Being a Toddler Mom CEO during a Pandemic

I’m a toddler mom CEO. It’s an identity I’ve suddenly had to come to terms with over the past few weeks while trying to do my job locked in a house without any childcare.

It’s never easy to be a toddler mom CEO, but it’s manageable. We were lucky to get into an excellent preschool with particularly long hours and have an evening/weekend nanny. I’ve made a point of being mindfully present when I am with my son to be a source of comfort, education, and fun in his life, even if I don’t hang around him every second of the day. I still feel mom guilt because society really wants me to. But I’m dealing with it. Or rather, I was dealing with it until COVID-19 struck San Francisco.

If you don’t need to work while taking care of a toddler, they may actually be easier to deal with than older kids right now. They have shorter memory. So after a few days, they don’t remember that they used to go to school and playgrounds. They just assume that the current situation is the norm.

On the other hand, they can’t keep themselves busy or do any activity for too long. They also need to run around. A LOT. That’s what playgrounds are for. Which means that they require constant supervision, particularly at a time when you really don’t want to end up in an emergency room. All of this makes it really hard to get work done with a toddler.

So far, my husband and I have each been able to get a solid 8+ hours of focused work by splitting up each day in two and working after his bedtime. I also get more unfocused work time because we’ve gone from pretty much no screen time to lots of it. The control freak in me is freaking out. But it’s only temporary and he only watches educational content or grandparents reading stories over FaceTime, so I try to keep my mom guilt at bay.

We’ve also talked about shifting our entire day. We could get up in the middle of the night to get a few hours of focused time before our brains get bogged down chasing little dude around the house to get him dressed and similar parenting nonsense. That seemed a little too brutal, but is still an option depending on how long we need to do this.

I’m curious how other parents in similar situations are coping. It’s a pretty unprecedented time. Everyone’s posting pictures of themselves on Zoom calls with kids in their laps. But what does it really look like around the edges?