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5 Tips for Working from Home with Kids

You can earn the income your family needs and be with your children, too.

By Andrea DawsonPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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Photo: BillionPhotos / Adobe Stock

There is no straightforward or easy way to balance motherhood and work, but many mums find working from home to be an appealing solution. Working from home allows you to skip the time-wasting commute to work, spend more time with your kids and, hopefully, take greater control of your own schedule. If you’re thinking of working from home with your kids, consider the following 5 tips that can help you avoid some of the pitfalls work-at-home mums are up against:

1. Choose the Right Remote Job

There are bunches of ideal work-at-home jobs. There are also jobs that aren’t as viable for being performed remotely. You can save yourself massive amounts of grief by simply choosing a suitable remote job. Your first step is to figure out what kind of work you’d be best suited for doing at home.

If you’re already employed, a logical starting point would be to evaluate whether the job you already have could be done from home. If you think there’s any chance that could work out well, speak with your employer about it. It is possible that perhaps they’d be okay with you doing some or all of your work from home. If you can transition from working at the office to working from your own home, you’ll have an advantage in not having to completely start over with a new job.

2. Allocate a Well-Stocked Workspace

Define or create a workspace that will be dedicated exclusively to your work and nothing else. The “and nothing else” rule means that your kitchen table, your sofa and your bed are not allowed to become your workspace. It’s ideal if you can create a home office; but no worries if you can’t. Even a small desk in the kitchen or laundry room would be satisfactory if that’s all the space you can set aside.

Stock your workspace with all the supplies you’ll need to do your work. You’ll most likely need to have easy access to things like pens, notepads and a laptop.

3. Encourage Your Children to Play Independently

Your children will need to learn that you cannot play with them every minute. The sooner you can teach them to play independently, the better.

This doesn’t mean you should abandon them while you’re working. It’s ideal if you can get them playing in the same room with you, where you can supervise their activities while you work.

Well, okay, not really. It would actually be better if you could hire a carer to play with the kids so you don’t have to divide your attention between their play and your work. But, realistically speaking, your hourly wage would have to be enough to justify that. If hiring someone isn’t practical, keeping an eye on your kids while you work is the next best thing.

4. Get the Right Toys—and Rotate Them

As a work-at-home mum, keeping your kids busy is one of the most important skills you’ll need to master. This isn’t such an issue if you’re parenting a newborn who naps for most of the day. It also gets easier as your children reach school age. It’s the time in between—the toddler years—that can be most challenging for work-at-home mums to deal with.

The right toys and games can make all the difference in whether your children are able to occupy themselves for significant blocks of time. The following are a few toys that are essential for children of work-at-home mums:

  • Colouring books and crayons
  • Wooden blocks
  • Reusable stickers
  • Picture books
  • Puzzles
  • Legos

Play Dough is great too, but keep in mind that you may have to interrupt your work to help your kids clean it up when they are finished playing with it.

If you notice that interest in a particular toy has waned, put it in a closet for a couple of weeks. Then at a point when your kids seem bored, reintroduce that toy to them. Rotating your children’s toys in this manner can help the toys to seem new and interesting to them again.

5. Turn Off Your Phone and Hide It

What’s more important—spending cherished time with your children, or scrolling haphazardly through Instagram for hours?

As a work-at-home mum, you will need to work relentlessly at time management. You’ll want to have a conscious and deliberate purpose for every minute you spend on your phone. Otherwise, turn it off so you can’t hear it dinging every minute, and hide it out of easy reach in a drawer. Designate specific times when you plan to check it for updates, and limit your usage to those designated times.

Obviously, this tip is irrelevant if social media is an integral part of your job—for example if you’re a freelance social media manager. Even then, it’s important to be deliberate about managing the time you spend on the phone vs the time you allocate to other important tasks.

Work-at-home mum’s life can be strenuous and challenging. However, these 5 tips can help you avoid some of the toughest pitfalls you’ll face when you get started.

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About the Creator

Andrea Dawson

A fitness blogger and a personal trainer.

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