How to work from home with a kid (COVID-19 Lockdown)

Goodbye childcare and hello trying to balance work with homeschooling and housework all while not being able to get out. This is going to be fun.

We’re only 2 days in and if you already feel like you’re losing your mind, here are some tips from someone who has worked from home for seven odd years, three of those with a kid – all in a small apartment.

Start your day early - If you can get up and get some work down before your kid or kids get up, it will be a big help. Even 30 minutes of uninterrupted time will make a huge difference.

Create a flexible work schedule - My husbands and sat down and tried to create a schedule because we have a 3-year-old and he doesn’t entertain himself for long. We realise that we have to be flexible around meetings.

Special time - Schedule in a special time of 10 to 20 minutes alone with each child in which they are allowed to direct the play (but it does have to be fun and safe for both of you).

Giving them this uninterrupted time (no phones allowed) makes it easier to ask them to do this...

Play alone time - Set up a game or invitation to play of some sorts that your child enjoys. Ask your child to play alone for as long as they can or until you call them.

I was told by a parenting expert that a 3-year-old should be able to alone for 45-minutes. Um, what?! My jaw dropped when I was told this because my extroverted child doesn’t seem to like alone time. 

We are working on it by using a reward system. If he plays by himself for more than 20 minutes, he moves up his reward chart. Once he reaches the goal, he gets a toy that I bought long before lockdown. So far, the longest he has played alone is 27 minutes (with playdough and dinosaurs)

This gives you and your partner time to knuckle down and work.

Quiet time - My kid naps occasionally, but we do insist on 20-30-minutes of quiet time. During this time he lies on his bed and looks at books. Thankfully he loves books and the now very overdue library books we took out are gems.

Hopefully, that gives you something to work with for now. 

P.S. you might enjoy reading Into the wild - before lockdown

Into the wild - before lockdown

We don't know what freedom is until it's taken away. 

This was our walk on Tuesday. We're usually avoid hiking because of crime and having a toddler, but we braved it because we wanted to keep physical distance from other people. On that little hike, I said, "After lockdown, we have to do this often, and invite friends so we can walk together." If it weren't for the loaming house arrest, we wouldn't have done this, we would have stuck to the safe and the known, the less wild.

But things are going to get wild. Without us around who knows how the plant and animal life in parks, forests and beaches will flourish.

And thanks to an extreme reduction in road traffic, we are going to benefit from massively reduced air pollution levels (please let someone be studying this). Mother nature is reclaiming herself. She's having a spa day for 21 days. She deserves it. We deserve it. It's the least we can do.

#gratitudeduringlockdown #lockdownsouthafrica #gratitudejournal

The small things are the big things

A few weeks ago, I woke up uncharacteristically early and decided to watch the sunrise. I throw clothes over pj's, took my coffee and walked down the road, greeting early morning runners on route. I must have been quite a sight with wild morning hair and coffee cup in hand.

The sunrise was worth it. 

I tried to be quiet because I was already freaking out about the coronavirus, but I couldn't really talk about it because I sounded like a hypochondriac. I am, but I've also been expecting this since I watched an Oprah show way back about how scientists predicted a virus will mutate enough to cause a pandemic. At the time, they thought it would be bird flu (it could still be). I also looked at how fast the numbers climbed in China and I just knew this was going to hard to contain.

I was grinding my teeth in my sleep freaked out. And then I watched the sunrise and felt like God was saying, stop to notice the big things. In that moment, the sunset was so big, the sky a show of colour changing every second. It was a performance. One I hardly ever attend, something sidelined as small. I thought of my child when he was born. He was tiny (2,4kg), but the first moment I saw him, roaring in his deep voice, he was the biggest thing in the room. Sometimes the smallest things are the biggest things.

Right now, something so small that we can't even see it is causing big changes in our lives. Its horribly scary but it's also a reminder that the small things could be the big things.

Job stress, workloads, deadlines, career success all loom like big things over us, taking up so much headspace, but in comparison to our family, health, creativity and the wonder of nature they are the small things.

Fitting in fitness

Trying to fit in fitness as a mom is tough. Pre-parenthood, I brisk walked about 5 times a week and followed a few workouts online when I felt like it. Now, I'm lucky if I can fit in a 10-minute workout a day during the week. So now, most of my weekly workout time is clocked on Saturday and Sunday.

We're all supposed to get a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise. At the start of Saturday, I only had 57. Now, I've clocked 224. Yeah, baby!

No gym. No fancy equipment (other than this watch that my husband bought cause I'm far too cheap to buy such fancies, but I do love it). It's possible.

On learning to draw

A friend of mine asked my advice on teaching her art-loving young child to draw using how-to guides/formulas and my gut response was Nooooo! I couldn't explain why, but I've been thinking about it and here's why I wouldn't try to teach a young child how to draw... 

1. Learning the so-called rules for drawing often overpowers the most important thing about drawing - the ability to see.

2. The implication of teaching someone how to draw is that there is a right way and a wrong way to draw. If that was the case, all art would look the same.

3. An artist will learn through the best possible means - exploration - there's no need to assist them, only to equip them.

3. Formulas for drawing often follow a left-brained way of thinking and it encourages copying images like a camera. But we have cameras, so...?! 4. Left-brained formulas for drawing are downers for predominantly right-brained creators and can hamper a growing love for art.

5. Drawing formulas assume perfect proportions (like symmetrical faces) when nothing is perfect.

5. There's a magic to a line that is drawn freely, without hesitation, and it's easily lost when drawing according to the rules.