We asked area moms how it’s going working from home with kids in the house all day. Thanks to all who shared their wins, their struggles, and their funny stories!
It’s not easy to be productively working from home while home schooling my daughter. I am blessed in the fact that she doesn’t need a lot of extra help and is very independent. The struggles are with keeping her on task while I am absorbed in my work. It will be a special memory for us to have spent this time together working side by side though. What works for us is wearing fresh clothes each morning, laying out a schedule, and trying to stick to it. The funniest part has been after a recent conference call with work. I had no idea she was listening. After I hung up she said, “All of those people were in a room and on the phone talking about cleaning? Seriously? For an hour?” I tried to explain why and she said, “Yeah yeah I heard it, cleaning to prevent corona but you guys are grown ups you know how to clean.” The next day she wanted to listen again and fell asleep during it! – Bobbie, mom to two.
Week 2 and feeling a little more settled than last week. Kids are technically on Spring Break this week so we are little more relaxed on the curriculum requirements this week. If you don’t make it outside today to walk I highly recommend watching some GoNoodle exercise videos. My daughter completed one this morning via Zoom with her entire 3rd Grade Class! – Pam, mom to two.
Seven people in one house is a lot! That means feeding seven people three meals a day and snacks – so many snacks and so many dishes. So. Many. Dishes. I’m not sure which is worse. We’ve eased ourselves into this home bound phase of life. The first week it was my husband and I working from home, sharing the dining room table/office and alternating conference calls. (He has way more than me.) The second week, our daughter started her UIUC remote coursework from the basement. Some of it with pre-recorded video lectures, others were Zoom Conference classes. That’s when the boys are kicked off online gaming – because there never seems to be enough internet bandwidth. This coming week our boys (ages 17, 14 and 10) start their remote learning from home. While they’d rather see their friends and have their normal teachers, (trust me – their new teacher is not a nice and has way less patience) they seem to be weathering the storm well. I think the social media connections are helping this generation stay connected, from video games, to social media platforms, they communicate just as they always did. The flip side is my 72-year-old father, who is still baffled at how a restaurant can have an open sign, yet you cannot go inside to eat. My father lives with us and that makes us a family of seven. It’s hard to explain to him when we are working, or when the kids are “in school” – because it’s all on computers and all looks the same. I remind myself that I must give grace to him, to everyone in my house. And I must dig a little deeper for patience. There are things I am forever grateful for, a less busy schedule, eating dinner together, learning to use Instacart, the ability to sleep past 5 a.m., ability to tackle some cleaning jobs that have been on the back burner for a while, family game time, family movie nights, Netflix’s Tiger King and job that allows me to work remotely. Life is just different now, not forever, just for now. I do however, look forward to the days when I don’t have to spend four hours on Sundays making academic schedules for my boys, balancing teaching and work at the same time from the same table and can allow my father to go inside Chatham CafĂ© to grab a bite to eat. Until then, we’ll be tucked in our home safe and sound arguing loudly over who’s turn it is for the internet bandwidth. – Angela, mom to four.
I have been doing everything I can to keep work and home separate. My “office” is downstairs in our basement. I come up for lunch, and once 5 pm hits I try to do everything I can to walk away at that time, and then I do not come back down to the basement until the next morning. I also make daily to do lists and I TRY to stick to the to do-lists and my “timeline” for each day. This is such an abnormal situation for everyone, I feel like we are all going to have our individual struggles. Trying to keep things as fluid as possible, while difficult for most of us Type A personalities, is the best way we can work through this. I have learned through all of this that I am NOT meant to be a stay-at-home mama, so its helped me realize that I made the right choice in coming back to work after maternity leave! – Kristen, mom to one.
Starting out, I struggled. I worked too many hours and it wore me out physically but especially mentally. I’m setting some boundaries now, which is helping. My family has agreed to all take an hour lunch break each day at noon, and it’s fun preparing it together and cleaning up together. We promptly stop working at 5 pm and take the dog on a long walk, then eat a fairly early dinner. Do we argue? Yes. Frustrated? You bet. Every day we learn how to better balance it all. – Lisa, mom to one.
When my daughter and I first found out that school would be canceled for a while, we knew we needed to create a schedule. Even though her school wasn’t requiring work to be done, I didn’t want her to be sitting around all day with nothing to do OR on electronics all day. So I found worksheets and various activities for her to do most mornings. We also work in some PE time. Things we like to do are take a walk, dance party or Just Dance on Wii, yoga, basketball, etc. Then after lunch, she gets to watch a movie. While she is watching a movie, I focus on getting some work done. I respond to emails/texts, create content and plan future lessons. She also has reading time and piano practice. Sometimes I can squeeze in some work during those times as well. When boredom starts to set in, we change up the pace and play a board game or create together. We have both started water color painting and it is so fun to do together. We also laugh a lot! If we didn’t laugh we would go crazy. It is good for the soul! – Mandy, mom to one.
I am trying to keep to my “normal” schedule but the first thing that went out the window was getting up at the normal time. For the first few days of this, I had a terrible time sleeping. I’d sleep for a few hours then wake up and worry. I’ve done better after talking it through with my fiance and finding time to walk or exercise in some way. I’ve been moving around the house to work but a couple days ago I moved to the basement office (where we usually just store anything we don’t have another place for) and have been working there. – Kate, soon-to-be-stepmom to two.
I am a single mother of two girls, ages 12 and 21, and am thankful to get a lot of help from their father. I closed my office and began practicing telemedicine/telepsychiatry in 2019 and now realize that was one of the best decisions I ever made. When school first closed, my 12 year old was struggling with boredom which meant more interruptions for me. Her father, who is an oncology pharmacist and also considered essential, agreed with me that we needed to have our college age daughter, whose classes were going online, come home. We have always shared the parenting philosophy that we were raising our kids to eventually be adults. Therefore, my oldest has been assigned grocery shopping, cooking, and occasionally entertaining her little sister. Her cooking allows us all to have a good dinner and allows him to take leftovers to work so he can avoid the hospital cafeteria. My twelve year old also has chores including dishes and caring for the cats. So far, this situation is working out relatively well other than some concern on the part of the girls as to what online classes will look like for 7th grade and college. Although they miss their friends and I am sad that my vacation and several theater shows have been cancelled, we are thankful that we have the resources to ride out this pandemic together. – Andrea, mom to two.
I am finding this situation exhausting! My husband’s job is considered “essential” and daycare is closed, so juggling “homeschooling” two kiddos and keeping an 8 month old content is not the easiest thing. My main goal with my children is to keep their lives as normal and worry free as possible. I am doing my work in “non-traditional” shifts. I get up about two hours before the kids wake up, keep connected via email on my phone when the kids are using our only laptop for their school work, work for two hours during the big kids’ naptime, and then finish up my work when my husband gets home from work. My personal goal is to wipe the dust off the treadmill and burn off some of these Girl Scout cookies that endlessly taunt me, and when the weather warms up get my family outside for some serious Vitamin D and exercise!! Until then I highly recommend Koo Koo Kanga Roo videos to get you up and moving—-yes these videos are for toddlers and school age children but I am having a blast doing them! I highly recommend Dinosaur Stomp and Pop See Co! – Katie, mom of three.
When I left work on Friday, March 13th I had no clue what was coming. Social distancing, working from home, and home schooling were not what I had envisioned, that is for sure! On day 1, my third grader couldn’t wait to get on the school website and do math to his heart’s content. He wanted to learn long division and after an hour we had it down, then on to reading the fourth Harry Potter book. Of course I knew I had the most gifted child and was clearly an amazing parent! Then my high schooler and freshman in college woke up around lunch time and proceeded to spend the day on social media. Day 2…..my third grader didn’t want anything to do with school and to my complete shock he didn’t remember all the steps to long division. The teens woke up, about lunchtime, and getting them involved in chores or anything besides technology felt like yelling in the wind. I was supposed to be having video meetings daily with the other nurses in my school district which I found was no problem as long as I hid in my room with the door locked and only after running the dog to complete exhaustion so he would not go nuts barking at my locked door. Now, at the end of week two (which should have been spring break so there haven’t been official online assignments yet) we have a daily schedule with chores assigned and some structure which was the only way to keep everyone from climbing the walls with frustration. No, it isn’t easy. No, it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine being home all day every day.…spending every waking second together. No, I don’t understand the moms that post pictures of their kids sitting around a table working on school work and professing their love for being home all day EVERY day. But what I have found is we are eating every meal together, we spend time laughing and talking, we play games, we take drives and wave at friends through their windows, and we are allowed to be frustrated at times too. Most of all, we are thankful for our health and pray for those fighting the virus. Out of respect for the care providers and those that are ill, and most importantly now, for those who are at high risk of severe complications if they would get ill, we stay inside and respect the advice of experts and doctors. It isn’t perfect, but we are getting by together. – Maressa, mom to three.
What is working for you? Share your stories by leaving a comment!
