Skip to Content

How To Keep Kids Occupied When Working from Home

When you work from home, kids often pop in and say hello, which is adorable but can be a huge distraction. Check out these tips for keeping your kids occupied and out of your workspace. 

work from home with kids

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Put A Sign on the Door

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For more information, see our disclosure.

Let your children know that you cannot be disturbed with a sign on the door. A simple “Do Not Disturb” works, but why not make it a little more fun? Hang a picture of a traffic light on your door and use a corresponding clip or arrow to let them know what’s going on inside the office. Red means “do not come in”, green means “come in”, and yellow can mean, “you may enter, but please be quiet.” Be creative with your door sign. Maybe do a different sign each day to keep it interesting. You can even leave love notes for your kids on the door so even if they can’t come in for a hug, they can leave with a little love. 

To help you out, we created this simple traffic light sign for your door! Print it out and let your kids color it. Then you can hang it on your workspace door together! Click here for a printable version.work from home

Schedule one on one time

When parents work from home, children have a hard time not being able to access them whenever they want. This often leads to kids bursting in and disrupting your work. To give them the attention they crave, schedule one on one time with them regularly. This should help them feel connected to you and hopefully lead to less interruptions. Plus, if they know they’ll get your undivided attention later, it might be easier for them to leave you in peace while you work. 

Find activities to keep them busy

Image by Aline Ponce from Pixabay

Get creative and find lots of new activities to help their brains occupied while you work. Momtrovert Creative has a great list of 50 ways to keep your kids busy while you work. Check out her list for lots of ideas. Stock up on lots of arts and crafts, coloring pages, books, and other activities to keep them quiet and busy while you work from home. You can also hang fun activities on the door next to the traffic light sign. If you set the arrow to red and the kids can’t come in, leave a fun maze or coloring page outside the door to keep kids happy and outside the office. 

Define emergency

Of course, you want your kids to break the rules and interrupt you if they have an emergency. But, do your kids know what a real emergency is? Go over all the things they can interrupt you with and all the things they can’t. Then test them. Ask them questions like, “Which of these things is an emergency: I hurt myself, I’m bored, or the wifi isn’t working?”

Give them some grace

Your kids are probably trying their best to stay away when you work from home. But, like anyone, they aren’t perfect and will probably disturb you at some point. Give them some grace when they mess up. A big hug and a reminder about the rules may be just what they need. 

Working from home is definitely challenging when the kids are also at home. But implementing a few of these strategies should go a long way to help create a quiet, peaceful working environment. 

Share and join us on social media!