82: Working from Home and Homeschooling: 7 Practical Strategies for Parents, with Adriane Thompson

Guest blogger, Adriane Thompson of Raising Kids With Purpose, shares strategies to balance career and being a homeschool mom...

Working from home has challenges such as getting distracted, feeling isolated, and mismanaging time. You can experience all of these when you are at home by yourself. If you have the desire to homeschool your children but don’t think you can do it while working, I am here to tell you it is VERY possible. In my experience, it’s also very rewarding. 

In 2020, many parents were forced to move from the office to home for work, but their kids were also forced to be home as well. I’ve heard from so many friends and family about how incredibly stressful this was. If this was you, don’t let that experience deter you from working from home while homeschooling. It can be enjoyable, I promise.

Working At Home With Kids Is Hard

Common statements I often hear from working parents are: 

“It’s just not possible.” 

“I can’t seem to finish a single thought without someone asking me a question or needing something.” 

“I want to give my full attention to my kids and my work but I can’t figure it out.” 

“Homeschooling and working full time are unattainable and unrealistic. Although we don’t want our kids on technology all day, that’s the only way I get work done.” 

I found it incredibly difficult to be productive when I was interrupted every 10 minutes or sometimes every 45 seconds! This is when I quickly discovered that I couldn’t work from home and homeschool without a plan. 

Subsequently, I had to learn how to gain control and stay productive while everyone worked, played, and learned in the same environment. With intention and patience, working and homeschooling became pleasant for all involved. 

The Four Different Types of Homeschooling

I’ve seen quite a few discrepancies around the word and concept of homeschooling. Here are all the different ways kids can "go to school" at home. If I'm missing any, please comment below!

1. Traditional Homeschooling

Essentially homeschooling is when parents choose to educate their children instead of having someone else do it. Education is typically done at school and conducted by a parent, tutor, mentor, or online teacher. Kids do not attend a traditional public, charter, or private school.

Instead, the parents sign an affidavit saying that they are responsible for educating their children. Homeschooling programs or curricula are not associated with any school system; instead, the parent is 100% responsible. 

Traditional homeschooling is typically personalized, aligned with the family’s values, and is flexible. Homeschooling for one family doesn’t typically look the exact same as another family choosing to homeschool. 

2. Unschooling

Unschooling is a method of homeschooling that gives the child ownership over their learning. Unschooling does not mean, “no schooling” as many people falsely assume. 

Unschoolers are self-directed. What sets unschoolers apart is that there isn’t an imposed curriculum. The child is free to choose his or her learning journey. Instead of teaching the child every subject, parents guide the learning and are there for support. What’s amazing about unschooling is that it truly taps into the child’s intrinsic motivation and desire to learn because it’s interest-led. Often, everyday activities such as grocery shopping and checking books out at the library are viewed as learning. 

3. Emergency Remote Learning/Crisis Schooling

What most families did when schools were shut down is the transition to emergency remote learning, or I’ve seen it called crisis schooling.

This kind of schooling is when kids abruptly go from learning in a school environment to learning virtually or through packets that teachers send home. Crisis schooling still happens as different areas experience natural disasters or schools face adversity or tragic situations. However, it’s not an accurate depiction of homeschooling or even virtual schooling. 

4. Distance & Online Schooling

Lastly, homeschooling can also include distance learning and online schooling. They are similar in the sense that students engage in schoolwork using a computer.

The difference is that distance learning is when students are given online assignments, lessons, and assessments to do at home whereas online schooling (also known as eLearning) is when students are taught live by a teacher using platforms such as Google Classroom.

There are also full-time online schools where they do a little of both, live instruction with online assignments. My favorite school like this is The Socratic Experience founded by Michael Strong. 

For the sake of this post, I refer to any schooling done at home while parents are working full-time or part-time as “homeschooling.” If you’re a homeschool momma, please note I’m not taking away from all the hard work you put into educating your kids! 

Now that we know what homeschooling entails, let’s jump into how it’s done while working from home. 

7 Practical Tips for Homeschooling and Working Full-Time

Whether you are working full-time from home, balancing remote work, or managing a stay-at-home routine with a side hustle, you’ve likely discovered that productivity with kids around has its challenges.

Kids naturally seek attention throughout the day, often because they haven't yet learned to manage alone time. Honestly, it’s also healthy in their development of a secure attachment and a healthy nervous system. Kids are wired to need their parents’ care and attention. 

While it might be tempting to rely on screens to keep your kids occupied, studies show that extended screen time can be detrimental to a child’s brain development and autonomic nervous system, which impacts their overall well-being. This isn’t to say all screen time is harmful—just that it isn’t ideal for growing minds. If you haven’t checked out Jonathan Haidt’s new book, Anxious Generation, it’s quite eye-opening and I highly recommend it!

If this lifestyle change is recent for you and your kids, you might notice more pushback. Children used to a structured school day often struggle with the newfound flexibility, which may lead to unwanted behaviors. 

Routines help kids feel secure by providing predictability. Without them, they may experience increased stress as their brains interpret this unpredictability as a lack of safety.

With all of this in mind, here are 7 strategies to help you work from home and homeschool without losing your mind. 

1. Shift Your Mindset

The first step to managing the stress of balancing homeschooling with a full-time job is to shift your perspective. Embracing change—even the messiness that comes with it—can help you let go of outdated expectations.

As parents, we often feel an unspoken duty to drop everything to meet our kids’ every demand, request, and need, even those that aren’t true needs. Our culture tends to suggest that kids need constant supervision and should avoid all risks, and if not, they are doomed. While this is understandable, it’s also unrealistic. Additionally, research shows that it limits their growth and can cause harm.

Research also shows that kids benefit from opportunities to explore, make mistakes, fail, and experience a full range of emotions. If your children are frequently in conflict, resist the urge to solve it for them. Instead, help them build the skills they need to navigate disagreements on their own.

You can also look at your mindset around what school should look like. Or even what homeschooling looks like for other families. I know when I first started, I envisioned meeting at the kitchen table promptly at 9 am every morning, grabbing a book from our morning basket, opening up workbooks, working on projects, and having a blast learning together for a few hours. 

This is not how homeschooling first looked for my family and it still doesn’t. It took quite some time to get to a place where my son would even do any work or not run away from me when it was time to work. The reason why my vision was so unrealistic is because my son has an expression of autism called Pathological Demand Avoidance. The more demands I put on him, the further he ran or the louder he became. 

Now, homeschooling looks like his teacher coming two days a week for two hours at a time. Most of the time, my son is walking in circles or riding the scooterboard while he listens to books being read to him. He often refuses to write but he does fully engage in deep conversations about what he is learning. 

By shifting my mindset, I am able to see the fruit of this type of homeschooling where he is empowered to learn because he has the freedom to learn his way, not mine. 

The takeaway: Start by adjusting your mindset and letting go of unrealistic expectations.

2. Put Your Oxygen Mask on First

I emphasize this a lot: if we’re not taking care of ourselves first, it’s nearly impossible to create a thriving environment for anyone else. 

Self-care doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Something you can start doing tomorrow is to wake up 15 minutes earlier to do stretches, journal, and meditate for a few minutes. 

I am intentional about incorporating self-care into my morning routine by taking the dogs for a long walk with no cell phone or earbuds in. I look at the trees, listen for the birds, focus on my breath, and get my heart rate up a little. Even if I wake up late, I still do this just around the block to get ready for the day kid-free and distraction-free. It makes such a difference in the way I can show up from day to day. 

The takeaway: Self-care isn’t optional.

3. Encourage Self-Sufficiency Skills

Motivation science shows that all people, including kids, have an innate need for autonomy, connection, and competence. This means that kids are naturally inclined toward self-sufficiency—they just might need some encouragement or the chance to experience the freedom to realize what they’re capable of.

I often remind myself, “Don’t do for a child what they can do for themselves.” I don’t take this to an extreme, of course. My child is still dependent on me for many things including neurological safety. However, if he is capable, I either ensure the task is done by him or I offer to help and we do it together. By letting him take responsibility, I’m nurturing his development and sense of capability.

The goal is to give your kids the skills to manage tasks independently.

Starting with new skills can be challenging, so I use a simple four-step process inspired by Julie Lythcott-Haims’ book How to Raise an Adult. You first show the child, do it together with the child, watch the child, and finally, allow the child to do the task completely on his or her own without you there. 

The takeaway: Kids can do more than we often realize—let’s support them in becoming more self-reliant.

4. Assign Daily Jobs to Your Kids

Similar to how teachers assign “jobs” in the classroom, you can do something similar at home. Make it fun and give your kids autonomy and choice. You can even name the jobs.  

Personally, I like to call these “special jobs”! Kids love feeling more grown-up and having “jobs” taps into that. When my youngest went to a Montessori school, they called the chore-like tasks, contributions, which helped my son feel like he was contributing to his little community of classmates. Use whatever name resonates. The key is to make it fun and meaningful.

Included in the jobs is a chance for my son to prepare for his homeschool work each day. Instead of teaching him myself, he has an incredible private teacher who comes to our house a few days a week. On the other days, he goes to a learning pod and has to take all his schoolwork to complete there. This means there is a lot of prep work. I used to do it all myself but then realized he was capable and interested in helping! 

The takeaway: Involve your kids in helping out around the house and helping with homeschool prep. 

5. Establish Routines and Schedules

Kids flourish with routines. They don’t need every minute filled with a new activity, but they do need a sense of predictability. Also, all humans, including you as the adult can benefit greatly with routines as well! A great way to do this is to build them together. 

I recently started using Systemize Your Life by Chelsi Jo. It has been transformative in how much I get done for my home and my business. I highly recommend the course or listening to her podcast.

With Systemize Your Life, I have created a block system with routine stacks inside each block. It has been essential for balancing work and family life especially because I work from home with a homeschooler and a microchooler. 

I printed and laminated the time blocks. They are hanging on my fridge so everyone in the family can implement the routines.

If you’re homeschooling while working full-time, set a “work block” where you can focus on work tasks. During this time, your kids can focus on schoolwork if they’re able to work independently or enjoy “room time” or “quiet time.” My son typically reads during this time or works with his teacher. 

If you’re working for an employer, make sure to communicate your schedule with your boss and clarify that some flexibility might be needed.

The takeaway: Routines and schedules simplify life and support productivity.

6. Schedule Quality Time

When kids feel their “attention buckets” are full, they’re more likely to play independently and get along better with their siblings. We tried leaving quality time unscheduled, but it often slipped through the cracks. 

Scheduling this special connection time ensures each child gets at least 10 minutes of one-on-one time with me or my husband daily. This simple commitment leads to more solo play, better decision-making, and even reduces sibling conflict.

With the systems I’ve created, I have quality time with my kids in my PM block which is after I’m completely done working for the day. What I’ve learned from Chelsi Jo is to always separate home from work as best as I can. When I try to do both, I’m back to where I started feeling like I’m failing my kids and failing my company. This thinking leads to a limiting belief that I’m a failure. Having that belief doesn’t help me, my clients or my kids! 

The takeaway: Kids crave one-on-one attention, even if they don’t always express it directly.

7. Outsource When Needed!

If possible, hire a sitter or mother’s helper to play with your kids so you can enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted work time. We have a part-time mother’s helper who picks up two of my kids and has them for the entire afternoon so I can focus on work. 

And as I mentioned earlier, my homeschooler has a private teacher. We are fortunate and live in a state that has an Education Savings Account program so we don’t have to pay out of pocket. He uses the funds for the learning pod, cake decorating classes, sewing classes, a Curious Cardinals mentor, and Synthesis Teams as well as all of his curriculum and books. 

If you are not in a state where the funding follows the child, there are still options available to you such as co-ops and other homeschooling resources so you don’t have to do it completely on your own! 

Depending on your children’s ages, you could also explore virtual help! I know, I said to keep the kids off the screens, however, research shows that virtual interactions like interacting on FaceTime are positive ways screens can benefit young children. My mother-in-law used to read books to our kids via FaceTime from across the country. 

Family members or friends can often engage your kids long enough to free up some time for you to work.  It’s a different way to use technology than having your child play educational games or watching educational videos which can overstimulate the brain and increase dopamine. 

The takeaway: Don’t hesitate to ask for help!

Homeschool While Working

Balancing work and homeschooling from home is possible, though it requires patience, planning, and flexibility. 

Finding a rhythm that suits both your work and family needs may take time, but with small adjustments like creating blocks and routine stacks, scheduling quality time, and fostering independence, it can be done. 

Ultimately, homeschooling while working from home is about progress, not perfection as is anything in parenting. Embrace the small wins, give yourself grace on tough days, and celebrate the moments of connection and growth with your kids. You’re building something meaningful, one day at a time!

About Adriane Thompson

Adriane is a mom to three loud boys, is a research-a-holic, and a very passionate person who writes content for moms at Raising Kids With Purpose. Parenting can feel hard sometimes but with mindset shifts and understanding, it can be very enjoyable. She hopes to inspire parents like you to create lifelong connections with your children and enjoy the journey along the way!

Connect with Adriane:

📌 Grab her FREE Ultimate Home Education Resource List  – Over 200 tools to support your homeschool journey!

 📌 Learn more about Adriane’s PURPOSE Parent Coaching Program, where she helps families create trust, connection, and lasting change.

 Follow Raising Kids With Purpose: Website | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn