Accepting Our New Normal
In the background, my husband and three children are playing a game, frozen pizza is in the oven, and my dog is hanging out under my desk. This is a dream Friday night. The chaos of the day doesn’t exist. Fighting traffic to get home by dinner time doesn’t exist.
I know that this isn’t the case for everyone right now. Many moms are still considered essential, and they are trying to juggle the demands of work, the threat of a virus, and ensuring that their children’s school requirements are being met. Not much has changed for them (or you).
What I have learned over the last two weeks of working from home, while juggling the requirements of work is that my tone sets us up for the successes of the day. Our days require more routine than they have when I was working outside of the home and my children were going to school and daycare. When I deliver a more structured day, we all succeed.
Our Schedule
What I have found by unofficially testing… ok, just being lazy… is that when I set our alarms and require my kids to follow a morning routine we are all able to flow between conference calls and worksheets easily. Here is an example of what is working in our house:
6 AM - Adult alarm goes off, check email, etc. …
6:30 AM - Children naturally wake up. We also use this alarm clock to let them know when its ok to get out of bed. Sometimes they pay attention, sometimes they don’t.
7 AM - Breakfast, nothing crazy. I didn’t change into Martha Stewart when I lost my commute. We usually have the same cereal or oatmeal that we would have if we were all off to our old destinations.
7:45 AM - Get dressed for a walk and then go on said walk. Its about 30-40 minutes for us to make it around our neighborhood. The kids get to run and some fresh air before we sit down for about 2 hours of schoolwork.
9 AM - My conference calls begin. During my call prep I have added to tasks to make sure that all of the worksheets have been printed out and directions are explained. My oldest is in First Grade. I let her work on these items independently and as I get breaks I look over her work and make any needed corrections. I set up my pre-k child with some of his own worksheets. Right now we are favoring Play-doh letter and number mats. I have placed the print outs in sleeves to help make them last - as you can imagine, I am going through enough printer toner, and you probably are too. These are great sleeves because they work well with dry erase markers and are used in many pre-school and kindergarten classrooms. I have found them in the dollar section of Target during back to school sales.
10 AM - Snack Time - This is about the time that my kids have snack time at school. Keeping them on a similar food schedule has helped cut back on the all day snacking.
10:30 AM - Ipad and Kindle time. Any work that has to be done in apps happens now. This helps power everyone through to lunch, and I get some quiet time for tasks that require little disruption.
12 PM - Lunch - Self explanatory. I have added in some recess time, if the weather is cooperating then I get them outside to run off some built up energy, and I get to pull my laptop outside and get some vit-d while I work through some emails.
1 PM - Naptime. My youngest isn’t quiet 2 so I here is where I have placed school work that requires a bit more attention from me and nicely eliminated a child for a couple of hours, so we all aren’t juggling meltdowns because she sin’t getting attention.
1:15 PM - Math and any additional schoolwork which requires extra assistance from a parent. This last hour to hour and a half is our final push for schoolwork for the day. If we haven’t finished it by now, then I will move the assignment to a different day.
3 PM - TV Time. I let my kids watch their favorite shows. We don’t have cable so they are limited to Netflix and Amazon Prime. This will then give me another hour and a half to get through my work during normal office hours.
5 PM - Dinner - prep, make, eat, clean up. I try to involve my kids in this process in different ways. Sometimes they can help with actual preparation (I try to sneak in some math here), other times I just require them to straighten up their toys and the dinner table.
6:30 PM - Bedtime routine. This routine is still the same as its been during the traditional school year. Bath, PJs, brush teeth, and read stories, with a lights out goal of between 8 and 8:30 PM.
8:30 PM - This is my time to finish any work from the office and catch up on chores. I am a follower of Clean Mama, so depending on the day I will have to finish up those tasks.
10:30 PM - Lights out!
