Working While Our Children Sleep

Know More: Work/Life Balance balance, busyness, family time, kids and work, scheduling, work at home with kids

As work-at-home moms, we often try to carve a work schedule out during the time that our children are asleep. This is especially true if we have very young children. But, exactly how much time is that, really? How much work time can you actually find while your child is asleep?

The answer, of course, varies depending on the age of your child and their own particular sleep patterns.

This chart, from ParentCenter, shows the average amount of sleep that children between two years of age and eight years of age. For comparison's sake, adults typically need seven or eight hours of sleep each night.

If your family fits into the averages shown on the charts it's easy to see that you could possibly get as much as 7 1/2 hours of working time in while your child slept. (15.5 hours average daily sleep for a two year old minus 8 hours average daily sleep for an adult.)

The true number of work hours that you get in while your child is asleep is likely to be a little lower, though.

There are a lot of variables that affect the number of hours your child sleeps. He or she may be sick. They may be teething. Or, they might have had too much sugar.
There may be other chores that you need to do while your child asleep. (Like doing the dishes, house cleaning, or laundry, for example.)

The good news is that, as your child gets older, they will become more capable of entertaining themselves for longer periods of time. It will be possible to leave the to watch a movie on DVD or give them a good book and they will be quiet for a few hours. Also, by the time most children are six or seven, they will also have school work to keep them busy for at least part of the day.

The balance between family and work is a fragile, but important, one. Finding that balance is something that you will need to work on as long as your child lives at home. Finding a working schedule that works for your family is just part of balancing the work/life equation.

Here are some additional posts with tips about balancing parenting and working:

How to Make Working From Home Work For You from Revolution Health provides some tips for finding balance.
Getting Work Done At Home from Mom Works At Home discusses the importance of setting goals.
Balancing Work & Family from FreelanceSwitch. I really liked the way that this blogger makes time for his family.

What about you? Do you work while your children sleep? How much work time does this give you? Do you have tips to keep the kids occupied when you are busy?

Leave a comment and let us know.

I have four children ages 5 months, 2 years, 4 years and 10 years. The only one I have that sleeps during the day is the baby.

My days are pretty busy and I like to work in the evenings when all of my kids are in bed and I can relax and really work and not have to worry about someone waking up when I am in the middle of working on something. . It is 1:28am EST as I type this! LOL

Posted by: WAHM Tara | March 8, 2008 11:29 PM | Permalink to Comment

Thanks Tara!

You bring up an excellent point. If your kids are on different sleeping schedules, you will probably have less working time while they sleep.

Posted by: Laura Spencer | March 10, 2008 8:43 AM | Permalink to Comment

A trick we just learned at our house: Run the dishwasher every day at nap time. For some reason the bear cubs estivate a bit longer. Guess it's the white noise.

Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | March 10, 2008 3:48 PM | Permalink to Comment

That's a great tip Easton!

White noise does work. To this day, one of our daughters will not sleep without the sound of a fan in her room.

Posted by: Laura Spencer | March 10, 2008 3:51 PM | Permalink to Comment

I just made a post about this earlier, I also have 4 kids 8 and under, anyone that knows me knows that I just don't sleep- not healthy, granted, but it's what I need to do for now and my body has adjusted. For me, I'm tired at the end of the day and go to bed around 10 but I automatically wake at 1 and work from 1-4a.m. sleep then sleep until 5:30a.m. then start the day.

Posted by: Kristen | March 12, 2008 3:31 PM | Permalink to Comment

» A Typical Day of a Work at Home Mom? from Mother of Four-Goddess of Chaos
Hi! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You'll get all my posts plus private posts plus special offers I occasionally share with my subscribers for free! I haven’t finished writing the article I wanted to post today, b... [Read More]

Hi Kristen!

As long as you feel okay and your doctor says that you are healthy, then it is probably okay. I wish I could get by with so little sleep. I bet you get a lot done.

Posted by: Laura Spencer | March 12, 2008 3:47 PM | Permalink to Comment

This is one good article!
So I have two and the third one's ready to pop at any second. They're all under 4 and for now they've got similar schedules. In terms of sleep hours they sleep around 2hours/day and around 9/night. Between the household and the kids, I get to work about an hour/day when they're asleep, a couple of hours when they're awake but caught up with something else and then 3 more hours at night. And then... I crash :P

Posted by: kpriss | March 23, 2008 6:46 AM | Permalink to Comment

Devoted to WAHMs -Work at Home Moms

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