#210: How to Work at Home with Kids During the Coronavirus Lockdown

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 210. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mention during the show. All right, so let's talk about the elephant in the room, right? Your kids are home for who knows how long and you are worried about how you'll be able to make this work for everyone. Maybe your spouse doesn't work from home, at least not right now. Or you're super busy with client work or you have little ones who can't really self direct, need some attention or can't really entertain themselves for hours at a time. How on earth are you supposed to work on client projects and do quality work? Well, my guest today is Carol Alexander. She's a 13 year freelance writer and homeschooling mom of six kids. So we're talking about someone who's worked under these conditions for years and figured out how to make it work for everyone involved, for her and for her kids. Carol's work has been published in over 100 local, regional and national publications, as well as on websites and blogs. Notable clients include this Old House, Costco Connection, Family Handyman, and pods. She's also the former editor of a regional lifestyle publication and a frequent speaker at the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference in Roanoke, Virginia. I hope you enjoy this conversation and make sure to stay to the end where I also provide a few additional ideas for maintaining focus and of course, your sanity during this unprecedented time. Carol, welcome to the show. So great to have you here.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Absolutely. This is obviously a very timely topic and I appreciate you reaching out to me with this idea because this is something that's top of mind for all of us. Going to get right into it here in a moment, but I want to make sure listeners know a little bit about you first, what it is, what you do, maybe a little bit of background on how you've been able to get really good in this area of working with kids at home.

Okay. Well, yes, I AM in my 27th year of homeschooling, six kids, five of which were very active boys. And I started freelancing 13 years ago. So of course I started part time, but it's grown over the years. And the last several years I've taken my business to a full time level. So I've been juggling kids and writing for a long time.

Gotcha. Yeah. That is a long time. You've dealt with maybe all the different scenarios and what could happen and try different things, see what works and doesn't work. It's ironic because right now as we're recording this, it's chaos in my house right now. I got two boys, one of which is very, very active. And I can overhear my wife downstairs working with my 9 year old on the schoolwork which he's doing online. All right, so where do you even start dealing with this? Suddenly, overnight, it seems like a week ago, the world was relatively normal. And in a matter of days, schools are closed and we are work at home professionals who now have kids at home. And we were not prepared to deal with this. I mean, one thing is to say, well, a snow day or two or a teacher work day. But this is a time when we know we're going to be in this for several weeks. In some parts of the country and the world, we're talking months. So how do you even start dealing with this unprecedented issue?

Well, the first thing that I think we need to do is check our mindset. As you know, as freelancers, that's a constant battle, whether it's with running our business or dealing with clients. And right now it's just with our social life and understanding that we're not alone. Most of the world right now is trying to juggle this crisis. And even the client you're serving, I believe all the clients that I've touched base with in the last couple of weeks are working from home themselves. Their companies have shut their offices, they're sending everybody home. And so it's not just us anymore. Where in pre coronavirus, we were always really cognizant of the fact that we needed to sound professional on the phone, not have the dogs barking, that sort of. Well, right now your client on the other end of that phone is doing the same thing. Another thing is to understand that your kids are not to blame. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but a lot of times when a parent carries a heavy load, the kids take the brunt of that anxiety. And so we want to make sure that we don't let that happen. And practice breathing, practice laughing with them, Just give ourselves grace. You can only do so much. And if any time is the perfect time to adjust our Standards. Now is that time, even if it's temporary. You know, I'm thinking about the dirty dishes in the sink or the pile of laundry. Right now we need to focus on what's the most important and that's our families and our work. And so, you know, maybe our standards just need to, you know, we need to let them slip a little bit.

Yeah, well said. Yeah, it's the right. And many times you're trying to run, you know, a certain household, but that's under certain assumptions. And if suddenly those assumptions are out the window, you need to give yourself a little bit of slack. Let's talk a little bit about. God, I hate to use the word managing kids, but there is going to be a managing component to this. Right. I'm going to ask a broad question and we can drill down a little bit, but how do you manage kids while working at home when there are no options in terms of like, I'll just put them in camp, you know.

Exactly. The first thing that I would do is, and some people might even be past this point, like you said, your kids are home already. Start with a family meeting. Explain to them what's going on if you haven't already done that. But lay down some rules and some rules that there's no slack given, you know, whether it be don't barge in on the office door or you know, when you're supposed to be doing school, that's what you're doing, or whatever they are. Just lay all your cards on the table from the beginning and then it's really important to strategize. We do this anyway. But now it's even more crucial to plan your week. Maybe it be Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. Just get in there and make sure that you know what you're doing. Kids perform better. I don't like the word perform, but kids handle things in their lives better when they know what to expect. So if you have a schedule, that is very helpful rather than just playing it by the seat of your pants. So that's really important.

What about everyone's got a different situation in terms of their spouse or partner. But I've heard from some clients, hey, my husband or my wife also works at home or in many cases, let's face it, even if they don't work from home now, people are so, you know, what can you do in terms of kind of tag teaming? The work of managing.

Yeah. If you're both working student shifts, we need to understand that we're not necessarily going to be able to work 9 to 5 right now. And if your kids are home doing their schoolwork online, one parent take that hour while the other one's working and then maybe switch the next day or a lot of this has got to be what works for you too. I've seen this a lot in the homeschooling community. We can't compare ourselves and our family and our lifestyle with the people next door. What works for us might not work for them and vice versa. So if you can separate those time slots and time blocking is a big help. So if one partner works with the kids in the morning while one works, then the opposite the next day, that's really good system. Also enlisting the help of other adults in your life. Maybe your spouse or partner is in the healthcare profession or in package delivery. You know, a lot of those things that are really crucial right now. Enlist the help of other adults in your life. Whether but not grandparents, because this illness is targeting the older people. But you know, whether you have an aunt or an uncle close by or even your older college age students that were sent home, if they're not on task, just set up some shifts is what I'm trying to say.

Sure. We have a Facebook group in our neighborhood and there have been several parents who have. I think this is a very creative offer that said, look, my kid is home from college, really strong in these areas, math, science or so and so is home from college. She's good in this area and also she's very much willing to babysit if you need to catch up on a little bit of work or run a couple of errands, get groceries, that kind of. So several people have offered and I guess what I'm saying is you may have seen those offers. That's the light bulb probably already went off. But if you haven't seen them, it's okay to put that request out there and see if somebody takes you up on it.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

What about this idea of being a little bit more flexible in understanding that you may have to. You talk about time blocking, do a little bit of work in the evening. I know you've done plenty of that. What have you found as a writer for you works well in terms of evening work.

When I had more children at home, the way I approached my writing, which was now I have to put out this caveat that it was part time. I had to be all in with my kids during the day. So I kept pads of paper and okay, this was pre smartphones, so I'm dating myself but you know, I kept pads of Paper all over the house. Now, you could just keep your phone in your pocket. But I would actually mentally work, you know, while we were picking things in the garden, or I would be mentally working while my child was reading out loud or whatever and scribble notes. And then in the evening or during afternoon rest time, which is something that we'll get into in my other tips, I would then get on the computer and do the things that I jotted down. So that's how I handled it when I had a lot of school age children in my house. But yes, time blocking. Like I said, kids thrive with a schedule. So if they know I have to work on this for an hour, then that gives you an hour where maybe you're not doing deep work, but you can do other tasks where you keep an ear on the children at the same time, like emailing or marketing or sending out your invoices or even writing rough drafts. And then when that hour is over, everybody comes back together, takes a breather, do a dance, do something stress relieving, take a walk, and then go back to another block of time.

Carol, one thing I've found is we tend to look at this and our first reaction is, oh my gosh, my typical nine hour day is now going to be blocks of maybe an hour or two and it won't even add up to nine. How am I going to get this done? I have found that when you have real time constraints like this, you get things done much more efficiently. Which is a really interesting discovery. Right. Because it makes you wonder, huh, what have I been doing wrong? I'm able to still get it done. And it's just constraints are a magical thing. That's why I'm a strong believer the.

More time you have, the longer your projects will take.

Exactly. Parkinson's law. Right. The work will expand to the time available. So in a way, I think it's one of those mindset shifts you talked about earlier in our conversation. It's one of them. It's like, you know, sometimes it's a blessing. It's like, you know, because now I have this hour. I know, you know, so and so is watching them or they're occupied with X. I got an hour, so planning ahead, how am I going to use that hour?

Yes, exactly.

One of the things that we should also mention is that going back to what you said earlier about, hey, everyone is in this right now, is that clients are going to understand if you're on a call when a little one starts screaming or crying in the background. Okay? So I think we all need to give ourselves permission. And I think there's never been a time when clients are going to be more understanding of that. Like right now I'm waiting for someone downstairs to scream or for a dog to bark. And if it happens, man, it's going to add so much flavor to this episode. I know. So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure you guys understand. It's like, look, relax. Now, would it make sense to change your work hours or actually set actual work hours in order to give yourself some clear parameters and be able to just relieve the stress? Because when you know you're going to be working in certain hours and that's written and you still have to be flexible, have you found that that kind of reduces some of the stress and anxiety?

I think so. And it also gives your kids something to look forward to. You know, it's like I said, with the time blocking, if they know that at 11 o' clock you're all going to take a walk through the woods or through your neighborhood or wherever, that gives them something to look forward to. So they are more inclined to give you your space while you are trying to get some work done. Also, if you have a partner and you're both juggling, having those set hours helps everyone's expectations. And I think I come from a history of being what's dubbed a relaxed homeschooler. So our home didn't operate on a strict schedule. And I found with my business, though, that it's helped me tremendously to set office hours. My family knows from this time to this time, they don't call me, they don't text me, they don't come through the door. So I think with everybody's expectations or having those expectations to look forward to is really helpful.

Yeah. As opposed to telling them, yeah, we're going to go later and do that.

Exactly.

They know the time. Let's talk a little bit about kind of managing terms of like schoolwork, keeping them occupied, especially now that a lot of schools are set up for online learning. Any tips in that area?

The first thing that I would do is to make your children's lives easier so that they're not as needy. So have prepared snacks, have lunches already made, and if you're eating a lot of fresh foods, have your baby carrots already washed and in containers and where they can get to them, or the bowl of apples on the kitchen table instead of in the refrigerator drawer or, you know, whatever makes it easier for the kids. If they want them sliced pre slice them, have their Lunches already made and move supplies. A lot of families keep things like paper and scissors and those sort of things that your kids might need for school up on a high shelf make things more accessible. I'm saying you want them to be safe, but also make it so that they can help themselves better without always coming to mommy or daddy to get something for them.

I love that you could do that at night, like prep right when you're exhausted mentally.

One thing that we used to do as homeschooling parents is keep like a shoebox, Rubbermaid shoebox for each child. And so everything they would need for that day would go in that Rubbermaid shoebox. And then so they just had to get it off the shelf and get to work. Those are techniques that, you know, you learn over the years. So your kids are probably doing online programs for schoolwork. But one thing to keep in mind is that what takes seven hours or even longer if they're on a bus for a child to accomplish in a day will probably only take them two when they're home. Because, you know, you're cutting out bus rides, you're cutting out changing of classes, you're cutting out recess and lunch hour and all of that. All of those herd things, you know, that the system has to do to herd 100 kids or 200 kids or however many at a time. So it just doesn't take that long to sit down and do your math and language. It's not going to be the entire day for this schoolwork.

What do you suggest? Because I know that was my expectation. I just didn't even think about it. Okay, well, we'll be busy from 8 to 2 or whatever. So what do you do? And do you have them do everything at once? Do you batch it? What tends to work better?

I would say it depends on the program that your school system has you set up with. But while you have children, they're more alert when they first get up in the morning. Your brain, I mean, just like we are brains, get tired by afternoon. I always like to start my kids with math because that takes a lot of mental acuity and then do the things they need to be freshest for. And if you start to see them get tired, then take a break, have a snack, go on a walk, put some music on and dance. In fact, I've actually seen that life coach that I follow on LinkedIn was offering 15 minute slots for people to tune in and dance this stress away, which really intrigued me.

Yeah, you just look, it depends, you know, you're a Kid, but it's maybe more mentally intense tasks or topics would be better first thing in the morning. I know you kind of touched on this a little bit earlier. If you have a neighbor with kids as well, does it make sense? And I know this is constantly evolving and as we socially isolate, but maybe we could kind of exchange, hey, can they be there for a couple hours and do the schoolwork together and then I can take them in the afternoon? Is that an option you've seen done before?

I think that's a great thing to do. In fact, for my one son that's still homeschooling high school. We belong to a co op and so we meet every Friday and the parents teach classes. And it's a structured environment for them too, so that it makes it easier to transition into going to college, but on a much smaller scale for this crisis situation. I think that would be a viable option as long as we're proactive in making sure that who we partner with has also stayed home. You don't want to, you know, have too many contacts with people that have been out to Walmart or you're defeating the purpose of staying home and self isolating or self quarantining. Last evening I chatted with my sister because we generally get together on Tuesday evenings for something. And so I'm asking her, when was the last time you went out, who have you hugged lately? That sort of thing. So we want to be careful with people in our neighborhoods.

I'd like to talk about two specific groups to drill down on this a little further. I want to talk about teenagers who are of course the nice thing is that they're very self sufficient. But there's a different challenge there in that they could very easily get distracted and then just default after their schoolwork to video games or social media. And then I'd like to talk about much younger kids who, you know, okay, it's going to take two or three hours to do the schoolwork, but hey, you know what, they're going to have questions about every five minutes. So let's start with teenagers. How do you motivate or how to get teenagers to do more than just their schoolwork and then just default to the Xbox?

Well, first I'd like to preface with saying that this is temporary. So even if your kids do fall into the digital trap, it's temporary. So I don't want parents beating themselves up because they let their kids watch movies or play video games for three weeks. However, that said, I would really encourage them to dive into some hobbies you know, whatever they are, if they're athletes, to keep up their sports practices. I know my son's track has been totally canceled, but he's still going out and running every day and doing his workout, you know, whether it's music or handicrafts or whatever. Cooking. Hey, your teenagers should be well equipped to take over a lot of your household duties, including especially cooking and baking.

Or what about helping the younger ones, too? Right?

Exactly. And I'm not saying that you want to be careful that they're not dumping your responsibilities onto your teenagers so that you don't want them to be resentful, but this is a crisis situation and everyone needs to come up to the plate. And a lot of teenagers that I know enjoy cooking or enjoy helping with children, and so that would be a good opportunity for them to do that.

I love that. You just have to get creative and resourceful. Let's talk about younger kids again who are going to have questions every five minutes as they're doing their schoolwork or you need to check to make sure they've completed everything. We've talked about some things in terms of time blocking and so forth, but it's hard when there's a constant interruption and they just need more attention.

Right? Well, like I said before, the ability to read for themselves is really a tipping point. So maybe we should also talk about preschoolers. But I still go back to the time blocking. So if Johnny is working on his math and you are trying to answer emails and he knows that he's got 45 minutes, at the end of that 45 minutes, you're going to reconnect with him and go over his work. But teach him that if he comes to a problem that he doesn't understand or he's getting wrong to skip it and go on. And then when you reconnect at the end of that 45 minutes, you can go back and help him with that problem that he skipped. And for me, that was a lifesaver because then they're not constantly tapping you on the shoulder or saying, mom, I need help. The same with any of the subjects. If they have a word they don't understand in their reading, you know, circle it and ask me when the 45 minutes is done. The use of timers, too, is really helpful. When the timer goes off, then everybody knows that's the end of the time. Stop what you're doing and let's regroup.

What about other activities outside of just the schoolwork with little ones? You had talked to me about several ideas that I thought were pretty creative.

Yeah, preschoolers and even your younger elementary age children, they have things that are their favorite things to do or there are things that they don't get to do very often. So those are some things to think about. I know for my boys, the Lego could have kept them entertained for a day, you know, but you're good for at least an hour with the Legos. You spread a sheet on the floor, you dump it, and everybody's happy. We always kept several. We had a whole collection of them, actually. Science experiment books. If they've got free time, let them work in these books. Let them have free reign of any supplies that they can find are required to do these experiments. For a real little person, you can set up a small desk and give them an old laptop or an old keyboard and tell them they can work too. You know, give them some paper clips and some rubber bands and a pencil cup with some colored pencils and a stack of paper and they're good to work just like mommy or daddy. And while they're doing their work, you can, you know, send out some invoices or answer some emails or whatever. My kids always liked audiobooks. And I'm not sure every community is different. I know just yesterday our county shut all the library, but you can still download them online. You can still download Kindles from the library's website. So the library structure might be closed, but the library digital products are still out there. And you know, my boys would just lay on the bed for as long as I let them, listening to audiobooks. And that reminds me too, what I mentioned earlier about afternoon rest time. Because I was with my children 24 7, afternoon rest time was sacred in our home. Yes, I'm serious. You know, three o' clock comes around, the baby's taking its nap. Everybody was in their beds for an hour and they could sleep, they could read, they could do schoolwork, they could play with dollies, they could do whatever they wanted to, but they each had to be on their own bed and they could not bother mommy. And so most of those years I was taking a nap. But then when I started writing, I would use that time to do some focused work. Some other ideas, Plan a movie marathon, you know, not to be overused, but maybe on Fridays or Saturdays, let them watch all the Star wars movies, let them watch all the Marvel movies or whatever their favorites are, you know, and to keep healthy, encourage them to be outside, stock up on bubbles on sidewalk, chalk on silly string, all kinds of outdoor amusements. Let them set up obstacle courses and then run races when mom and dad can watch. Have them write plays together and perform them in the evening when mom and dad can watch. There's so many things. If you just put your thinking cap on ways that you can get that hour and that's all you really need. We need to think about all we really need is an hour or 45 minutes. And if we're focused, we can get so much done in that amount of time.

Exactly. So think in terms of short increments and don't try to maybe figure out the whole day, have a plan, but if you could kind of take it one hour at a time. I love all these ideas because certainly we need a good mix outside of just Netflix and iPads, even though those have a place in the mix as well. I'm going to come back to as we wrap up, one of the questions that came up in one of my communities is let's say that school is assigning work but it's just not enough or you find that they need a little bit more help in a certain area. How do you find good, let's say homeschooling curriculum or materials to supplement for parents who are just new to that world? Where do you even start? It seems overwhelming.

Well, first I would say that if you think that it's not enough, maybe we need to go back to you're expecting your child to be busy for seven hours. Okay, good point. Secondly, this is a temporary situation and maybe not for your high schoolers, but for your younger children. It's really not going to set them back to miss three weeks of school. And I'm hearing teachers in my head going, what are you saying? What are you saying? But you know, children are resilient and they remember things more than we think they do and they catch up faster than we expect. So I wouldn't get stressed out is what I'm trying to say. I wouldn't get stressed out over them not being really in the books. But to answer your question, Google is your friend. Free homeschool curriculum. You know, you will be totally overwhelmed with the offerings that are out there right now. And so I looked on our co ops Facebook group because other parents were starting to share things that they were finding right now. One is Scholastic. Scholastic.com is offering a lot of things right now for free to help parents that are home. Another one is amazing educationalresources.com and then the curriculum that our co op uses with the preschoolers is called the Homegrown preschooler. So those are a few that I found that are specific. But like I said, just Google free homeschool curriculum and you will find more than you ever dreamed of.

I wanted to plug in a resource that I have no affiliations with, but my teenager used them recently before all this happened with some Algebra 2 help. And there's several of these companies out there, but this is the one we end up using, tutor me.com they use real teachers who do this part time to do tutoring. And it's a combination of video conference and the chat feature. It's really, really slick. And you could have a couple of options. You could pay by the minute, which sounds scary, but it's really not that bad. Or there's a monthly fee that's like unlimited tutoring. From there they have several plans. But if you're in a situation where normally they're used to getting that help, that tutoring help after school or anything like that, you don't have access to that. It could be a nice stopgap. Will cost you a few bucks. But we found it helpful in a couple of situations.

Another free one for your older kids too that we've used quite a bit is Khan Academy.

Yes, Khan Academy. K A H N. Right.

K a h a n.org and it's amazing for especially math, but they also have science topics and history and I think pretty much everything but language arts is covered on Khan Academy.

Yeah, it's a brilliant resource. I'm glad you mentioned that. I forgot about Khan. Carol. This has been extremely helpful. So practical. I think listeners understand that. Look, there's no perfect solution here. If you're looking to solve this problem perfectly. Honestly, you got to reset those expectations. But I know I've walked away with some great ideas and I'm sure others have as well. So thank you. Thank you for being so generous with your insights and information. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they find you online?

Well, my blog online is beaproriter.com I'm there. I try to post something helpful every week and I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn is CarolJ. Alexander and yeah, wonderful. The best places to find me.

We'll include links to all these resources in the show notes. We not really sure right now if and when we'll have the show notes because we're doing this kind of an impromptu. We want to get it out to you guys as soon as possible, but they'll be there eventually. So again, Carol, thank you so much.

Sure. Absolutely.

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