

Ask HN Parents: How do you handle working and kids? - barredo

Do you work from home and/or in a small startup and have kids? Would you mind share some tips?<p>In my experience (father of a &#60;2 year old):<p>* work when the kids are sleep or in daycare
* don't work all the other time (I usually check email, server status and such minor tasks)<p>My daughter gets 11-12h at night and a couple of hours of nap. So, I always try to adapt around her schedule:<p><pre><code>    9,30h - 13h day care
    14h - 16h nap
    21h - 8,30h sleep
</code></pre>
I started working at 21h at first. This started messing with the mother schedule and staying up late is not always the best solution. Although it's the most quite time.<p>So i ended up waking up as soon as possible everyday, coffee up and start working for a couple hours before they woke up. Then I'll take her to daycare (which takes 12min*2 walking) to get a mental break, came back home and working till 12h30 when I go back to pick her up.<p>Then I usually take a nap with her. Then park time, then bath and dinner, then I'll check if everything's ok (altough I keep checking with the smartphone every now and then). I cannot get any job done when she's playing/"idling" around the house.<p>And that is the only tip I could share right now (TLDR): start working really early in the morning before anyone wakes up.
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OafTobark
My situation is unique so don't know if this will help you. My son is also
under 2 years old. He has always been a very happy baby (never cries except
for when he gets hurt which almost never happens). I guess this is a bit
different than what most parents experience. My son sleeps a good 12 hours
through the night and additionally naps for 2-3 hours during the day. This
means he's only up for about 9 hours give or take in a day. This isn't always
true but it's pretty standard. It helps that my wife is a stay at home mom. I
pretty much spend mornings with him, work during his nap, a few more hours in
the afternoon, then work evenings to night. I get adequate sleep hours and are
able to function pretty normally on a good schedule. I am not sure how that
will play out for you. As a note, I have my office in a separate room he is
never allowed to come into

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barredo
I forgot to say that I live in Spain, which shares timezone with Poland and
northern Norway
([http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/eutimetwo...](http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/eutimetwo.gif)
>2000 km difference in longitude... I know). We should have the UK/Portugal
timezone. So when I say we eat at 13h it's really 12h "sun time".

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ArekDymalski
My son is 3.5 years old. I've never been able to work longer than 3 minutes
when I was home (and he was awake). My solution is office+baby sitter(now
kindergarden) as I can't actually focus at home (unless the family is
sleeping). What I like about your solution is the work-life balance and
healthy breaks.

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KiwiCoder
2 kids; 3y and 1y.

I pay for office space and treat my own work the same as if I was working for
someone else.

I go to the office to work, and when I'm home my interrupt flag is set to 1.

This is the only way I can get things done. Anything else and someone is bound
to be unhappy.

