they had, and then switching roles to the parent until eventually you would crash in bed after a long day. That physical separation helped us to switch between roles and help the brain cope with it. Yes, some of us would end up once in a while having to work at home, and yes if the kids would get sick or the school closed we would have to work from home with them around.
Right now however it feels like a constant battle where you don’t have a clue if your wining or losing it. I’m a firm believer multitasking is a lie, but now it’s a necessity. In the ideal world there would be 2 parents at home where 1 would dedicate a few slots in the working diary to support the kids and compensate at a later stage but it doesn’t work like that. You might be in the middle of a really important meeting when your precious little one remembers you are a snack provider, or that the tablet stopped working and it’s really important for it to be fixed right now. I’ve lost the count on how many times I ended blurbing in a middle because I lost my full train of thought.
But here’s some good news: every parent out there working from home is in the same boat! We all feel guilty we are not doing enough in both the homeschooling or work or both at the same time. We are trying out best in these unprecedented times. We are not super human, we are not an octopus either. Our brains are not geared to a gazillion things and more (while flipping pancakes at the same time).
So here’s my thoughts on this parenting jungle:
- Let’s be grateful first and foremost we are juggling work and parenting as it means we still have a job and we can work from home (I have found than in the middle of this madness practicising daily gratitute and recognizing all the good things I have helped me to keep sane);
- Our kids do not see our failures the same way we do (well unless they are teenagers, then they see failure in everything we do), they see the love we have for them and they feel happy for having us home next to them. I know they don’t say thank you when we are getting the 100th snack in the morning, but they feel a lot of happiness;
- We are spending more time with them, haven’t so many of us done the yearly resolution of spending quality time with the kids prior to all of this? I had. I know most of the time it feels too much, but I know she’s happy to see so much of me. Also she’s seeing how hard both mummy & daddy work (or try to make it work). That’s important too.
- Whenever your day allows try to divide your day in blocks:
- Consider if you can wake up before the kids to get some work done before they wake up (this works for me because my daughter sleeps until 07h40 – 08h00, would never work if she was waking up at 06a.m!)
- I find straight after breakfast my daughter is more focused (either playing or in the case of homeschooling), so you can use this slot for your focus time. In my case I happen to always have meetings in this slot, so works for me.
- Block a mid morning slot where you can spend a few minutes with the kids, either help them with school work or even just sit next to them and paint, or do some maths together or even play some lego. We all need a break right?
- Plan your snacks. Yes I mean it. Plan what you are comfortable with them eating and leave them in places where they can easily reach it (e.g. fresh fruits, cereal bars, bread). My daughter is even able to do her breakfast by herself as I ensure I have most of the stuff within her reach (she will use the chair to be able to remove the bread from the toaster and she can open the fridge to get her milk). On the other hand, hide all the stuff they are not meant to eat without supervision (chocolate, cookies, you name it). I have to ask my husband to hide it really high so there’s no chance she can reach anything (after we found her eat a whole package of cookies in one go that I had hidden and still she manage to find). This means they don’t need to disturb you all the time for snacking. Also they love being independent.
- Reserve a slot in your calendar for lunch together at the table. I do meal planning on the weekend and mostly dinner meals will include leftover for lunch next day so I don’t need to stress over making food and finding a slot for lunch. It’s just warm up and sit together at the table.
- If you have a critical meeting and your other half can support you and ensure the kids are monitored, great. If you have a part of the house / flat you can hide, then hide. You could also try to talk to the kids and tell them not to disturb you for whatever it takes. Bribary is totally allowed here. As said, we are not super heroes. Whatever works!
- If you have something critical to finish but didn’t manage to finish during the day then try to finish after kids go to bed. I have to ask my husband if this happens given that my daughter is really hard to put in bed and she will not fall asleep before 20h20 or 21h no matter how early I start the routines.
- You know all the rules about how much tablet and tv was allowed? Forget it! Bin them if you need to. As I said, sanity is more important than anything else.
- Give them a role in the household, e.g. I’ve asked my daughter to ensure the cat has food in his bowl also to tell daddy if he popped so he can clean it (I said give a role, not necessarily a fair one!). They need to understand they need to help based on what they can do for their age. The house doesn’t get sorted by magic. I ask my daughter to put the table while I warm up the food or clean the dishes and she quite enjoys it as a 4 year old (well, most of the time).
- Celebrate the weekends by planning something special (if you’re running our of ideas use the existing holidays, especial days, I never celebrated valentines day until this year for example). Here’s a few things we’ve done recently: Movie night with popcorn, playstation game night, pijama party with pillow fight, board game night, making clay hearts and then paiting them another weekend. I’m sure some of you out there have even better ideas than mine.
- Give yourself a big hug, because this is hard! Remember there is no point in a burn out: Nobody will thank you for it. You can’t have it all perfect, so just decide what’s really important and what can be left behind (valid both for work items as well as stuff around the house). No matter how hard we try we can’t ace it everywhere just remember what’s really really important and you are important too!
- It’s ok to celebrate when the kids go back to school again, I will be celebrating that’s for sure (she has been home since 11th December, almost 3 months now!)
The lines are blurred so it’s up to you to find how to give some kind of order to your day and find what works for all of you. There is no right or wrong answers here, just keeping sane.
FYI, you're TBB 