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On the surface, working from home is a dream. No more daily commutes, we can wear whatever we want while on the job, our productivity is (mostly) better, and most importantly, we can bond as much as we want with our kids.
However, kids demanding a piggyback ride while you’re in the middle of a Zoom conference or yelling at the top of their lungs as you try to crunch some numbers for a client can be an everyday occurrence when you work at home.
And with the COVID-19 pandemic ensuring that you will be spending more time with them in close proximity for a much longer period than you expected, we wouldn’t blame you if you’re close to rethinking this whole work-from-home setup.
Not that spending plenty of time with our kids is a bad thing, but we have to face the reality that parenting and working at the same time can get incredibly challenging.
Handling teens would probably be easier since they tend to stay out of your hair anyway, especially if you get them to do chores to earn an allowance to put on a debit card for teens.
Little children, on the other hand, are an entirely different story, one that doesn’t need any elaborating.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to manage both your job and kids better while working from home.
Be Upfront About Your Situation To Your Boss and Colleagues
It’s always better to give the people you work with a heads up about the possibility of interruptions and distracting noises in the background during conference calls, courtesy of your kids. Trust them enough that they will understand, especially if they also have kids of their own.
Lay Ground Rules
However, just because your co-workers would understand doesn’t mean that your kids have a license to cause unnecessary interruptions while you work. Talk to your kids and lay some ground rules, like knocking before entering your home office or keeping silent when you’re on a very important call.
Get Babysitting Help
It doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, a friend, or a babysitting service. You need help watching your kids while you work, and the ones mentioned above can provide that in spades.
If you want free babysitting help, your partner, older kids, and parents are your best options. If you have the budget for it, you can pay for a babysitting service to ensure that you can work in relative peace.
If you do have a partner who also works from home and your work schedules are flexible, you might want to consider the idea of babysitting your kids in shifts. That way, both of you can concentrate on doing your job and taking care of your children with relative ease.
Keep Them Occupied
Assigning light and age-appropriate tasks to your kids like folding towels, feeding and watering pets, and sorting fresh laundry ought to keep them occupied enough to give you a break, even for a short amount of time.
Giving them more screen time would also work, although you have to ensure that the content they access would be of great quality and educational.
Get them to play in the yard, but make sure someone keeps an eye on them while they’re at it. If you have to do that yourself, work where you can see them.
No one can deny that juggling parenthood and your livelihood as you work from home can be an uphill climb, and we can only hope that the tips provided above can get you started on managing your work and kids in a work-from-home setup better.
How We Can Help
Whether you are looking to start a savings account to reward your kids, we can help. At Greater Alliance Credit Union, we offer Youth Accounts can be opened as soon as they are born.
We also have fun resources you can use to help your kids understand the financial difficulty and the value of money. To learn more about our youth account benefits, call us today at 201-599-5500.