Working from home means living a flexible work lifestyle, right? Not when you’re a working parent! If you’re working from home at the same time your children are also at home, finding a proper work/life balance becomes a lot more complicated.
After all, your kids are home and they need you – or at least, they want you. And it’s hard to say no in the face of this responsibility, even when your work tasks are piling up.
All in all, it can be quite difficult to try and work from home when you’ve got kids. But is it totally impossible to do? Let’s have a think about the factors below.
You’ll Likely Need to Give Yourself Extra Time
Being a parent and a remote worker at the same time means always being against the clock. That’s not a very nice way to work, so it’s best to try and give yourself some extra time to get things done.
Start earlier on projects that have a deadline two weeks away. Get up 10 minutes earlier so you can get breakfast ready AND get yourself ready. Little time tweaks make all the difference here, so try to make good use of them!
Remote Work Can Be Complicated for Children with Special Needs
If you have children with special needs, you obviously need to spend more time on being there to support them. As such, you can feel an incredible amount of guilt for trying to work from home.
And your child may struggle with this decision as well. A child who has autism might find it very difficult to understand the difference between mommy being at home and mommy working at home.
They might not understand why you need to be alone for a couple of hours, or why there’s a babysitter looking after them instead.
If this is the kind of thing you’re struggling to help them understand, we recommend checking out an app with therapy support for autism. You’re allowed to ask for help with an issue like this, and you certainly don’t need to stop being a remote worker either!
Keep Them on Task When You’re on Task
If you’re busy, try to keep your kids busy too. When you’ve got something to finish that needed to be done yesterday, it’s worth it to spend 10 minutes setting up a game, puzzle, or treasure hunt for the kids to do that’ll give you at least half an hour of free time.
And try to apply this principle whenever you’ve got a deadline to hit and the kids in the background. They can be in the same room to spend time with you, but you should encourage them to do their own thing, just like you’re doing yours.
Working from home when you’ve got kids is hard, there’s no arguing with that. And to do it successfully, you’re going to have to put a lot of effort into the situation! But it can be done.
