To think more people WFH with DC than let on

[Thorts]

NC. Will preface this: I’m pregnant, and I’ve worked in the early years sector for lots of years. I cannot imagine working from home with a young child, even one who sleeps a lot, unless it is an absolute emergency and even then I can imagine work suffers or you end up making the hours back up late at night. Despite this I can totally understand why people do and would never judge anyone for it, you do what you have to do. The cost of childcare being the main reason and then the availability of it. Some providers didn’t have space until my DC would be nearly two and I was enquiring less than a week after finding out I was pregnant.

Reading some older threads on here, people seem to share my view or have stronger opinions about why it’s wrong to WFH with a young child.

However, my experience of what people do IRL (might just be among those I know) is vastly different. I know a handful of people in various professions who admit to either them WFH or their partner working from home with the child there, for at least one day a week, to help cut costs down. Even my DM who always worked a hybrid position used to work from home whilst me and my sister were very young and said she just managed it and enjoyed the flexibility!!!

AIBU to think it actually happens a LOT more in real life than people are happy to admit?

yes but if you’re never pulled up on it…. how do you know you’re not pulling your weight? you’re managing to work and do childcare and getting paid every month and. o one saying anything to suggest what you’re doing isn’t good enough

I find it difficult to imagine genuinely believing that being paid to do say 8 hours of work for an employer but only doing 4, and therefore being paid by that employer to look after my own children, was totally fine just because nobody had told me otherwise.

But then I don’t take the piss, so.

You had a childminder though!

I knew someone who did this with a toddler with additional needs. I'm amazed that her work were ok with it. Or so she said. I suspect the toddler was often left in a play pen unsupervised.

but say you’d been doing it for years
and every performance review was… yep meeting expectations, no issues whatsoever

then perhaps your job is simply one you can do in 4 hours

My first ever wfh with child there was the lockdowns but ds was 9 by then so he was relatively self sufficient and was either doing schoolwork next to me or entertaining himself, he even made his own lunch (sandwich or salad) so I think that older dc are fine to wfh with while they are in the house. I doubt many do so with younger dc.

*. I had a childminder for to when I had to attend face to face meetings/ conferences etc.
what sort of nanny does the odd day here and there?

unless it’s very regularly every week

A guy was telling me he was planning to do a bit of Uber-ing during his work day. He works in a pubic service. I don’t know if he’ll manage to, or if this idea is an outlier, or has heard of others doing it.

I know one family who wfh with kids but theirs are upper primary age. They are gaming online a lot. I also know of one single mum who has her child at home with her for the entire summer holidays unless she is off on holiday and I feel sorry for both of them but especially the child who apparently knows to play quietly in her room the entire time.

Every single other family I know well where both parents work (maybe around 8?), uses grandparents, parental taking annual leave in turns, and mainly various holiday clubs. Some of us have started looking after each others kids in the holidays too. Reasons vary between the kids get bored at home, want to see their friends in the clubs, one or both of the parents travel sometimes, or in our case we have a lot of meetings on video call that do NOT work with kids popping in and out, or high pressure roles that are quite full on and can't easily just stop.

I don't know anyone at work who routinely works with their kids at home either. Occasionally someone will say their kid is at home because they are sick, in case they are interrupted, but it would definitely be frowned upon to have kids at home if you were working unless they were very capable of looking after themselves, getting their own food etc (eg year 4+)

DS is 10 so far today he has only need me for
*Making breakfast - could be done before work
*Permission to go call on a friend
*Finding his scooter in the garage - 5 minutes the same as a toilet break
*Doing some pizza for him and friend - could be on my lunch break

I don't work from home but can see why you would do it with an older child you don't have to entertain.

I do this a little 😬 husband works normal office hours, so I picked up a WFH job in evening hours so one of us is always here for the children.

The only stumbling block is that our youngest (under 1) is rocked to sleep by 18:30 and then eldest goes to bed at 18:45. Youngest will wake up if she's put down in her cot too soon after falling asleep, so it's just easiest to hold her for about 45 mins/1 hour before putting her down.

My shifts usually start between 18:00 and 19:00, so I'm left holding a sleeping baby whilst working at the laptop for at least some of the time I'm working. It does affect my typing speed as I've just got one hand free so therefore my work for that first hour. She also sometimes will stir and I have to spend 5 or 10 minutes rocking her back to sleep.

Oh well. I'm doing what I can. If they don't like it, they can pull me up on it. They haven't. I easily make up for it during the rest of my shift, I do far more overall than my other colleagues who work the same hours. Tbh they're decent employers so would probably appreciate the situation if it came to explaining why my first hour of working is a bit iffy...

I know lots on here won't like it but 🤷‍♀️

I'm more amazed a 10 year old needs you to get breakfast for him lol.

Unless they are your line reports or it's affecting you - so what?

I don't think that many people work with babies or toddlers (or if they start, they soon realise it's not viable).

I suspect there are more than a few who "pop" out to collect the kids from school in the afternoon though. And then let the kids watch TV until they've finished work for the day.

I suspect there are more than a few who "pop" out to collect the kids from school in the afternoon though. And then let the kids watch TV until they've finished work for the day

This is acceptable practice in my workplace and generally in in my sector.

People are quite open about this it's not a secret b

Primary aged children need childcare for anything more than an hour-ish, unless it's an emergency/one off or very infrequent. It's simply not feasible to do both jobs well.

Either you're focused on work or on the child. IMO, unless for short periods of time, its unreasonable to expect a child to just be quiet and get on with things themselves. To them, it's you prioritising something else over them.

Imagine most kids aged 4-8 are happier at home than at a childminders or something

under 3 no

Ultimately it depends on your job.
If its a case of just getting the work done, but doesn't matter if its at 7am, 1pm or 10pm... it might be manageable.

If its full on, with chance for breaks, 9-5pm... it will be a lot harder, and maybe unsafe.

Lots of us do this with primary age kids. My employer also does it too and has no problem, but babies/toddlers they've said it needs to be for sickness or emergency only.

I think most kids do prefer being at home with an engaged parent, yes, but mine definitely prefer after school club to being at home having to entertain themselves while one of us works.

They would love it if I just handed them a tablet for a couple of hours of course but I don't think that is as good for their development as playing with their peers.

The

I'm now in a position where my ND child can't function in a mainstream setting, and has been kicked out of wraparound care, so he's only in school 3 hours a day. I am fully remote and have no choice but to juggle work around him because there are zero options. His dad has washed his hands of him, too much hard work to manage the care between us so he's just shrugged his shoulders and walked away from his child. And yet I have to contunue to work to keep a roof over our heads. So I juggle and do my best.

I work from home in school holidays. DS is in year 1. I balance it pretty well and DS has a desk in my office that he can draw,
craft, write at, etc. My boss only cares that work gets done on time and the phone is answered in core hours. She doesn’t mind if I take a few hours off in the day, as long as I answer the phone. We don’t all work in corporate roles or have Teams meetings all day. Some of us just have to keep things ticking over.

A couple of my colleagues definitely do and are open about it. Kids are around 3/4 years old, the bosses seem to have no issue with it.

My DC is 16 so I do WFH when he's here sometimes but obviously he doesn't need looking after!