Ask HN Parents: How do you handle working and kids? | Hacker News Reader

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

10 pointsbarredo4 comments

Do you work from home and/or in a small startup and have kids? Would you mind share some tips?

In my experience (father of a <2 year old):

* 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)

My daughter gets 11-12h at night and a couple of hours of nap. So, I always try to adapt around her schedule:

    9,30h - 13h day care
    14h - 16h nap
    21h - 8,30h sleep

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.

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.

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.

And that is the only tip I could share right now (TLDR): start working really early in the morning before anyone wakes up.

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

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... >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".

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.

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.

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