How to Work From Home With 5 Kids in the Next Room
“My son comes into my office about 4 times a day, on the hoverboard, with a ping pong paddle in hand, bouncing a ping pong ball. “Ping Pong?” he asks me. “Or are you on a call?” He sticks his head right next to mine to see if he can see himself on the camera.”
Meet your new colleagues: They’re aged 16, 13, and 10.
They don’t respect the boundaries of a work call with your boss, you have to make them lunch and they play Xbox really loudly during your zoom call, which involves barking orders non-stop to teammates and lamenting loudly when their characters get killed.
Welcome to our new reality, working from home with your kids. Like many Americans, you may be working remotely due to Covid19 and your kids may have transitioned to online e-learning.
It’s not easy to navigate so many extreme changes in our lives simultaneously, so here are some tips to help navigate working from home with your kids.
Accept the situation
“I was interviewing a new candidate for a company I do consulting work for. Over MS Teams. Video call. My son Mason barged in, asked if I was on a call, waved to the guy I was interviewing and said hi, took 3 bucks from me, patted me on the head and said thanks, waved goodbye to the guy I was interviewing and left.” Kevin Nickell, #TalesfromHomeVideoCalls
“Dogs will bark. Kids will interrupt. Don’t be embarrassed by it. Many products are doing amazing things to block out those noises, like MS Teams and Google Hangouts,” says Kevin, and he would know. With 5 kids at home, and a demanding job running a start-up, he’s got a challenging schedule.
Create a family routine
If you share childcare duty with a partner, try creating a schedule for your entire family. This may be very different than your regular work schedule. Children and adults respond well to routine and it will help your kids to define your work hours and particularly when they can and can’t interrupt you.
Try, if possible, to have a designated workspace or area. This will help your children to understand when you are in work mode.
“Set up your office as far away from everyone as possible, :)” says Phil Bellini, co-founder of Vistasuite and dad of 3 boys aged 8, 11 and 13. “I've had a lot more success working in a smaller area upstairs further away as opposed to a nicer office on a floor where everyone moves around all day.”
Don’t multitask
Susan Weinschenk Ph.D., Chief Behavioral Scientist and CEO at The Team W Inc, as well as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin, says:
“It takes more time to get tasks completed if you switch between them than if you do them one at a time. Each task switch might waste only 1/10th of a second, but if you do a lot of switching in a day it can add up to a loss of 40% of your productivity.”
Try splitting your day into smaller chunks and focusing for designated periods of time, rather than trying to do twelve things at once.
Use nap time to your advantage
Some tasks require considerable concentration, and other tasks require less. Try to schedule your most important tasks during a time when you know your children are occupied and save the easier tasks for the rest of the day.
Encourage autonomy
“I had lists on the fridge of lunch choices and snack choices. The children could get all of their own snacks, so I didn't have to spend twenty minutes taking them through the options,” says Melanie McKay, a scheduling manager for Kaplan Test Prep.
“I also had a list on the fridge labeled ‘Bored?’ with about fifteen activity suggestions such as coloring, dance party, and crafts. The last item on the list was ‘clean.’ Obviously, no one wanted to make it to the bottom of the list and get stuck cleaning, so they chose something else.”
Appreciate this extra time with your family
Jake (aged 8) - "Dad, what time is it?"
Me - "1:00, why?"
Jake - "I have a Google Meet at 2:00 so I just want to have enough time to charge my laptop for it"
It’s important to be realistic about what you can achieve, and what you can’t. Don’t beat yourself up if you feel you aren’t being 100% productive. We are in the middle of a pandemic and you don’t also have to be a super-boss and super-parent.
“This is an unprecedented time,” Phil Bellini says. “We may never (hopefully) experience anything like this in our lifetime, so take advantage of it. Break up the day a bit and spend time with the kids. Work later at night once they're in bed. Take advantage of the flexibility and family time.”
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