Working From Home With Kids

Tips on sharing the space and making the most of the day

Working from home with kids during coronavirus quarantine | Washington FAMILY

Starting today, area public schools are closed, and many companies as well as state offices are allowing their workers to telecommute. If you’re going to be working from home with kids in the house, your new normal may be answering emails at the dining room table alongside a third grader studying math or a seventh grader creating a PowerPoint.

This is the day-to-day in a state of emergency declared to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“Everyone is in the same boat and it’s going to take some trial and error,” says Amy McGinn, a lecturer on educational technology at Loyola University of Maryland and a mother two young girls.

Schedules are a must

First, remember that kids are used to schedules, and they are growing up in a world that includes online learning. But they also have shorter attention spans than we do. Even high schoolers can struggle with executive function or knowing what to do when.

These days at home need structure and that needs to come from the adults, McGinn says. Each day should have time for children and adults to do independent work. Make sure they are set up so that when adults are most busy, kids are doing their schoolwork.

Try setting a timer for 25 minutes of quiet work, McGinn says. Use an online timer or even your stove or microwave so children can see how much time they have left.

Lower expectations

Kids will come home with weeks of lessons for this unprecedented school closing, McGinn says, and these lessons “may not happen perfectly.”

Know, too, that our own work may not happen in the 9-to-5. Answer emails before the kids get up and work after they go to bed, she says.

“We have to take the time we can find to get things done,” she adds.

Go low tech

Make time for non-tech activities. “Be scientists outside,” McGinn says.

Watch Washington FAMILY’s editor talks about things to do with the kids at home over the next two weeks.

And do the things they can’t do at school, such as take a 10-minute walk between science and math.

Get help

From your kids, that is. Young children love to be helpers and can staple, file or even bring laundry upstairs. “Take advantage of their energy and excitement,” McGinn says.

She adds that working side by side in these weeks allows kids to see what adults get to for their work day. And it could give us opportunities we haven’t thought about. She is looking forward to having lunch with her kids every day.

Get bored

“We are so scheduled with our kids these days,” McGinn says. It’s OK for them to be bored for a short period of time and to be challenged to come up with an activity to do on their own. “That would give them a little bit of ownership and responsibility. And that’s growth and learning,” she says.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, Baltimore’s Child.