Working at home can provide the flexibility needed to also provide childcare, but when these two jobs are carried out simultaneously you can quickly find that you are sharing your home office with some decidedly distracting ‘coolleagues’!
However, there are several tried and tested methods for coping with these challenges, the chief aim of which is to clearly delineate a workspace that is ‘separate’ from the rest of the home.
To start with, this can be as simple as the quick online purchase of some home office furniture from a supplier, to keep you away from the kitchen table that your children may quite reasonably see as their domain.
Having a dedicated home office is of course the most effective solution, but a luxury for many, especially if your family is expanding.
Why having home office space is important
The purpose of using dedicated home office furniture, rather than simply a dining chair, is to provide an easily identifiable physical signal that you are not engaged in a joint family activity. You don’t need a lot of space for this, and can easily colonise a corner of a living room or kitchen as your work area.
If possible, it can also be helpful to have a dedicated laptop or desktop PC that will be used solely for work, and is separate from the family computer. Again, this physical delineation of joint family and personal work equipment can make things a lot clearer for children, especially young children.
It can be hard to explain why the kitchen table and the family laptop are out of bounds during the daytime, but is family space at the weekend, for example.
Of course, there is always the option to work in the evenings once children are in bed, but these working hours won’t suit everybody, especially if you live with a partner who has a 9 to 5.
Keep children occupied
This brings us to the task of keeping children occupied while you work, and the sometimes thorny issue of worthy entertainment, and in particular, television.
The evils of TV and deleterious effect that the box has on young minds have been common currency for years now. However, it is worth noting that many of the major studies into the effects of TV usage on children were conducted in the U.S, where crucially the range and quality of the programming is quite different to that on offer in the U.K.
In a nutshell, U.K. children’s television can be not only benign, but educationally beneficial.
Using television to distract and entertain the children need not be seen as a desperate last-ditch resort when you need to address work issues.
On-demand TV can now allow you to compile a suitable playlist for the kids, and in so doing not only ensure quality control of content, but also provide an definite period of time during which you know you can schedule conference calls or simply get stuck in to business without distractions.
