What Happens When Parents Work From Home? A Teacher’s Perspective on Attention and Independence
On a Tuesday morning in early October, I sat across from Mia in my kindergarten classroom. She was staring at a pile of unopened crayons. “You can start whenever you’re ready,” I told her. She didn’t move. She glanced at me, then at the crayons, then at the door.
“Where does your mom work?” I asked.
“In her office,” Mia said. “She has the door closed.”
Mia’s mom is a marketing director who has worked from home since before the pandemic. During our parent-teacher conference, she logged on from a small desk in her bedroom, apologizing for the laundry basket behind her chair. She told me she loves her job and loves being there for Mia, but she also says she feels like she’s never fully done with anything. That stuck with me.
Because what I’ve started to notice in my classroom isn’t about the parents at all. It’s about the kids.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen a shift. More children than ever have a parent or two who work remotely. They’re not bad kids. Actually, many of them have incredible vocabularies and are used to adult conversations. They hear the rhythm of meetings, the politeness of Zoom greetings, the way their parents talk through problems out loud. That’s a gift.
But they also tend to expect a kind of availability that their peers don’t. They’re used to having an adult within earshot. If they need help opening their snack, or they can’t find their shoe, or they just feel like telling someone something important about a squirrel, there’s always been a parent right there—sometimes muted, sometimes half-listening, but physically present.
In the classroom, this shows up in small ways. A child will sit and wait for me to give them permission to start a task, even though I’ve just explained the instructions. Another will raise their hand and say, “I can’t,” without having tried. They look to me the way they look to the closed door of their parent’s office—hoping, waiting, unsure.
I started using a simple phrase this year: Try three things before you find me. It’s not a rule I scold with. It’s more like a signal. It tells a child that their first resource isn’t the adult in charge. It’s their own memory, their own problem-solving, their own ability to look around and figure something out. When a student asks, “What do I do next?” I reply, “Can you try three things first?” One of those things is usually looking at the board. Another is asking a friend. The third is usually just guessing and starting somewhere.
It works. Not every time, but most of the time.
At home, my husband and I both work remotely. Our daughter, Maya, is seven. A few months ago, I bought a small red light—the kind you’d see on a stage—and put it on my office door. We explained it like this: when the red light is on, Mom is in her meeting brain. Unless someone is bleeding or the house is on fire, the door stays closed. When the light is off, Mom is available.
It took Maya three weeks to stop knocking. The first week, we had six interruptions. The second week, she started sliding notes under the door. Now, she mostly waits. But sometimes, she still sits right outside the door with her back against the wall, playing with a doll or reading. She wants to be near me, even if she can’t be with me. I understand the feeling.
Last week, I was on a call that ran over my lunch break. I could hear Maya in the kitchen, making a sandwich for herself. She sliced a banana using a butter knife, and I thought, That’s fine. She’s capable. But then she knocked on the door, and I ignored it. When the call finally ended, I opened the door and found her sitting in the hallway, not crying, but with a quiet, patient look on her face.
“I just needed to ask you something,” she said. “But you said only fire and blood.”
I wasn’t angry. I was frustrated—at myself, at the culture that makes us feel like we need to be available to our jobs at all hours, at the way a simple red light can make a seven-year-old feel like she has to manage her own needs alone.
That moment didn’t make me feel like a better employee or a better parent. And I think that’s the honest answer to the question you hear a lot these days: does remote work improve overall work-life balance and employee happiness?
I want to say yes. I’ve seen parents who get to eat lunch with their kids, who don’t have to miss soccer games, who save two hours of commute every day. Those are real wins. But remote work doesn’t automatically create balance. It just makes the imbalance more visible. When you work in an office, you carry the boundary with you—you leave at 5:00, and home is home. When you work in your kitchen, the boundary is something you have to build every single day, with lights and schedules and a lot of imperfect conversations.
That’s a skill. And it’s one kids watch us learn in real time.
What I tell parents at conferences now isn’t about whether working from home is good or bad for children. It’s about the signal you’re sending. If you always answer your child right away, they won’t learn what waiting feels like. If you’re physically present but mentally somewhere else, they feel that too—because they’re paying attention to the inside of you, not just your location in the house.
I don’t say this to make parents feel guilty. I am a parent, and I’m not guilty—I’m just tired. But I do think we can be more intentional.
One thing that helped our family was scheduling “non-busy time.” It sounds strange, because remote work gives us more time together, so why schedule it? But the truth is, if I don’t plan for it, the time gets eaten by meetings and deadlines. So we now have a recurring calendar event: Maya time, 15 minutes after school. We both treat it like it’s a real meeting. I close my laptop. She chooses the activity. It’s not long, but it’s predictable. She knows it’s coming, and I do too.
That predictability matters more than the length. It’s also the same thing I’m trying to teach in the classroom: not that adults are always unavailable, but that we’re available in a way that a child can rely on. Reliable, not constant.
Back to Mia. She eventually did open the crayons. It took her about five minutes of fidgeting, looking around, and sighing. When she finally started, she drew a picture of her mom sitting at a laptop, with a speech bubble that said, “One moment, honey.” Underneath, she wrote the word waiting. She wasn’t upset. She told me her mom says that a lot, and then she usually comes to the kitchen for lunch.
That’s not trauma. That’s just life. But it taught me something about what remote work does to children. It doesn’t hurt them. It just asks them to grow a certain kind of patience earlier than some other kids. As long as they know they’re still loved—and they do—that patience is probably a good thing. It just needs to be balanced with enough presence that they don’t feel like they’re always waiting for something.
I still don’t have this figured out. My red light works some days and not others. Last week, I forgot to turn it off during lunch, and Maya knocked anyway. She had a drawing to show me, and I’m glad she did. Because in the end, remote work doesn’t mean we’re always available. It just means we have to work harder at deciding when to be.
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