Working From Home With Kids: 10 Best Tips
Working at home with kids is a great opportunity because I get to spend time with my kids while still contributing to our household earnings. The flexibility of being able to set my own schedule is another plus that works well. All of the benefits of this arrangement have to be carefully balanced in order to make working from home a good experience.
This is a guest post from Ivana over at FindYourMomTribe. Find out more about her at the end of this post.
Can you work from home and look after a child?
I’m not going to lie, there are downsides to working from home. The challenges that I’ve faced have mainly been trying to balance the drive to accomplish tasks and still caring for my children. This is a struggle that a lot of other women are facing. Coming up with strategies to overcome the obstacles of working from home sometimes stretched my creative and planning abilities. It may sound trying, but in actuality, these make for transferable mom skills!
It was hard finding a work-life balance initially when my kids still needed almost constant attention.
Here are 10 ways that I found to be useful in dealing with the everyday pressures of getting things done and still being the best mom possible.
- Create a WorkSpace
A separate area to work was important because it made it feel real instead of me just trying to rush through the tasks that I needed to complete. It was a good visible reminder to the kids that while I was in my work area, I needed to be able to concentrate.
In the beginning, it seemed easier to just try to work in the same room as the kids. This proved to be a mistake because I wasn’t really able to get anything done. I found that it was taking me longer to complete the same number of tasks, which is a really bad thing when it comes to reaping the rewards of having a more flexible work schedule.
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Have A Conversation
My kids need structure in order to thrive. Knowing what I expected of them was something that was helpful. I sat down with my kids and explained what working from home meant. They already understood that Daddy left the house to go to work every day. This strategy helped them to make the connection to what I was doing when I was away from them.
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Do A Dry Run
I would essentially hide from the kids in the next room so that they learned how to manage their own activities. Trying out the whole work from home routine before I started working helped me identify the problem areas. It gave me the opportunity to fine-tune things before I’d actually have to be productive. This made working from home with kids less stressful for me because I wasn’t having to pile on work during the adjustment period.
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Invest In Monitoring Devices
Setting up the video baby monitor was one way that I coped with working in a different room. It allowed me to feel as though I was still watching them while not having to be right next to them the whole time. Being able to glance over occasionally allowed me to focus on and complete my tasks more effectively so that I could get back to my kids.
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Use A Timer
While I’m not saying there weren’t times in which the kids were still driving me crazy by constantly wanting to talk to me, it was a battle to teach them about the concept of time. Setting a timer was another good method that I found that would enable them to have a more visual reminder of when I was free to hang out with them.
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Create A Bag Of Tricks
Remember that I said working from home with kids meant getting creative?
My bag of tricks needed to encompass all of the range of emotions that my kids were likely to experience during the day. If they were tired and cranky, a movie might be the perfect solution so that I could finish something quickly. Different toys, especially those that they hadn’t seen in a while, were another option when they were feeling more independent. I would print off coloring or activity sheets and keep them on hand to give out if my kids were starting to get whiny and restless.
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Use Downtime Wisely
When all else failed, I needed to call it a day and pick up my work after the kids were down for the night. Knowing when to stop for the day was something that I struggled with in the beginning. I would want to push through my kids’ poor behavior, but the quality of my work would suffer when I tried. It was just better to put a pin in it and wait until after they went to bed.
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Make A Priorities List
Making a list of priority items that I needed to accomplish each day helped to set the tone. I knew that these were the things that absolutely had to be done. It also worked to lift some of the stress that I was experiencing so that I could do a better job. Does everything go smoothly every day? Of course not, but that’s to be expected. The point was to pace myself. I didn’t want to sacrifice my downtime or sleep just to earn a few extra dollars.
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Take A Break
Another thing that I found useful was scheduling in playtime breaks. Even just ten minutes helped to prevent interruptions that may have occurred at an inopportune moment. This allowed me to get some facetime with my kids so that I didn’t feel as though I was neglecting them. It also provided me with a chance to recharge and return to my work feeling like a better mom.
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Go With The Flow
Flexibility is truly the key that I’ve found to be the most useful tool in my box. There are days or even certain times of the day that are better to work than others. When my kids were very little, taking advantage of naptime was the perfect time to get those tasks done that really required my undivided attention.
Being able to find those times of the day when my kids are the easiest to distract or even keep themselves entertained can be difficult. The really hard thing is that this time can vary depending on the day of the week or even how much sleep my kids got the night before. Realizing that and going with the flow can be hard in the beginning.
Getting Used to Working from Home with Kids
I had to learn to be self-aware and understand that getting it all done in one day may not always be possible. Embracing flexibility is so important because it allows me to feel that I can still do a good job while not sacrificing the time I have with my kids.
I love working from home even though I still encounter challenges. Having the ability to spend quality time with my kids and my husband is worth the extra effort. This is something that my kids are going to be able to look back on and realize that I was there for them. That makes it worth the income cut because raising my kids is an investment in their future. I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Author’s bio:
Ivana is an educator turned stay-at-home mom. She’s a proud mom of a beautiful 7 year old girl and a playful 5 year old boy. Since she didn’t have a clue about raising kids, she had to learn it all in a hard way. She managed to find so much information online and it inspired her to turn to blogging to share her experiences and struggles as a mom. Being a mom is not easy. In fact, it can sometimes be pretty isolating.
Her blog, Find Your Mom Tribe, is here to help you connect with other moms, as well as to share mom hacks, information, and tools to help you on this parenting journey. You can catch up with her on Facebook and Pinterest. She also has more about working from home with kids.