Juggling home-schooling, working from home and managing general household chaos

'I am not on my own, I thought as I juggled my attempts at home-schooling, working from home and managing the chaos that's my house.

Having fielded another question of ‘what is there to eat’, I went to shower the middle boy after he seemingly slipped into some hole that we have outside in the garden. Although, I reckon he might have been pushed by one of his brothers. However, my only eye witness couldn’t collaborate either story!

The return to work last week had been fraught with throwing wipes, hand sanitizer and Milton spray into my handbag. Was I being over cautious, I don’t know? I mean I met nobody because it had been St Patrick’s Day and it had actually been refreshing to get out of the house for a while. We had been nestled away since the previous Thursday.

A wee text to my sister in law in Scotland where things were very different. However, they are coming around and I read the schools were going to close that Friday as her husband is a teacher. Thankfully, as my thoughts went to my new little niece, barely a few weeks old.

An early morning trip to the shop, the sense of fear amongst the older generation was palpable as we stood in the queue, back behind the line on the floor for ‘social distancing’. What most be going through their minds but they must know we have got their back. We will protect them and ‘cocoon’ them as An Taoiseach referred to his speech, rallying the country. We will not throw them to the wolves, as someone replied to my tweet later that night.

With the paper ‘gone to bed’ for the week, I took to working at home while wrestling and feeding the zoo throughout the day. My husband ‘works remotely’ at least one day a week. So he is a dab hand at disappearing upstairs to the ‘office’. However, it’s a different story for me.

But, having worked from home before, there are a few tricks you can use to prepare yourself for the day including preparing the boys’ meals, snacks and activities the night before so I’m not caught off the hop. Here are some more ideas I found that might help including explaining the situation to your children, making a schedule of office hours, if you have older children given them a little responsibility to 'keeping an eye' on their younger siblings, switching working hours to the evening time (if you can), creating a 'busy table' near where you are working to include crayons, puzzles, word searches etc, assign some schoolwork which I have done in the morning times, and if all else fails give them some 'screen time'. I also use what is called a ‘standing desk’, which I find brilliant!

Meanwhile, word filtered through that I was going to be added to yet another WhatsApp group…. Yipee, I thought. This time it was their teacher to help them with their school work, which helped greatly to anchor the kids' concentration. We even got an opportunity to move the classroom outside a few of the days. Well, that was more out necessity as there was complaints from other little co-workers about too much noise. But, it wasn't just about sitting up a classroom scenario at home. I have decided this was an opportunity to teach the boys other life skills including my eldest lad making his first batch of scones and doing some household chores.

Meanwhile, please keep in touch with me @kogog or via email at Karen.ogrady@iconicnews.ie, through Facebook or Instagram or via WhatsApp on (087) 3751974. I would love to hear how your journey is going over the coming weeks.