I was 20 minutes into a three-hour Zoom meeting when I heard the whisper fighting starting in the hallway outside my makeshift office. It was 2 p.m. and it was apparently time for the afternoon bickering about who gets to have the last package of cheese crackers. While my husband came and solved the snack dispute, I found myself once again struggling with the way the lines between my work life and my life life had blurred ever since COVID hit.
I’ve never been someone who ever imagined working from home, but I also never imagined COVID-19 and how quickly it would change things. Like a lot of other office workers, my workplace went largely remote in March 2020 and me and my laptop were sent home. I suddenly found myself spending more time in my house than I’d ever done before.
I also found myself spending way more time with my kids than I’d ever done before.
We were all home basically 24/7 and my kids were both adapting to the new normal of distance learning and very much enjoying having me around. My daughter would come hang out with me between meetings, filling out her online worksheets while I responded to emails. My son rejoiced in having access to me at lunchtime (no disrespect to my husband, but my grilled cheese sandwiches are far superior).
There were more hugs and snuggles and just plain face-to-face time than ever before. At first, it was comforting to all of us to be home together, and I think all of us felt like we were tighter as a family unit than we were before the pandemic hit.
While my kids are about as easy going as it gets, it didn’t take long for me to miss having the chance to leave the house most days of the week.
Not only did I miss the change of scenery that comes with going into the office, but I missed the version of myself that I was in the office. I was more focused there. I was more active there, clocking lots of steps as I went from meeting to meeting in various buildings on the college campus where I worked. I didn’t think about home stuff or kid stuff most of the time — I was work Wendy and work Wendy was good at what she did.
I was still good at my job working from home, but I was always distracted. By the kids, by the dust on the bookshelves that I didn’t usually notice, by the puttering of my husband as he did stuff around the house. My work days started getting longer because I was less productive. Ironically, we started having less family time in the evenings because it got harder and harder for me to be done with work for the day. Without a commute home to help me switch into mom mode, I was always in half mom/half work mode. Sometimes if felt like nothing ever got my full attention.
The truth is, I don't think parents were meant to spend all day, every day with their kid.
In addition to the fact that I came to believe more strongly than ever that kids and parents aren’t meant to be all up in each other’s business all day (though I do think it was good for them to see how hard I work), I also made another discovery. It was during the pandemic that I first suspected and then later learned that I have ADHD. This discovery was in part prompted by my realizing how hard it was for me to regain focus after yet another interaction with my kids. I’d always known I had the gift of hyper focus but I seemed to lose that gift without the structure of the office.
In addition to the ways that working from home made me feel less focused and less productive as an employee, I also started feeling like it was making me a less focused parent. Ironically, I was seeing my children more than ever, but I was becoming less intentional about giving them focused attention. When I worked out of the home, I always made sure to schedule one-on-one time with each kid and to make sure I had hours where I wasn’t on a screen so we could play a game or read together.
Knowing that our time together was limited made it more precious.
I recently was given the option to continue to 100% remote work or to return to the office or to make a hybrid schedule. As I considered my choices, I knew that my kids really wanted me to stay home. But I ultimately decided to go back to the office, at least in part so I’d be a better mom. It’s a hard thing to explain to a child that you love them so much that you want to spend less time with them, but that’s the reality of being a working mom, especially when it comes to drawing a firmer line between work and family time.
I’ve been back in my office for about three weeks now and I’m so happy. I might miss my kids a little during the day (and, to be honest, my comfy work-from-home wardrobe) but I’m already feeling like my kids are getting a better mom when I get home every night. Being able to be more present at work has let me regain my focus when it’s time to come home. I guess absence really does make the mom heart fonder.
