Home Office Obstacles
Moms who work at home deal with deadlines, clients, bosses, and kids knocking at the home-office door, sometimes simultaneously. Tell your fellow harried work-at-home moms how you cope, if you actually do cope.
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"Managing" the Nanny
07.01.08
I work full time from my home office and have been noticing my daughter's boredom - she's 17 months and is a curious, sociable little girl. It breaks my heart to see her wandering around the house, playing with the same old toys and occasionally picking up little specs of dirt and handing it to my nanny. Sure, she's signed up for a MyGym class once a week and a Kindermusik, but my little "housekeeper" needs more activity. 17 months is a hard age because she's too young for a robust school program, yet too old to be hanging around the house without socialization and organized activity. I can't send my nanny to play dates and literally do not know one person in my town that's in my situation. My friends can't understand why a 2 hour playdate in the middle of my work day is not feasible...
Any suggestions? A nanny guide of some sort?
Tearful tonight...
08.27.08
Our nanny is great with our two year old and 9 month old sons. She plays cars, reads, takes them on walks, plays in the yard and colors with them. I work in my home office too and everytime I come up from my basement office, they seem entertained and happy.
Maybe you have the wrong nanny? Can she take advantage of free storytime at the library? Or local parks?
I hear you about the mid-day playdates. I've been looking for mom groups around here and everything is during the week. I have Fridays off, but even the local community center doesn't have classes on Fridays. Ugh.
Good luck. Keep us posted.
07.02.08
Hi WonderWoman. I know how frustrating that can be! I work from a home office as well, and I've run into the same challenge.
I've been fortunate to have family members - including my husband - who share the daily activity director role for my 19-month old daughter. But, we're working on adding structure to her day as well.
Lately, we've picked a few things that we try to do with her every day and it's working pretty well.
It may be that your nanny simply needs some help coming up with ideas (if she's reluctant, however, I'd make it clear that it's an expectation/condition of her employment).
A great place to start could be to try a Google search for preschool daily schedules and activity lists. While the results won't all be age-appropriate, they may give you some new ideas for things that could be a great fit for your daughter.
Then, you can discuss with your nanny and enlist her help leading your daughter in a few blocks of scheduled time throughout her day.
For example, you could pick a few morning activities and a few afternoon activities, with some flexibility depending on how your daughter's doing each day:
- Story time with book of your choice and a book of her choice (reading them to her or letting her look at pictures)
- Coloring with blank paper and crayons (we figured out that my daughter loves this while she's still sitting in her high chair after breakfast or lunch)
- Dancing (I have an iPod playlist that my daughter likes to dance to - it's usually good for about 10 minutes and then she's on to the next activity, but she'll come back to it throughout the day)
- Building a fort/tunnel/playhouse - sometimes my daughter enjoys it if we pull some of the kitchen chairs and cover them with a sheet, towel, etc. She'll climb on, go under, and run around them or put toys underneath...
- Singing time - we're learning itsy-bitsy spider, ring around the rosie, the chicken dance, the hokie pokie, and some other songs my daughter can dance along to even if she hasn't learned the words yet
These are a few I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure you can come up with lots more.
I'm interested to see what feedback other moms here have, and how things work out for you.
Good luck!