Working at home with kids: 5 tips on how to make it easier for you and them
Working from home can be wonderful. You can choose your hours, make yourself endless snacks, choose your background music. Unless… cue a couple of kids with excess energy, no playmates and easily accessible parents due to a global pandemic. That, to me, spells disaster.
Here are 5 tips on how to make it easier on you and them, and (hopefully) get some work done.
Start the day with connection. Dr. Laura Markham of the Aha! Parenting blog and Patty Wipfler of Hand in Hand Parenting, both explain that your child needs to feel connected to a parent or caregiver before they can play on their own. Patty Wipfler recommends preventive maintenance to fill a child’s connection cup, in the form of daily special time. You set a timer for 10, 15 or 20 minutes and tell the child you will play with her until the timer rings. During that time, the child takes the lead. You let them choose what to play. You follow along and connect fully, listening, observing and often playing the less powerful role, so that she feels in control during special time. When the timer rings, the child might have some big feelings. Acknowledge her feelings, empathize, and reassure her you will have more special time tomorrow. If necessary, listen to her feelings until she has finished offloading them. Oftentimes, he will feel lighter after a good cry and ready to play independently, which will give you precious time to do your work. If you continue doing this every day, you will find that there is less need to offload feelings, and connection alone before work will be enough to ease the child into indepedent play.
If possible, avoid screens. Don’t get me wrong, even though we follow the Waldorf approach, which advocates for very little screentime, I use it strategically. But turning the TV on first thing in the morning is a recipe for disaster. It makes children moody and disconnected, and you later need to do much more repair work to get them playing independently.
Make a special activity box for when you have to attend a meeting or do focused work. Fill the box with little things that you can either get new every couple of days, or rotate them often. Some ideas can be: coloring books and new crayons, sticker books, small puzzles, blocks, nature elements, such as sticks, pinecones and rocks, felt balls in different sizes, etc. The elements will vary according to the age of the children.
Wrap small presents and hide them around the house. This will work wonders for the under 7 crowd. You can even play hot/cold while sitting on your computer, if you can multitask a bit.
If your kids are like mine, when all else fails, bring out the play dough and some fun molds. Today, my 2 year old and my 5 year old played for over an hour mostly without my help. Other ideas might be kinetic sand, modelling clay, modelling beeswax, or scissors, paper and glue, if they’re old enough.
I hope you try some of these suggestions. Whatever you do, extend yourself and your child some grace. These are special times and they need empathy and understanding. Maybe you need to do more work after they are in bed, or adjust your expectations a bit. It’s important to return yourself to calm and breathe. They are little for only a short time and this too shall pass.