As teachers go on strike today over pay and pensions, thousands of mothers around the country will be forced to either pay for expensive one-off childcare, take the day off, or work from home.
While we all hope that this strike action will not be the start of many to come, there will other events that will mean mums around the country will not be able to work in the office, and will have no choice but to work from home with the kids…one example is if it snows this winter. How prepared are you for that?
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 ‘co-workers’!
Here are some useful tips to help you cope – and actually get some work done!
Set aside dedicated space for your home office
It can be hard to explain to children why the kitchen table and the family laptop are out of bounds during the daytime, but is family space at the weekend, but if you have a room that is your office during the day, or a dedicated laptop, or are in the living room or dining room, for example, these can be made out of bounds whether you are there or not.
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, a d especially if you are working from home because of a strike or bad weather conditions – you simply may not have any choice but to work during the day when the children are awake.
Keep your child occupied
Keeping children occupied while you work often raises the thorny issue of what is deemed worthy entertainment… and in particular, television.
If you have important calls to make and you know that the only sure thing that will keep your children entertained and therefore not interrupting you for an hour or so, then be it a DVD or their favourite TV programme, you simply have to do what you need to do. If you find that your child has been in front of the box all day, only taking a ‘break’ to eat or use the loo, then you need to change this.
Give them work to do, give them tasks to do to help you with your work, or arrange for them to spend some of the day with a relative or a friend.
Reach an agreement with your child and honour it
It’s amazing how children can accommodate your work commitments and not disturb you while you work if they know that at a certain time during the day, which you agree to, they will get a treat. This does not have to include money or sweets, but just time with you, where you both do something your child enjoys doing. But you need to get into the practise of keeping your promises, otherwise children who sense that you are just trying to brush them off with empty promises just won’t play ball.
