How to Balance Parenting and Work Life During a Crisis

Working remotely is challenging. But when combined with the full-time job of entertaining, feeding, and caring for my child, Im overwhelmed and exasperated. As a parent to a vociferous toddler (with flipside one on the way!), I have no clever transmission for how to wastefulness both. 

My thoughtfully crafted schedule is thrown out the window, idealized parenting techniques ignored, and hours of once-forbidden screen-time consumed. Theres no right way to deal with a slipperiness like this, but Ive learned quite a few lessons- and so have my team members at Lemonade. 

Here are some tried and true hacks that can make the difference between a good day and an villainous one. They wont all work for every family or child, but they may help ease some of your strain as we all navigate these new changes, responsibilities, and schedules.

Customer Wits Specialist, Alex.R and his daughter Nina

1. Come up with a game plan

Have a conversation with your partner in childcare and come up with a schedule for your own work. I try nonflexible not to get unprotected up in maintaining the way things used to be. These are unchartered waters, and weve got to make do with what we can. 

I recommend creating shift work and setting up a designated workspace. Choose a spot in your home that is quiet and comfortable. I’ve found our garden table to be a unconfined temporary office. No solution is going to be perfect, so if something doesnt work, get creative, and try again. 

Of course, all of this applies to your partners work as well, Avital Schreiber-Levy, a parenting performance coach, told me. Honoring both of your work times (and personal me time) is vital to your family as a whole. Schreiber-Levy said it best:

Its simply untellable to multitask parenting and important work, and it would not do either of your roles justice to try.

Tell your partner how you can protect their work time, and help them do the same for you. This is a unconfined time to shine together.

For one of my team members Silvi S., noise-canceling headphones are her tool of choice:

“When I wore headphones at work, my team knew I was in the zone. Now, I use the same signal with my partner at home,” she said.

Ive moreover found that it helps to be picky with Zoom calls, which have the potential to eat up all of your working hours. Decide which calls are essential, and which ones can be solved without a meeting. 

2. Teach your children to play vacated

Looking back, my pre-corona lifestyle had been pretty hectic, expressly for my toddler. This wits made me realize that he demands a lot of sustentation and unvarying interaction. Because of this, Im trying to lean into self-sustaining play, which can have serious benefits- not just for his own development, but for my necessary blocks of child-free time to work. 

Allocate a specific woodcut of time to play with your children, recommends Dr. Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D., tragedian of Playful Parenting. The key is to show up with no plan. Let your kids lead, but encourage their play. Once time is up, the kids tend to protract alone, feeling good well-nigh themselves. 

Thankfully, you dont need to supervise your kids play the whole time. Schreiber-Levy can help you master this wastefulness with her Play Guide, which offers practical resources to play with kids during lockdown. 

Dr. Cohen moreover recommends stuff involved as your child plays. For instance, I requite my toddler a challenge: Setting up a tea party in a tent we built for him. Once I self-ruling up, I take the time to enjoy playing in the tent with him. So if your kid wants your sustentation when youre busy, rencontre them to something you can participate in later. 

Product Quality Specialist, Olga.H and her son Yuval

3. Schedule, schedule, schedule

In specimen you didnt once know, routines can modernize your health- and they don’t unchangingly need to be boring. Until this crisis, I didnt know how much I needed a good ol routine. They can requite your kids a sense of security, expressly during a crisis.

A predictable routine allows children to finger safe, and to develop a sense of mastery in handling their lives, I read in Aha Parenting, a popular parenting blog. 

One of my colleagues, Jorge E., Lemonades Chief Business Minutiae Officer, confirmed this- he finds that scheduling blocks of family time throughout the day helps him maintain a wastefulness between work and kids.

When chatting with Yael C., VP of BizOps at Lemonade, she recommended creating a schedule that combines play and learning:

We requite stickers for studying language, math, and science throughout the week. If you get 15 stickers a week, you get to go to the treasure box.  There, you can pick one item, usually small LEGO sets or puzzles.

Schedules arent only vital for kids- they moreover help create some routine in our own lives. Some of the most famous writers, like T.S Eliot, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, depended on a set daily routine for success, equal to the Harvard Business Review. 

Thats why I set an watchtower every day, get dressed, make my coffee, and throne to my designated workspace. 

4. Exercise 

A full day of commuting, work, and social commitments unchangingly exhausts me (and my toddler). But staying indoors all day long doesnt quite eat up the same energy levels. Good luck with nap time, right?

Im lucky unbearable to have an outside area, so I try to encourage zippy play as much as possible. For those who dont, Schreiber-Levy recommends creating a unscratched space inside for kids to tumble: