Trying to work at home with noisy kids – it’s a whole new challenge by itself.
If you’re allowed to work from home during the ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine), consider yourself lucky.
Or are you REALLY lucky?
If you DON’T have kids, you are lucky. But if you do, there’s only one thing for me to say.
Welcome to my life!
I’ve been working from home for the past 9 years and for most of those years, we didn’t have a nanny to take care of our kids. That means working full-time, at home, with 2 very noisy kids.
I love my kids. I really do. But they make so much noise!
They. Don’t. Stop. Talking. And singing. And dancing. Plus the running around!
You name it. They’ve done it.
And the thing is, we live in a small house. So if they make a noise in the living room we can definitely hear it at our workstation.
How have I not lost my sanity yet? And more importantly, how do I still have a thriving career?
Let me give you some tips on how to work at home with noisy kids. And no, it doesn’t include kicking them out of the house. (Sorry!)
Set up your home office in a quiet place
You kids need visual and glaringly obvious signs that you are working. To do that, you need to set up a home office. It has to appear like your sacred working space. A place where they are not allowed to play.
If you live in a big house, you might have a room that you can spare as your home office. That way, you can close the door while you are working. At the very least, their noise will be muffled by the door.
But if you are like me, living in a small house, it’s going to be a bit more challenging. Your choices will either be the living room or your bedroom. The bedroom is probably the best spot especially if your kids often play in the living room.
Use noise-canceling headphones
I tried it and earphones will not suffice. Trust me. You will need headphones. The big ones that will really drown out the noise. Among the brands that have these noise-canceling headphones include Sony, Bose, and Plantronics. Headset Direct explains that noise-canceling headphones makes your voice clearer resulting to less repetition within the conversation making it more accurate.
Admittedly, I do not use these noise-canceling headphones because I realized that I can concentrate even if I use the normal ones.
Besides, we don’t have anyone else looking after the kids while we work. So we need to hear them even while they are in the other room. Like if we need to stop a fight or to check if they’re still alive after a loud crashing sound. You know, normal kid stuff. If they’re too quiet, it’s not always a good sign.
Work At Home With Noisy Kids by Talking to them
Finally, you need to talk to them. It doesn’t matter how young they are, they have to know that when Mommy or Daddy are seated in their home office, we need to concentrate. We need to work in peace. If we are talking to someone on the phone, they cannot disturb us.
You might have to write down the rules if you have to. Just to remind them that home is also where Mommy and Daddy have to work sometimes. So they need to keep quiet.
While they will understand this “peace and quiet” rule during your conversation, be prepared to remind them again and again. Because they will forget. And you just have to be patient with them.
After all these years, we still remind them. So don’t think your kids are going to behave soon. The only time you will really get some peace and quiet is when they go back to school. Which, it seems, will not happen anytime soon.
So, again, welcome to my life.
Good luck! 😁
(I made my eldest read this and he said he felt insulted…) 😂😂😂