With their kids being around more during the daytime, though, both couples have found work days are longer as they attempt to put in hours when their children are asleep. “To provide the emotional comfort and support they need in their academic life as well as me trying to maintain my own job was pretty hard,” said Sargent, a teacher at Northern Arizona University, whose semester has now ended. “I could balance maybe working a little bit later at night or super early in the morning with what the kids needed, but it was definitely exhausting.”Lalan said her eight-hour workdays are now spread out over about 16 hours, especially when her curious daughters notice one of their parents is in a meeting, so the couple takes it an hour at a time, often switching who is working and who is parenting. “We each get to freak out one time a week and leave the house quietly by ourselves,” she said with a laugh. “You don’t really go anywhere, you might just drive around for five minutes and then come back.”In the end, though, Lalan said the social distancing with her family has been equally rewarding, from being able to watch her youngest daughter’s vocabulary quadruple to seeing how the sisters’ relationship is developing.

Source: Daily Sun May 20, 2020 14:03 UTC