What Full-time Work from Home Really Looks Like With Kids

Two weeks in the life of a freelancing parent

Working from home wasn’t a COVID pivot for me, the way it was for hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Instead, it was something I chose seven years ago.

In January 2015, I had just finished my fifth year working full-time as an editor for an environmental engineering firm. I was starting my second year as the department editor for a local seminary, and my fourth as a recommended editor for seminary students. I’d just completed my first and second novel edits for pay.

Oh, and I had a six-month-old.

After three weeks of putting in 12-hour days seven days a week — and effectively missing a full sixth of my daughter’s life thus far doing it — I knew something had to give.

My job with the engineers was cushy in a lot of respects. I had great health insurance, flexible hours, and co-workers I enjoyed. But in five years, I felt I’d learned all I could — and wanted to — about environmental engineering.

Also, despite being a great place to work, it was a literal dead-end job. I could be their editor forever, but the only feasible promotion was putting “senior” in front of my title and keeping on editing quarterly reports where nothing changed but the data.

I told my husband, my mom, and my best friend I wanted to quit my full-time job and focus on, well, everything else. I expected someone to tell me I was being reckless. No one did. In fact, they all encouraged me and thought it was a smart move. So I put in my notice.

I’ve worked from home full time since March 2015.

Most of that time, I’ve had access to at least part-time daycare and/or the kids have been in school much of the day. The last two weeks have been the first time since June 2020 when this wasn’t true.

Some things I noticed about these two weeks versus the three months of 2020 shutdown:

• My work expectations are different. I was lucky in 2020 that most of my projects were shallow work, like formatting, rather than deep work that requires significant focus.
• My children are two years older. They were 4 and 6 in 2020 and are 6 and 8 now. In some ways, this makes it easier, but their dynamic and needs have changed.
• The world is not shut down around us anymore. I couldn’t curl up on the couch and play Animal Crossing while they watched; we all had places we needed to be. This ended up being the kicker.

Week One: Thou Shalt Commute

Thinking it would help with keeping down sibling fights, boredom, and all other such calamities, I enrolled my six-and-a-half-year-old son in a dance/art (both of which he loves) camp for the first four days of week one.

Unfortunately, it was a half-day camp. Also unfortunately, I had a lot of recurring appointments whose recurrences happened to be this week. Also also, my eight-year-old is on a competitive gymnastics team with practices Monday and Wednesday afternoons.

The driving

Monday, August 1, eight-year-old had daycare and six-year-old had camp. I was driving from 8:00 to 9:25, from 12:20 to 2:15, and from 4:35 to 5:40, but between 9:25 and 12:20, and between 2:15 and 4:35, I was child-free for the last time until August 16.

Tuesday, I was driving from 8:30 to 9:15 and from 12:45 to 1:30, and taking public transit to an appointment downtown, with eight-year-old in tow, from 9:50 to 12.

Wednesday, I was driving from 8:40 to 9:15, from 12:40 to 1:55, and 4:55 to 5:40, and I had an online appointment from 2 to 3.

Thursday, I drove the same times as Tuesday but also had an eye doctor appointment in the morning that, once again, eight-year-old got to tag along to.

Friday there was NO CAMP! Only somewhere I had to leave for at 3:30 and not leave from until closer to 7. Before the week started, I had planned Friday as my day to finally get work done. That didn’t happen.

The work

In the midst of all that commuting, I found eight entire hours over the course of five days to work, and three of them were Monday. I had shallow, but tedious, work that took up all of those hours. I didn’t even try any of the deeper work I needed to do.

By the end of this week, I was desperately behind on my deadlines for three projects. I didn’t even make a weekly spread in my bullet journal, missing a whole week for the first time since August 2019 when I was on vacation.

Week Two: Thou Shalt Burn Out

Maybe, if I thought this state of kids home was indefinite like the “pause” in 2020, I would have tried to slow down a bit and lowered my expectations from a usual week.

I did not. I only had eight-year-old’s gymnastics practices and a few small errands to run this week, plus getting an allergy shot that would probably take me out, so I set up my expectations for myself as if I didn’t have two kids who were very tired of each other home with me for eight more days.

This went fine. On Monday.

The chaos

But Tuesday I woke up sneezing every ten minutes, so hard I was scared I would throw out my back. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, not work and not my kids, and I ended up having to call my husband home so I could take the Benadryl I knew would knock me out. And Wednesday I had to get the shot that makes those allergies not quite so bad, which meant another night of Benadryl.

I’m certain part of what made my allergies so bad this week (besides having to go six weeks instead of four between shots because a doctor was on vacation) was burning myself out. There are studies that show a correlation between lowered health and burnout.

I already knew this. Which meant that I went into Thursday and Friday… pushing as hard as ever, trying to get through the work I was behind on with bribes of even more work (this time on my novel), because I somehow thought that was what I needed.

In the midst of the above was the actual parenting part of working from home. I was driving less, but that meant the kids were home more. I spent my time breaking up fights, investigating and drying tears, and supervising cleaning.

When I did focus on work, I would get glimpses into their life as I overheard them from my office. They fought over whose rules to follow. They broke each other’s buildings. They begged for screen time and moped when it ended. Normal, typical kid stuff, if not ideal background noise for editing academic work.

They also were in charge of their own breakfasts and lunches, like six-year-old’s Pop Tart sandwich.

The work

I worked twelve hours over the course of five days, a full third of that on Friday when I finally found a rhythm that worked for the kids and me, two weeks into our two-week arrangement.

I think the only reason I succeeded at all was recognizing on Tuesday that I was too sneezy to work and giving myself respite that I wouldn’t have otherwise had. I stopped work after an hour and made myself not work on anything productive the rest of the day.

But I also ended the week so burnt out that I spent many of my evenings up until between midnight and 2am, when usually I’m in bed by 11 even on the weekends.

This is called Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, and it’s common among women (and students) in particular. Of course, as the Sleep Foundation notes, it results in significant downfalls, most of them associated with sleep deprivation, like:

• poor memory
• worse decision-making
• lowered health

Findings

While there is immense freedom in working from home, and I have found myself reluctant to give it up for the steady paycheck, hours, and workplace of a traditional job, in some ways, working from home as a parent has me exactly where I was in 2015 when I was juggling five different jobs and new motherhood all at once.

I spent more than twice as much time driving as working in my first week home, and found myself in a poorer mood because I felt I couldn’t give either job — my paid work or my parenting — my full attention. The balls I was juggling felt like hydras that multiplied if I tried to set them down.

As much as I’m grateful I have the flexibility to simply stay home with my kids when my daycare provider is on (a much-deserved!) vacation, I am counting down the days until Tuesday, when I can find focus in a way I’ve been desperately missing.

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