Working from home has a lot of advantages: you save travel, you have greater autonomy when organizing work, you don't have the boss “in the cogote” and, depending on the case, you organize your schedules in the way that best suits you .
Wonderful, right? Well, now we are going to add a little detail: one or several small children running around the house, demanding attention, fighting ... Some mothers find it impossible mission and, for others, it is the ideal option. We share the best tips from moms who work with babies or toddlers at home and also testimonies of those who left it as impossible.
Is for me?
Well the answer would be: it depends, especially on three things:
- How your work is: If we are in charge of the work and we simply have to deliver it by a deadline, we have the peace of mind of organizing our time. However, there are teleworking that simply consist of being in front of the computer at home with its schedule, immediate availability ... In that case it is much more difficult, since, from experience, If your little one is going to get sick or impossible, it will surely happen on the busiest day you are. Keep in mind that there are days when we can only work when children are sleeping. Apart from the schedule, it depends on the level of concentration required by the task to be performed.
- How are you: To me that of "female multitasking" seems like a real hoax. There are women (like men) who do very well doing several things at the same time and others that cause enormous stress to leave tasks halfway, continuous interruptions, take time to regain concentration, noise bothers you ... To work at home you need a lot of adaptability, mental flexibility and more patience than a saint.
- How is your son: There are children who, from a very young age, entertain themselves with their toys or just need to be close to you to be calm. Having a child of a calm nature, of course, makes everything easier. Another thing is when we talk about more intense children: they can be very demanding, they do not like to play alone, they find it difficult to calm down when they get angry… I mean that kind of kids that if they see you start talking for two minutes on the phone they get cry, hit your brother or do the bridge pine as long as you stop doing what you are doing and pay exclusive attention. Combining a job with the care of an intense child can be very complicated.
Real experiences
Elena Gómez works in project management for an NGO part-time from her home and tells us how she manages with a small child at home:
“Since before I got pregnant I knew that I wanted to spend the most time with my baby when I was born and that is what I have done, but it has not been a path of roses. My trick is the organization and also that I have been lucky enough to be able to count on help: on Sunday the meals are planned all week and I have a person who comes to do the cleaning thoroughly one day a week, so the subject cleaning step. I do the minimum and, always at the end of the day. My baby has quite regular schedules, so I take the opportunity to work when he sleeps and, when he is awake, I propose games and try that, little by little, he endures more and more entertaining himself. If one day it is painful or difficult, the work is parked and I will finish it when I go to bed. I have realized that it does not compensate to insist on imposing my schedule ”.
Marcela tells us that, for her, the most difficult thing was for people to convince themselves that she was really working:
“When you stay at home to take care of your baby, many people think that you are playing house. My friends called me at any time and expected me to have time to talk, my mother appeared at home to see the girl at any time ... For me it has been very important to set limits and make my environment understand that I am working and my work has exactly the same value as that done in an office. The only interruptions I allow are those of my baby: the rest have to wait. With my mother I agreed to come two days a week at a specific time and so I organized the work, with my partner that I could not dedicate myself to the thousand and a small day-to-day efforts in my work time, to my friends I told them what my work schedule was and if they call me at that time I don't pick them up and call them back later. ”
Nerea set up a buying and selling company online when she had her second child and has opted for a creative solution for the care of the child:
“I had to take my older son to the nursery with five months with all the pain of my heart and I promised myself that the same would not happen to me with the second. Between one pregnancy and another I decided to start and set up a business at home to buy products for babies. In a course for entrepreneurs I contacted two more mothers who were in the same situation as me and we have reached an agreement to share the care of children (they have all around the year) three mornings a week. In times of hard work we have resorted to a caretaker who has stayed with the three children and thus we get cheaper. "
Maybe because of the crisis or maybe because business philosophy is changing, there are many who take advantage of these times of economic uncertainty to start their own business. Some of these entrepreneurs are parents of babies and young children and, in order to meet this demand, innovative initiatives have emerged such as coworking spaces with baby areas (for example Cobaby, in Madrid) or coworking that establish agreements with nearby daycare centers at advantageous prices like Valkiria, in Barcelona.
Tatiana is the mother of a two-year-old child and tells us how she had to give up her desire to work from home when she became a mother:
“I am a graphic designer and have been working from home for 15 years. I was working until literally two hours before giving birth and my idea (innocent of me) was to return to work as soon as the first weeks had passed. Later, I found a very different reality. The demand was continuous, he had to be practically all day with the baby in his arms (or on the tit). I was exhausted and my brain was bloody. After a few months, I tried again. My son did not agree to see me in front of the computer (or drawings or toys or anything). I've come to hide in the bathroom to finish an urgent thing with him crying and pounding the door. In the end I decided that that was not fair for either of us and I have not returned to work until it has started to go to daycare. ”
Tips to work at home and not die trying
- The house is the house and your job is your job: With that mountain of clothes looking at us, that challenging stack of dishes and those toys everywhere, it is easy for much of our work time to be "taking away two or three little things in between." With children and work is enough, the house has to go to the background.
- Know yourself: What time do you pay more? What tasks cost you more work? What causes you stress? It is necessary to do self-analysis to get the most out of the time we have to work. For example, reserve the tasks that require more concentration for when the children are sleeping. Other lighter ones such as answering mails or organizing tasks surely we can do them while we watch the children.
- Plan: Do you know the Pomodoro technique? It consists of alternating periods of intense concentration of about 25 minutes with breaks of five minutes. Of course, the baby's demands are not going to adapt to that rigid scheme, but the idea is to apply ** techniques to improve performance ** making the most of the available time.
- Be flexible: Making strict expectations about what you have to do will only lead to frustration because, simply, many days you will not arrive. You have to have the ability to leave things halfway and then resume them without dramas, without feelings of guilt neither towards yourself nor towards children. They don't bother you for fun, it's just that they don't have the same interests as you.
- Set limits: The problem that all the people who work from home have, whether they have children or not, is that the flexibility of the schedules means that in the end you are working all day (even in a little while) and even on weekends. It is important not to collapse reserve time of rest and disconnection.
- Prioritize: Now, more than ever, you have to think: "Does it compensate me or not?" before undertaking any activity. Customers who must be persecuted to pay us, projects that do not contribute much to us ... if we have the option to choose, we must also have the courage to say "No" to projects that don't give us much and we take time to devote to the kids.
Before embarking on the adventure of working from home, we must think about whether things go with us and plan very well. If the answer is "Yes", go ahead! With these tips from moms who work at home with babies and toddlers We have it a little easier.
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