Working from home with kids – NOT!

Posted by Stormy on February 12th, 2008 in Open Source

When I mention that I work from home occasionally, there's always someone who says, "That's great! You get to spend more time with your kids."  Either they don't have kids or my kids are not normal kids. Here's what a day at home would look like for Caleb, my 18 month old, if I tried to work with him at home.

Caleb's Kichen

From Caleb's point of view:

Mom's toys are the most fun, especially "mommycomputer". Try to bang on the keyboard. If you can't reach the keyboard, climb into Mom's lap and bang on it. If she leaves, hit all the keys. Cool things happen. Mom won't let me play with "mommycomputer" anymore – oh, what about the dog! Sit on dog – whoops, he stood up. Grab his tail! Hang on for dear life and scream! This is fun, flying around the house, hanging onto dog's tail! OWWWW! The wall hurts. MOOMMMYYY! Ok, Mommy looked at my head and said I'd live. Check out the kitchen. Pull everything out of the drawers, turn the knobs on the stove, open door. Oh, Mommy finally came to play and she said no. Go to bathroom. Door is closed – no problem, I know a door I can open! Run to living room, climb on sofa, stand on sofa arm, lean way over, grab front door handle, twist! Front door is open! Now … 

That would be the first 30 minutes. Eventually I'd either get fired for not working or arrested for child abuse or both.

To be fair, I do get to spend more time with my kids when I work from home because I don't have to commute, so my day has two extra hours in it. But I don't spend time with my kids while I'm working. Maybe when they are older? 

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  1. srlinuxx said, on February 12th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    lolol

    Yep! My son wonders why I say I can’t work if he brings the gran’babies over. I’m gonna get him to read your post. That explains it so much better than I can.

    Too funny.

  2. Cathy Malmrose said, on February 18th, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    Yes! When they are older… In only a few years he’ll be sitting alongside you typing away on his own laptop / desktop posting his own brilliant blog. Ha.

    I did a lot of work from home with my 3 yo and 2 yo (both wildly active) by putting one of those Little Tykes climbing structures in the living room. People would walk in and stare, wondering what we had done, but the boys grew up strong and healthy and eventually began channelling their climbing, pulling, tugging, and running. They’re now healthy teenagers in cross country and other sports. Whew.

    Wishing you the best no matter where your office happens to be.