Working from Home with Kids

In the span of just a few weeks, the world has turned on its head. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way people live, work, learn and interact with each other so radically in such a short period of time, it is hard to remember exactly how things were just one month ago.

One group of people who have felt the changes drastically are parents. They now juggle the demands of working from home, looking after children and helping high-risk members of the community.

Our days begin, bleary-eyed, at 5:00 am, when that early rising child awakes and, after countless emails answered, snacks served, schoolwork managed, groceries procured, meetings virtually attended, laughs, smiles, tears and tantrums – not only the children’s – we collapse into bed at 10:00 pm if we’re lucky, just to repeat the ritual after grabbing a few (interrupted) hours of sleep.

Reading about all the new hobbies you could master, rooms you could renovate and pounds you could lose during quarantine are only more exhausting. Master Mandarin you say? Oh, certainly, right away!

At getAbstract we like to think of ourselves as a big family. But in reality, we are a big family made up of many smaller families. Nearly half the employees of the company are parents, many with children under 10 years old.

We’d like to offer readers our experiences so far navigating this new, mashed up world of work and life, and offer the tips we can to help you do the same without losing your sanity. We hope that sharing what we’ve learned so far may bring you some inspiration or, at least, some comfort. We’re all in this together.

This article is part of our Working from Home with Kids-series. Here you will find an overview of all the articles full of useful tips from the getAbstract work-life-educate-while-in-a-video-call-and-watching-one-of-those-new-live-sessions-play corner.