Listen to this blog post by using the audio player below:
This fall, I’ve been working part-time as a teaching fellow for a course about designing interactives. This has been an unexpected, perfect opportunity to combine my technical expertise with my passion for mentorship and teaching. I’m so grateful for how much I’ve learned these past weeks.
My original plan was to take the fall 2024 season to brush up my skills and prepare for part-time work next year. It turned out, I was more ready than I expected.
Over the summer, I started thinking about how to integrate more career time while caring for two young children (a baby and a toddler). I have the privilege of family to help with the children a few hours a week, but I still needed to figure out how to carve out more time.
Within a few weeks of working again, I found my groove. My second experience working outside the home as a new Mom has been smoother. I’m confident this has less to do with working part-time as opposed to full-time, and more to do with my approach. This blog post discusses the mindsets and workflows that have supported me working part-time while caring for young children.
I believe the ideas in this blog post may also apply to full-time working parents or full-time parents and homemakers who are pursuing hobbies or ventures. Much of this post discusses life with very young children, but ideas could adapt to other age groups.
Using technology to read and write on the move
My smartphone has been key to getting things done during this very active season of life. In this section, I’ll discuss how this technology enables me to read and write when sitting at a desk isn’t an option.
To start, I’ll provide some context for why reading and writing on the move became important recently.
Most of my time as a parent, I relied on nap time to accomplish things (professional and otherwise). When our second child joined our family, one of his naps always seemed to align with our toddler’s nap. However, when I started working again this fall, our toddler stopped napping.
We started a new “quiet time” routine, drawing the blinds and a shifting to a quiet activity like lying down and watching a movie. This lowers the energy similar to naptime, but it is not a possible work time as naptime was before. To encourage my toddler to rest, I need to set an example and rest, as well (which is, to be honest, a very good thing for me). With “quiet time” as a period of rest for all, I needed to find other free time.
Working during the day alongside my children poses the risk of being inattentive to them — this defeats the purpose of having me home with them. I also feel stressed by interruptions.
To resolve this, I do more involved work after children go to bed or when they are with other people. I also identified favorable times for brief reading and writing tasks throughout the day.
These include:
- Pushing the stroller: Stroller walks are a fantastic time for me to read or write since kids are either asleep, eating a snack, or otherwise engaged in their surroundings. The fresh air often jumpstarts my brain.
- Independent play: If I fill their cup sufficiently (such as playing with them for a few minutes and bringing out new activities), I am able to step away from my children for short periods of time while they play.
During these times, I can read and write hands-free by leaning on technology — reading by listening to audio and writing using voice recognition software.
Reading
For the course I’ve been assisting this fall, I’ve been doing weekly course readings at the same time as or a little ahead of the students. I also read other articles related to course content or teaching skills.
The text-to-speech software on my phone has been a game changer. I make the reading materials available on my smartphone, then it reads PDFs and web articles aloud.
Another form of listening is more obvious: listening to podcasts or videos. I used audio for these purposes (such as hearing the weather report or news) before relying on audio in order to do work-related reading. This — alongside past experience with a project focused on exhibit audio descriptions — led me to realize that I could convert almost any written material to audio.
If I’m out and about, there are often distractions like cars beeping. Sometimes I miss parts, so I often will go back and read again on my computer. It’s much faster to read the second time around, so having listened earlier is still useful.
Some readings flow more smoothly than others. For example, academic papers including many citations can read a bit choppy — that is another scenario where opening the document on my computer later is helpful. There may also be useful diagrams or tables interspersed, which are harder to decipher with audio alone.
I’m mindful to not read every time I walk. Sometimes, nature makes the choice for me. For example, on a rainy day this October, I did not want my device on the stroller handle’s phone mount. I could have put my phone in my pocket and connected headphones, but I decided to just savor the sound of drizzle and the sight of beautifully colored foliage.
Writing
I also rely on my phone to write. Sometimes I type directly into my phone, other times I activate the microphone and talk — speech-to-text usually works pretty well.
Often, these are short bursts of thought with little punctuation. The goal is to capture as many ideas as possible as they come to mind, and then refine the writing and organization of ideas later. Adding a heading helps me find the content more easily later on.
Parts of this blog post, for example, were written on the notepad on my phone and then sent to my laptop. The writing process goes so much faster when I have some material ready to go (even if jumbled up and in short segments).
Writing in a physical notebook instead is something I would like to do more. I like the idea of writing on paper while around my children, instead of being on my phone.
Exploring new areas alongside my children
During this season working part-time as a Mom of young children, there’s been synergy between the two parts of my life. I likely won’t spend this much time with both of children at once again, so I want to pay attention closely and make the most of this time together.
While I could focus on the lack of time in my season of life raising young children, I prefer to reframe it as an abundance of time to explore new things — to grow not just as an individual, but as a family. There are many opportunities to learn together and enjoy each other’s company.
A lot of our learning happens outdoors. Even living in the city, there are many green spaces where we can make observations about animals, plants, colors, sounds, smells, and temperatures. This reignites my passion for learning natural sciences and gives us many starting points for conversations. Over the winter, I’m looking forward to planning some gardening projects for us to do as a family in the spring, and thinking about what kind of science learning we can do alongside that.
I see this as similar to diving underwater to gather information — it’s an all-encompassing season of life, often in a little bubble of our own. I am gathering an abundance of content ideas and observations about how young children learn that I can draw from in the future when I am in a phase of more actively building new projects.
Sometimes, things I experience with my children have impacted the immediate work I am doing as a teaching fellow — and vice versa. This is especially relevant in the study of interactive design, which encompasses many products and experiences designed for children.
A couple examples:
- I visited the Engineering Design Workshop exhibit that I worked on earlier in my career, which is designed for families and school groups. When I was part of that team, I was not yet a parent and my focus was on the more technical elements of the work. Visiting years later with a baby and a toddler, I had a new and valuable perspective. In our course, we discussed the idea of lifelong learning, and this experience felt fitting.
- I’ve been interested in learning a new language for a while. Motivation arrived when I was reminded of Duolingo in a class discussion. It has become a great activity to do with my toddler, who enjoys pronouncing words in Spanish and asks about the animated characters. As a result of our positive experience with Duolingo, we also started watching Spanish lessons for young learners on YouTube.
It’s been so rewarding to connect professional and family life through the shared lens of education. I’m looking forward to how this evolves as my children get older — what I can learn from my children, and what exciting ideas I can bring home.
Lovingly closing and opening the home
There are many areas of friction I’ve smoothed out as I’ve gained experience as a parent. I’ve been especially mindful about family routines as I’ve adjusted to working outside the home again. Gentle transitions from day to night (and back again) have added a beautiful sense of ease during this time when life could have felt very hectic.
Closing the home
Since I rely on the time after children fall asleep to work, closing the home helps seal the daytime chapter of the day. Work in the evening feels less daunting. Even if I am not working after bedtime, we feel more relaxed to do other things like reading or playing video games.
Dinnertime with a baby and a toddler, who are often fussy and tired, is usually messy and a bit chaotic. From here, there are two simultaneous efforts: One is cleaning thoroughly so our home is tidy when everyone rises the next day. The other is bringing down the energy in the home.
Once the main messes have been cleaned, I shut off the overhead light of the kitchen and illuminate a candle. This makes the remainder of cleaning feel more relaxing, and it sends a signal to the children (and the adults!) to begin winding down. I love how peaceful the kitchen feels, and the candle lighting part of the evening makes cleaning something I actually look forward to doing each night.
Opening the home
As I close the home, I also do several things to prepare for the next morning:
- I set breakfast bowls and utensils on the table.
- I choose my clothes for the next day.
- I assemble books and toys on the living room coffee table, so our toddler has something to engage with when she first wakes up. If she is engaged, she gives me a little more space to sip my coffee or get breakfast together. If I’m feeling ambitious, I might set up a fun environment using textiles and stacking blocks, with little animal figurines interspersed and in hiding places. If I am exhausted, it may be simply rearranging items or bringing out a new book. I almost always tuck one or more stuffed toys or plastic dinosaurs under a little blanket so that our toddler can wake them up the next morning.
Learning to open and close our home each day with love and attention has been a wonderful area of growth in homemaking. It both prioritizes the well-being of our family and generates mental space to dedicate to other things.
Cultivating a peaceful spirit
As mentioned at the start of this post, my experience as a Mom working outside the home has been smoother compared to my first time around. Taking a period of time to fully focus on my family and learning the art of homemaking truly transformed and nurtured me.
I needed to step away to move forward, like pulling back an arrow to release it. In a practical sense, I have more experience running my household and caring for children. On a deeper level, I cultivated a more peaceful spirit.
My previous post Embracing the Art of Homemaking as a Software Developer discusses how homemaking healed my creative burnout, helped me decouple my identity and career, and gave me a more balanced perspective about what kind of things hold value in the world. The risk of returning to work was undoing the progress I made in these areas. I want to grow, learn new things, and contribute to my field, but with a softer approach that will enable me to maintain harmony in our home and within myself.
I’ve found ways to become more efficient, but I was mindful to not become obsessed with productivity. I give myself permission to rest and unplug from work.
As I carefully re-engage with my career, I pay attention to how much I compare myself to others. As a Mom caring for a baby and a toddler, my life is different from many others with similar professional interests. Right now, I simply cannot do as much. I have many years of experience, but I’m also less knowledgeable about some newer areas in web, software, and game development. I’m not so concerned with keeping track of every trend. With time so limited, my free time has gone entirely to my part-time job and blogging — I am in a season where I have to very carefully pick and choose. Being OK with this is part of what helps me maintain my equilibrium, to be peaceful and satisfied rather than anxious and striving.
Another part of this is being cognizant of the longer-term picture. I will be able to gradually do more (or maybe less) as I move through different seasons with my family. I find it fitting that the illustration that accompanies this blog post is one of vibrant fall colors — a symbol of the transient quality of life.
What’s next
After the semester ends, I will be increasing my focus back on life at home. I am looking forward to continuing reflecting on what I learned this fall. There is much to think about, work on, and prepare for when I next return to work. I am looking forward to the slower pace, but will also miss going into work and talking with colleagues and students.
After what I accomplished this fall, it will feel easy to fit in small bits of reading and writing to keep building my knowledge. By pushing the limits managing my time and using technology, I realized just how much I could do while still the primary caregiver for a baby and a toddler.
In my next blog post, I’ll be revisiting my first experience with computer science as an undergraduate at MIT, detailing the connective thread from there through over a decade of work, landing now in my current work teaching interactive design. This content-specific autobiography will be a stepping stone to uncovering what my next chapter as an artist and programmer might hold.
