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Comment by akulbe | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing my opinion isn't going to be popular, but you can train your children not to bother you. This requires participation from your spouse/partner.

I've worked from home for four years now. We have a 6-year-old. And she has been taught not to bother daddy when the office door is closed.

If she comes up to bring me food, she is quiet coming in, and quiet going out.

As far as network interruptions, I have two Internet connections coming into the house, and my router fails over when the primary connection goes down.

Every single last issue you mentioned is solvable. If you're going to work from home long-term, then buy equipment that works for you.

In my case, I have a desk that raises and lowers, and my display is mounted on a VESA arm so that I can alternate between sitting and walking (I have a treadmill as well. You need to keep healthy!)

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kids can definitely learn not to bother you, my daughter used to come in the door asking "daddy, are you having a meeting?" cause she knows those moments are more critical :).

But they are kids nonetheless, if you are in your "office" room (provided you have one) and next room your kids are screaming it's still disruptive (though headgear might help).

If you have >1 kids and they are home sick, I suggest just working from some other place for a couple days.

My ten year old son doesn't bother me when he is home from school. I taught him to program Scratch, Python and now learning C# so he gets as focused on his activities as I do.

I do try and limit his time to about four hours a day, then I deactivate his WiFi and send him outside to play until mom gets home.

" but you can train your children not to bother you"

It really depends on the age, I'm struggling to get my child to poop in the toilet, I'm not sure he's ready to learn not to barge into the office when he knows his dad is in there.

You can also supplement training with physical barriers as necessary. :)

My son is in daycare most of the time, so it's not a large problem. But the few times he's been home while I have been working, the major issue with closing the door is he knows I'm still in here. So he'll make a bunch of noise, yelling for me to help him. It's often easier to just fix his Duplo/juice box/etc issue.

> I'm guessing my opinion isn't going to be popular, but you can train your children not to bother you. This requires participation from your spouse/partner.

This approach actually worked quite well for me. For the first month or so there were some hurt feelings, but once everyone adjusted to the new "normal", everyone was fine.

I'm not sure if this your experience, but for me the interruption would be all too welcome. I'd love to play with my son (now 2), which would be a terrible idea in terms of productivity.

You can always tell a Milford man.

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