If you are a home – based professional who is also a stay at home parent, chances are that you sometimes have to take a business call when the children are present. It can be no small feat to keep your child or children safe, occupied, and content while you take even a short phone call. I take care of as many phone calls as I can during my two year old son’s nap time, but there are days when he does not nap and there are times when people call me and I must answer the phone.
The following are a few things that I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to complete my business calls while my son is awake. During the summer and fall, we were often playing outside when the phone rang. I have a cell phone, so it is always in my pocket. Some of the time, I was able to continue rambling about in the yard with him and making sure that he was safe as I took the calls. A couple of times I did have to wrap up the conversations so that I could attend to more, um, pressing matters. Once, my son decided that since I was on the phone it was all of a sudden a good idea to try climbing over the stone wall to go explore in the woods. I was right near him, so as soon as I saw him headed for the wall I started to ease out of the conversation. By the time I got off of the phone, he was starting to climb up the rocks and seemed rather surprised when I swooped in and scooped him up off of the rock to bring him inside. Another time, he was scooting around on his little bicycle in the driveway. After I had been on the phone a few minutes, he decided to try heading down the driveway towards the road. Again, I wrapped up the call and I led him back to where he had been riding safely prior to the phone call.
Lately, it has been cold and snowy and we have been indoors all day every day. When my phone rings, my son usually goes and finds something that he knows he is not permitted to have and begins demanding it loudly or trying to get to it if it is stored out of his reach. I sometimes try to entertain him by grabbing a notebook and crayons and sitting down with him at the table. Often, he tries to climb onto the table to grab the salt and pepper, water glasses, or anything else that he can see instead of drawing in the notebook.
As you can tell, my experience with taking phone calls with a toddler present has not been very successful. Tomorrow, I will present some solutions that I have not tried yet seem to work for other people. Perhaps they will help you, or perhaps you have your own suggestions of things that have worked for you. Either way, any input is welcome – as long as you don’t try to call me to tell me about it.