Does anyone else work from home with toddler?

[JessicaLeo1980]

I'm wondering if anyone else manages to work from home while looking after their toddler? I've just been offered a job by one of my old colleagues who said he would let me work flexibly. I was thinking I could do the majority in the evening and at weekends while my partner is at home. But that would mean we never get any time to do things as a family. Does anyone else manage to juggle all this? I wouldn't earn enough to put my son in childcare so I need to find a way of working while he is at home and while my partner can help. Does this sound doable? Thanks.

If you need to 'get a bit of work done', possibly. If you need to work solid days, with scheduled meetings/phone calls/interviews, no way whatsoever.

I've been freelance since before having my first baby 15 years ago. I worked four days week, made possible by a very wonderful childminder.

Imatter, nonsense thankful my male bosses were far more understanding about working from home than the two female ones
I did it and it is not impossible.i started working from home 20 hours a week when dd was born
Ds was 2 then and he went to nursery 2 days a week. I used to work when dd was a sleep or after dcs bedtime. Dd started nursery when she was 2. I carried on at home for 8 years and a then a 12 hours in the office and the rest at home for another 3 years.

Fusion - you have misread my posts.

I am a lawyer. I have my own firm. We do a lot of emergency applications to court. I was in court 8 times last week. Three of them at the drop of a hat.

We need to be ready to deal with various tricky situations in a heart beat. I would not employ anyone who did not have childcare in place. Unless they were happy to leave their toddler home alone whilst they headed off to a meeting or court....

I agree motherinferior.

You have hit the nail on the head and put it much better than I did.

Thank you.

I like my work: I like being able to focus on it. Not to do stuff in snatched moments, or starting a shift at bedtime. (And you can't schedule a phone interview at 8pm in any case.)

Fusion DH and I run our own business and I take care of all admin, finance and HR. I'm sure you didn't mean to sound quite as flippant as you did, but no, what I do doesn't involve "little concentration" and only 3.5 second time blocks. I manage to somehow provide employment for 10 people in a very competitive industry.

I did accounts admin for a major charity. I had deadlines to meet but as long as they were met nobody really cared when i worked. I was always a night owl anyway so didnt mind working late when needed.

Thanks everyone. Luckily the work wouldn't involve answering emails or phone calls most of the time as its formatting documents. I think I will do a trial and see how it goes as at the moment I'm unsure of how long each document will take. I'm reluctant to work all weekend as we would miss out on family time which is very precious. Plus I'm pregnant with number 2 so come August I won't be able to work at all. The work is for around 3 months so I will give it a go and hopefully we can work something out :-)

JustHavinABreak I was commenting more on the demands of a toddler - not the demands of your work as such. How on earth do you keep DC occupied whilst you work??!! I am genuinely baffled as mine do not leave me alone when I am at home.

I worked from home with a toddler for a while, but it depended on it being extremely flexible, computer-based work that I could do while he napped. I did the odd bit of work in the evening to meet a deadline, but not much. I was lucky in that DS kept to quite a reliable long nap for a long time. I was also able to pick and choose the amount of work I took on, which was essential to making it work. When he started not sleeping for as long, I started using a very well priced local childminder. I wouldn't want to do it in the longterm, but it worked for us for a while.

Comparing being a lawyer who has to take calls and attend court at short notice with document formatting or freelance writing (which is what I was doing) is a bit of a pointless exersise - they're so clearly different! If the work is extremely flexible, the deadlines aren't too intense and being interrupted by a crying child occasionally doesn't have too much of an impact, it's possible to work from home with a toddler. Not desirable, certainly, but possible!

I'm a freelance writer; I'm a journalist. It isn't that flexible - if you have interviews scheduled at 9am and 11am you have to do them - you have to have enough time to get everything done, and I'd have been mortified if I'd had my phone calls interrupted by toddlers!