I always had a dream of working from home. What I didn’t expect in that pipe dream was that the kids would be around me, while I worked from home. Without kids in the equation, it is all manageable. You can plan a perfect day between work, household chores and if you are lucky, to do something fun stuff. But if you add kids to the mix, it quickly moves from peaceful to chaos. It’s added pressure as we juggle between different hats. There’s constant presence, need for attention and responsibility.
If you are anything like me, a perfectly organised, structured and detail-oriented person, the working from home model thanks to COVID-19 proved to be nothing more than a personal nightmare. How does such a mum work from home with two kids to home school? I started with what I know best which was to create a schedule. So I came up with the plan that we would follow the same schedule of a typical working /school day.
Of course, the kids and DH were not enthusiastic with the plan. He is more free-spirited than me and spoke about ‘going with the flow’. Those are my least favourite words, and so I muttered under my breath that I would manipulate my way to having my schedule followed. What worked after numerous tweaking was my ‘new Flexi model ‘.I must admit it isn’t foolproof. But we are dealing with little humans here, so I learned that being flexible, collaborating and lowering the bar was the only way out to a peaceful coexistence.
My strategy to ace work from home with kids
Collaboration
Working in collaboration has always been something I advocate. I believe that work needs to be shared, and everyone should do their part for a happy and fulfilling family life. One person bearing the brunt of all the work does no one good. It only leads to resentment and anger and the other parties are wondering why the one sacrificial lamb is so aggrieved. So I devised a plan where every member of the family contributed to the smooth functioning of the family.
Lower the bar and Accept imperfections
The most important thing we learnt was that working from home with kids is not the same or perfect and pretending it is, will not help. So we learnt to accept our imperfect lives and schedules as we juggle our numerous roles. It was important to cherish the good and bad days.
Being Flexible
As parents, we learnt that while structure and routine is good for the kids, so is also flexibility and giving room for exceptions and creativity. By treating them both as responsible and childlike, we allow them to thrive. So, although the kids do their allocated chores, it isn’t fair to expect them to do it like adults. Accepting the fact that they do their best is ‘good enough’. Being Flexible with their schedules made them enjoy their activities more as they became captains of their journeys.
How to ace chores while working from home with kids.
The plan was two-fold. The first included the kids doing age-appropriate chores to help us out. The second was to ensure that we would work using our core strengths and interests. We reckoned that would not make it seem like a chore.
Age appropriate chores for kids
Some of the chores our kids did are outlined below
- They had to make their breakfast. It would include a choice from milk, sandwiches ( bread butter, cheese, Nutella, ham sandwiches) cereal and milk.
- Kids were to clean up the front room mess, i.e. books, craft items before TV time in the afternoon.
- They were sorting their rooms. The girls have a bunk bed. So all they had to do was fold their duvets, draw the curtains, put the pillow neatly, and put paper waste in the bin.
- They also would choose their clothes and put their dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
- Once a week – Instead of Homework, they would focus on cleaning one area of their room like bookshelf, closets or anything that needs tidying up.
- Once a week they got an’ Earn money for a chore option’ like hovering the room etc.
Adult chores
DH and I split the house hold work based on our interests and strength.
Cooking: DH loves cooking and its a stress buster for him, while cooking gets on my nerves. So he became Head Chef position, while I moved to Asst Chef who managed quick-fix meals. Head chef batched cooked, and Asst Chef looked at quick meals.
Cleaning – has always been my forte and so I became Head Cleaner. ;).Well, there were times, I had to put those duties on hold when others needed more attention. The key was to know what needed more attention and to prioritize.
How to ace Homeschooling
Homeschooling was my baby. I admit in the beginning, I expected the kids to follow a rigorous school schedule, but I had to lower my standards and expectations. After all, the kids were also affected by this fundamental change in structure. Instead of spending hours printing the HW sheet, I picked books for Maths and Grammar for their respective year group, and they did an activity each on both topics. For other learning, we resorted to the school’s online system, i.e. Time Table Rockstar, Education City and, Classroom secrets. They also referred to learning to spell from spellings list given by the school.
All this did not take more than half an hour to 45 minutes to complete, which meant, I had to find other ways to keep them occupied so that we could work.
Activities to keep the kids engaged
- Allowed use of phones to catch up with friends and to play with friends on Education city
- Pick what you want – Board games, Table footballs or any game those chose from our collection.
- Drawing – Both my girls love, drawing, painting and art. They either did freestyle or visited this website Art for Kids hub to learn new things to draw.
- Baking and cooking -My 11-year-old daughter loves to cook. She made pizza, cake, biscuit, homemade fries and crisps in the air fryer. I allowed her interest in cooking to blossom. I also taught them how to clean the mess after cooking. While my 11-year-old play sous chef, the younger one became her assistant chef who helped in beating eggs, being the taster etc
- We incorporated a daily’ huggy snuggle time’ with parents which is a 15-minute break on the bed with mum to unwind, tell tales, keep updated. We did these slots at different time of the day depending on how good or bad the day turned. There was a rule – Must have one a day.
How to ace working from home
The Work from Home signals: We taught the kids our working from home signals: Red, Green Amber status. During client meetings or critical work, it was the RED time which meant no talking/disturbing except emergency. AMBER time was when we were busy but were open to hearing them out, and GREEN was when we were ready to engage.
Separate workspace: We had a separates room for work and excused ourselves to those rooms when we had to concentrate or work peacefully. We tried to swap between DH and I where one would use the separate workspace, and the other would work in the living room keeping an eye on the kids. If both of us were extremely busy, we did our work in the workroom, and the kids followed the work from home signals.
Screen Time: We allowed Screen time to be our de facto babysitter. So,2-3 hours of Screen time was permitted in the afternoon so that we could complete our work.
How to beat stress and ace working from home
To alleviate mental and physical stress, both DH and I did different things. I went for a walk for an hour daily to destress, whereas DH went running every morning to start the day on a good note. We focused on things that we enjoyed doing and concentrated on it
How did we incorporate entertainment and me time for the couple? We have a system where the kids go upstairs at 8.00 p.m and the siblings spend time with each other or read or draw whereas we as couple watch TV or catch up with each other till form 10.30.p.m. We found this helped us unwind and filled our reserves for the next day.
Family time: We enjoyed few of movie times sessions with kids and spent the weekend chilling out. We baked and cooked together and made memories.
Other Essentials: We stocked the fridge with great food with great plenty of the option of a quick-fix meal and fun food to beat the blues.
Conclude
To conclude, I have to admit this working from home with kids is not for the fainthearted. It can test your patience and strengths, but on the whole, can bring the family together. I found working as a team, being flexible and lowering our standards made this successful for our family. Would you want to give it a shot?
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