IHW Admin's Miriam Yentumi reflects on the challenge of juggling working from home with caring for and schooling two young children

boy and girl at table doing homework web version

‘Are you finished yet, mummy?’ is a common refrain in my household these days. Mummy no longer leaves her work at the beautiful Victorian terrace on the rise of Great George Street. Work has been dragged east and is now a permanent – and horrifying, if you ask my children - fixture in the dining kitchen, the bedroom, the kids’ room... wherever that rare creature called peace exists in a house with a six-year-old, an eight-year-old and a husband trying to salvage his business.

If you’ve had a Zoom call with me you’ve probably unintentionally had a grand tour of most of my new house. As well as starting a secondment as the spectre of Covid-19 began to loom, I had just moved house. Why not do everything all at once? During a pandemic? Never let it be said that I don’t live life on the edge.

After many years living and working in West Africa, I thought I could handle it, this working from home malarkey, I’d done it before. I’d operated during power cuts and water shortages. I’d decamped to sweaty internet cafes when my own internet failed me. Again.

But this is different, this is so very different. Yes, there were power cuts, and yes my shirt might have been constantly clinging to me in 30-odd degree heat, but I had my simple, cherished freedoms. I could go outside and buy spicy roadside takeaway as the sun disappeared after a long, very hot, very tiring, very internet-free day. I could go to a bar and knock back the local fire water with friends. I could escape my home (and my children) for a much-needed quiet coffee in the welcome, humming cool of a coffee shop.

It’s been said that we are not working from home, but that we are at home during a crisis trying to work. I know many people don’t feel that way – or feel like they can’t, and often I don’t. Glasgow staff, I’ve learned, are made of strong stuff and most people are trying to keep things ‘business as usual’ - at home, with kids, with pets, with partners, or trying to manage entirely alone. All are a challenge in their own ways.

Is it tough being at home and trying to concentrate on work when you have kids? Of course, it is, it’s like having two very small, very inefficient, very needy personal assistants. Is home schooling often a nightmare where everyone (including my husband and I) are crying? Yes, absolutely. Do I have any great tips to make it all work? No, I don’t. There is a tsunami of information out there on how to work from home full stop, how to work from home with kids/without kids/with pets/flying solo. The only piece of advice that has stayed with me is this: play the long game, don’t burn yourself out crafting, home schooling, home baking, over-scheduling and under-sleeping. We don’t know when this will go away and when it will come back - it’s a bit like hide and seek, or the fantastical bogey man.

But what do I know? I’m just a person, sitting beside my daughter as she orders fractions, or rattling away at my keyboard, waiting for all this to disappear.

Miriam Yentumi 
PGR Administrator (IHW Admin)

First published: 6 May 2020

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