Working from home... with the kids...

I’d scheduled a blog post to write about my experiences with working form home. At the time I planned it, working from home was being encouraged by the government to reduce the spread of Coronavirus.

Since then we have entered lockdown. And with that obviously comes no nursery.

So not only are many working from home, they also have their children with them and no option of family or friends to help out unless they’re part of the same household. I think how you get on with this depends entirely on the age of your children. If they’re a little older and can occupy themselves with homework, reading or whichever their screen of choice is, it’s probably a little easier to fit in a few hours of work where you can. But when the kids are a bit younger things are a bit different...

Mine are four, and ten months. And I learnt the hard way that I can’t work while they are around. Well not work in the sense of doing anything at my desk. I’ve tried bringing them in with me, and Ruby, the four year old, has some colouring or stickers to do and Ollie, (the baby) has some brightly coloured, noisy, flashing piece of plastic to be pushing and pulling at. But that does not last long at all. It’s not long before Ruby needs to sit on my knee and Ollie is more interested in what’s inside all of the drawers rather than playing with his jingly jangly shakey rattley flashing plastic! 

A few weeks ago I had a stressful day where a client needed something last minute and urgently. After initially saying I couldn’t help on that day I ended up agreeing to take a look. This ended in chaos. Ollie was crying and not happy. Ruby was completely rearranging my office and then helping herself to things from the kitchen. I ended up shouting at Ruby, and Ollie ended up falling over and hurting himself. 

This day ended up making me feel pulled in all directions and like nobody was getting the best of me. I realised that I needed to get some boundaries in place and stick to them.

I’ve always been conscious of not trying to work too much when they are around as I don’t want them to feel they don’t have my attention. And one of the main reasons I do what I do is to be able to fit my work around my family and not the other way around so it’s all a bit pointless if it’s not working out like that isn’t it. I’ve started to timeblock work through the week so that I know exactly when I’m doing what and can plan that everything that needs to get done is fitted in.

But then nursery closed and we’re all at home. Trying to work has reached a new level of juggling. With everything going on I don’t want to make light of the fact that I am extremely grateful to currently have us all healthy and safe and have the extra time to spend together. And as I work online there isn’t anyting to stop me actually doing this work - it just may be that things are being postponed and I’m not getting invoices paid that are due. But trying to do any work when there is no childcare involved is proving very difficult. 

Joe (husband) has been doing his job from home. He has calls and meetings throughout the day so has needed to work during normal office hours when the rest of his team are. After I have looked after the kids for most of the day, even though he takes them to bed, by the time I get to work in the evening I’m worn out. 

This is such a strange time and one we are going to remember forever. I want to remember the extra time we have together as a family and the things we did while we had to stay home. But I also don’t want to just completely stop my business after all the hard work I have been putting in to get things off the ground. I’m working on finding a new balance that is going to work during this unusual time. 

At the moment I think as mums with businesses we just need to get through it the best we can and be adaptable. And if that means putting your business on hold or reducing your hours for a short time while we look after our families then that’s what we need to do.

Let’s be honest, the main goal we have at the moment is keeping everybody safe and healthy.