I’m Struggling to Work From Home Now That My Kids Are Teens

A funny and unexpected thing has happened now that I’m a mother of teenagers and all school-aged kids: I am finding it harder, not easier, to work from home.

I have five children, ranging in age from 6 to 17, and I have worked from home in some capacity since I was pregnant with my first child.

I pushed through many years of burnout and even sacrificed my own health to achieve my dream of working from home because I truly believed that eventually, when my kids were older, my life would settle down, and work would get easier.

Now that three of my children are teenagers and my youngest is entering kindergarten, however, I am finding that I was wrong.

I’m struggling to balance the needs of my older kids and work from home

In many ways, it doesn’t make sense because my kids feel busier than ever, but it boils down to this one simple realization: My work as a parent has shifted from primarily physical to mental.

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When my kids were little, my work as a parent was mainly physical: pregnancy, nursing a baby, carting a toddler around in my arms, changing diapers, hauling them through a grocery store in the days before pick-up and delivery existed.

Back then, the work I did as a freelance writer was a literal and mental escape. I had naptimes and early bedtimes and a freedom to “turn off” my brain from parenting in a way that I’m finding I can’t do when they’re older.

Having teens feel like I’m on call 24/7

Parenting teens, ironically, feels like I’m needed 24/7 in different, often more demanding, ways.

Trying to juggle their emotions and their schedules and helping them figure out their life paths and navigating relationships and friendships and the intensity that sports has become, plus just be “available” to them at their beck and call because you never know when a teen will want to talk, is something so exhausting to me I don’t know how to manage it.

It feels like there’s no “off” switch anymore, and it’s been so mentally taxing that I feel like I have nothing left creatively or mentally for my work.

It’s hit me even harder this summer, when all five of them are home, and I feel like I’m constantly “on call” for any of their needs. Sitting down to write feels like adding even more mental work to an already hefty load, and it’s dawning on me that what was once my dream may be OK to shift as my life has shifted.

I’m looking for work outside the home for the first time in a decade

I have a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and I worked part-time as a nurse in my first few years of parenting as I built up my writing career. I have always kept up my license, just in case I needed to go back.

I had no real plans to return to working as a nurse, but I’ve slowly been putting feelers out for a part-time or casual nursing position. It feels like taking a physical job outside the home will help me balance the mental load parenting has become for me. In some ways, physically removing myself from the home and giving myself a “break” from being constantly available feels like it might be a healthy choice for both me and my family.

I’m not sure what the future holds, but I am learning that it’s OK to give myself permission to admit that my dream may not work for my current season of life. I worked so incredibly hard to have a career as a writer, so it feels silly to admit that I might want a change.

Then again, isn’t that exactly what we do as parents: adapt and change with each new stage? I’m teaching my kids to do this, so it makes perfect sense that I should give myself the same grace to do what works best for me right now.

And maybe — hopefully — if I do decide to take a step back from my career as a writer, I could view this time and break not as a failure but as a refresher to come back better than ever.