For all the parent’s out there with small children, how do you balance work, life, family, and the demand for raising small children while learning to code?
I am struggling to squeeze in the time to code, and most days by the end of the day I am just too knackered. Anyone in a similar situation as me will appreciate your tips or how do you go about it.
I have two kids 5y and 2y. Older one goes to school. When younger one was a baby, I lay beside him and worked with my laptop. If he was hungry, I would be coding while nursing. The hard part is you must adjust the angle of the screen. Now I sit on the couch coding and he plays his cars beside me quietly.
I’ve got one daughter, she goes to daycare twice a week (Tuesday’s and Friday’s). On Tuesday’s I work an evening shift on my job. So I’ve got the morning up until about 1 p.m to code. On Friday’s I took the full day off permanently. So I work 4 days now, means less income but it’s an investment I’m willing to make. I tried to learn with a 5 day workweek but I didn’t have the brains to focus at night everytime.
It’s hard for me to study with my daughter running around me, I always feel bad when she asks me to play and I want to finish just this one challenge or only try to fix the navbar or something. It always takes much longer then I want it. I already have the feeling I don’t see her enough (most parents would say I’m crazy and I see her more then the average father, but what can I say, she’s my everything), so that’s why I scheduled time alone so I can fully study without the distraction or feeling guilty.
See if you can schedule some hours here and there, discuss with your husband / partner. We made Gmail account for the both of us and set that as the calender on our phones. I put my study days in there and my girlfriend hers. This gives a very good overview on how much time you spend on coding and how much time you have for your family or work, this way you can study much more relaxed and you can enjoy free time with your kids more.
Hope this was of help a little! Good luck out there.
There was a short period just after my daughter was born, maybe June to August, when I wasn’t exhausted all the time, when I actually did work in personal stuff between her going down at 10-11pm and me needing to sleep about 1am. After that, haven’t had any free time whatsoever: I’m at work, looking after her or sleeping. I think I’m approaching a point where I can let her play for extended amounts of time, but I’d say roughly first year is a write-off. Also I don’t even have it that bad, get to sleep on the couch so that I’m not a complete exhausted mess for work.
If you can manage to arrange something with your partner/etc, work in separate room and treat it as being completely away from the kid it kinda works, but it’s hard; while you’re in the same house it’s easy (and necessary a lot of the time) to get dragged away from anything you’re doing.
I feel your pain @codemom. I end up in that conundrum of: should I use that hour of free time to code or to spend with family? My advice is to wake up early and do it before the rest of the house wakes up. Evenings+kids=terrible focus.
I know how you feel, I have two kids, 5 and 2 years old, the only time I get to study/code is for about an hour or 2 a night if I’m not feeling too tired.
I have been learning for a year now and I think I will still learning in a years time before I feel confident that I could get a job as a junior web dev.
Just keep trying your best.