Working While Raising Kids: Real, Doable Tips for Busy Working Parents
7:12 a.m. last Wednesday, I’m leaning against my kitchen counter, laptop open to a 7:30 team check-in, orange juice seeping through my 8-year-old’s math worksheet, and my 4-year-old is tugging the hem of my sweatpants demanding I cut her toast into stars instead of squares. I’m counting the seconds I have to clean the juice, pack both kids’ lunches, and touch up my presentation bullet points, when I get a text from a mom in our carpool group: “How many of us actually do this every day and don’t talk about how messy it is?”
I went to school pickup the next day, asked the small group of parents waiting against the fence how many of us are working full or part-time while raising kids. Three out of four raised our hands. When I asked how many still struggle to make it work without feeling guilty all the time, all four did. No one posts the parts where you forget to pack a snack, or you miss a field trip because your boss scheduled a last-minute audit, or you yell because you’re on a call and the kids won’t stop yelling.
A couple of weeks back, my son’s teacher sent home a note: he’s been distracted during morning work, hasn’t turned in three homework assignments in two weeks. I was mid-deadline, so I stuffed the note in my bag and forgot about it until bedtime, when I found it crumpled under a granola bar wrapper. I sat on the edge of his bed that night and asked him what was going on. He said, “I forget to put it in my folder because you’re always working when I finish it, and I don’t remember to ask you to check.” That hit me. I’d been so busy feeling guilty about working that I hadn’t actually built a system that worked for him, instead of expecting him to fit around my messy schedule.
I tried a few small things, no big overhauls or expensive productivity tools, and most of them have stuck. The first was what I started calling “connection snacks.” I prep them the night before, so I don’t have to think about them when I’m busy. Before I log on for the day, I spend two minutes: a tickle fight with the 4-year-old, or let my son tell me the entire plot of the Roblox game he played the night before. I stick a dumb doodle of a penguin in my son’s lunchbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After my last meeting before pickup, I send a 10-second voice note to his old hand-me-down phone saying I’m excited to hear about art class. All of these are two minutes or less. What I noticed is that before I started this, the kids would interrupt my work every 10 minutes asking for snacks, or help, or just to show me something. Now they interrupt half as often, because their need for my attention is already filled in those small chunks. They don’t have to act out to get me to notice them.
Next, we made checklists. For my 8-year-old, a laminated checklist taped to the front of his backpack: 1) Homework in folder 2) Library book in bag 3) Hat for recess. Every morning he checks each box, gets a sticker on the fridge if he does it without a reminder. Friday night, if he has four stickers, he picks the movie for family night. No more me stopping work to remember to check his homework. His teacher said last week he’s turned in every assignment since we started that. He’s proud of himself, too, which I never would have gotten if I was checking it for him every night. That’s the thing I didn’t expect: kids learn to manage their own work when we let them, even if it takes a little time to set up the routine at first.
I also changed one phrase I used to say all the time. I used to snap “I’m busy, go away” when I was in the middle of a call. That made them feel shut out, so they’d just come back louder five minutes later. Now I say, “I need 10 more minutes to finish this work, then I will help you build that Lego set. Can you get all the pieces out onto the table while you wait?” It’s the same core thing — I’m still busy — but it tells them exactly when they’ll get my attention, and gives them a small job to do while they wait. Nine times out of 10, they’re fine, and I finish my work without interruption. The only non-negotiable rule is that when the 10 minutes are up, I go, even if my work isn’t done. If you keep your promise, they learn to trust that you’ll come, so they don’t need to badger you.
Last week, I had a full day of back-to-back meetings, and my 4-year-old’s daycare was closed for cleaning. I set her up with a rice sensory bin at the other end of my dining table, with plastic farm animals and spoons. She stayed busy for 45 minutes, right up until the middle of my big presentation with the CEO, when she dumped the entire bin of rice on the floor. I muted my mic, turned off my camera, pointed to the broom by the pantry, and mouthed “10 minutes” to her. She got the broom, and we swept it up during the 10-minute break between meetings. No yelling, no guilt, just a mess we cleaned up together.
This week hasn’t been perfect. I missed two connection snacks because I got stuck on a call. My son forgot his homework once. We ate cereal for dinner three nights in a row. I still have moments where I lie awake at night wondering if I’m missing too much. But last night, my son came home from school, pulled a crumpled sticky note out of his pocket with a doodle of a penguin just like mine, and stuck it to my laptop. It says “good luck on your meeting mom.” It’s not the neat, perfect balance everyone talks about, but it’s ours, and it works more often than it doesn’t.
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