School may be out for the summer, but work sure isn’t. If you’re one of the millions of people who work from home, there’s a good chance you’re also the parent in charge of managing your kids while they’re around. Logistically, it makes sense for the mom or dad who doesn’t have a commute longer than forty seconds to handle camps, sports, and keeping an eye on whichever offspring are floating around your house untethered to academic responsibilities for three months of the year.
That being said, holy potatoes does this add to your workload. School is a glorious time of early morning oustings and a set schedule of silence in the home. Summer is chaos soup, served with very sticky hands and a way-too-large side of, “I’m bored.” While it’s great to do a job you love with the flexibility of being around for your family and other perks, there can be some downsides. Here are twenty-one truths of what it’s like to be a work-from-home mom or dad during summer break.
- Daycamps are your BFF.
- If the daycamps get canceled due to bad weather, you now have a team of small, antsy cleaning people with extra time on their hands to take care of chores you weren’t sure how you’d get done today. (Hooray!)
- The most inappropriate question your kid will shout into your office on any given day will occur during a live conference call. It will also likely contain the word “poop.”
- Noise-canceling headphones that block out screaming kids, lawn mowing, and everyone’s warm-weather construction projects are a creation worthy of a Nobel prize in awesomeness.
- When your kids are home, you will hear “Mom?/Dad?” and have a child walk into your office every 7-12 minutes throughout the day to complain about a sibling.
- If you lock your office door to prevent these interruptions, your kids will write up their complaints about their siblings and slide them underneath the door while shout-whispering, “I WON’T INTERRUPT YOU BUT THERE’S SOMETHING YOU SHOULD READ BY THE DOOR NOW.”
- The pure elation of not wearing suits when it’s humid out can never, ever, ever be overstated.
- You’re the person people think of as “around” when they’re either at work or away on vacation, so the requests from parents who work outside the home pour in all summer long for favors that invalidate the importance of what you do during your work hours and take already-limited time away from your own kids.
- Ice cream trucks will stop when grownups run out of their house with cash in hand: no kids required.
- There’s even more laundry than usual (Doesn’t heat make us wear less and smaller clothing? How is this a thing?), making every break you take one during which you must visit the washer and dryer.
- You’ve totally worked while wearing nothing but a swimsuit.
- You’ve totally worked while sitting on the couch with the kids watching a family-friendly movie.
- Every vacation you take during summer break is a working vacation.
- Working by the kiddie pool at a resort while sipping a margarita isn’t all that terrible.
- There comes a point when you no longer register the sound of children playing basketball in the kitchen on rainy days, yet the faintest whimper made during a genuine injury two floors away sets off your internal alarm.
- Working parent guilt gets replaced by working parent jealousy when you see your kids playing on their own in the sunshine when you’re in the thick of your workload.
- The only kids you invite over to play with your kids during work hours are the ones who somehow magically keep yours quiet. (Really, someone should ask them how the heck they do it.)
- You can spend weekends at the beach with your family instead of running the errands you snuck in during the week.
- You have an emergency summer craft bin to point kids towards whenever they creeping a little too close to your office.
- It is possible to make deadline with a sweaty, crabby child on your lap.
- If you hustle, sometimes you can play hookie on a beautiful day, and nothing beats the looks on your kids’ faces when you tell them that’s what you’re doing.
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