Charles Morgan How Families Can Juggle Working And Learning From Home | The Importance Of Work Friends During Coron

Plus: How to make decisions amid uncertainty

Juggling the personal and the professional isn’t easy, especially for working parents. And with many children homebound due to coronavirus closures, parents have found themselves with a seemingly impossible task: serve as a full-time caregiver and educator, all while attempting to work from home. Sound familiar? We checked in with the leaders of four early childhood education companies to get their best advice for working parents during this trying time.

“As parents, the best gift we can give to our little ones is to empower them to have fun with challenges,” says Elinor Huang, founder and CEO of MEandMine, a company that creates educational play kits, and mother of two. So, how do you do that? Here are Huang’s top three tips:

1. Stick to a schedule that gives your family as much structure as possible.

2. Alternate between active and passive activities to ensure kids are engaged.

3. Encourage children to take responsibility for their school assignments and chores by creating checklists that they can mark as they complete each task.

And here’s more on everything you need to know about working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

For more on working and leading from home, check out our guide, updated daily.

The Telecommuter's Toolkit

Employees who have friends at work are more likely to be satisfied in their jobs than those who don’t. But when you’re working from home indefinitely, how can you keep those friendships alive? Start by seeking out opportunities for collaboration. Then, take these steps.

Remote work may be daunting for newcomers, but it’s business as usual for full-time telecommuters. We asked an entrepreneur who has been managing 1,000 remote workers for more than a decade for his top tips. No. 1: Set up morning check-ins to cultivate a sense of connection.

Working from home doesn’t have to be that hard, or at least not with the right tools and tech. From Adobe to Zoom, these companies are offering products and services free of charge to help employers cope with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Break Room

If sheltering in place has you logging more screen time than usual, give your eyes a rest by reading a book. Need a recommendation? Here are a few thought-provoking books worth the screen time required to place an online order.