🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Before becoming a founder and CEO in 2020, I was a headhunter for seven years, working five days a week in London, England. My role was to find founders and senior leaders within the advertising profession.
But when I gave birth to my daughter in 2013, I worked three days a week. This changed after having my son in 2015, as I transitioned into working four days a week. It was always a juggle balancing my career and spending quality time at home with my children.
The parenting shift from nursery to school
Some people think that when children are younger, parents are typically able to achieve a better balance in taking care of them, but it gets harder as the children get older.
What some may not realize is that when kids are young, they are often in nursery school, which means that they are there from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. When they get older and they attend public school, they are there from around 8.30 p.m. until 3.30 p.m., which is very different from before. This means that I would need to pick my kids up from school and continue to work daily while they are at home with me.
When my children were in nursery school, there was less of a blurred boundary between our work and home life. My kids never knew that I was working because they never saw me working. Whereas now, it's a lot of what they see, as my home office is in the house.
Apologizing for my kids being present
During the pandemic, I had to have my colleagues on the other side of my computer screen looking into my home and seeing my children for the first time. In 2020, I felt that a lot of people were constantly apologizing for their children being present during their work calls, including myself.
Looking back, my perspective is completely different. My kids were at home because schools were closed. As parents, we were all doing the best that we possibly could, trying to homeschool our children while working. Now, I think I'm a superhero for trying to raise two children and homeschool while working full-time.
Something occurred in March 2022 that allowed me to reevaluate why I was constantly apologizing and asking my children to not be present whilst I was on work calls.
My son has additional needs; he wears hearing aids and often talks very loudly because he's still regulating and understanding language. I was on a work call and he came into my home office and began to speak very loudly. I shooed him out and said: "Mom's in a meeting!" I then locked the door so that he wouldn't come in, but he was banging on the door because he didn't understand why I had told him that he couldn't speak to me.
At that moment, I thought: "This isn't working." He's distressed, and I'm also distracted. I'm not performing at my best in this meeting. And the other person can hear that I've locked my child out of the room, so it isn't serving anyone. Surely, if I just let him into the room and have a conversation with him, which would normally consist of him telling me what he had eaten for lunch, it would be less distressing. The person who I am on a call with can wait for a minute or two and check their emails whilst I am speaking to my child. Then, we would be able to have a better conversation. My son would feel more regulated, and everyone would be happier.
Shifting my perspective
Following that meeting, I began to feel that shooing my children away when I am in a work meeting for the rest of my life seems like the wrong thing to do.
I thought: "Why am I telling them that they cannot speak to me or have a moment with me when they can see me?"
How detrimental would it be to the people on the work calls, if my children asked me a question and said hello? In the grand scheme of things, it won't change anything, It'll only make them feel heard.
So, I stopped apologizing when my children interrupted my meetings. I have a job, I lead a business, I run a team and I'm raising investment. But I'm also raising the next generation of humans, and workers, and therefore, allowing them to be seen and heard is important. Why should I deny my children their right to speak to me?
Although I try not to have work calls around the time that my children come home from school, that's not always possible. I'm also not going to cancel an important call just because my children are home; as parents, we should be able to do both.
The positive reaction I have received from others
What's ironic is that since I have started letting my children interrupt my work calls, I have not received a bad reaction from anybody that I have been on a call with. When I started to relax, and let my children come into the room, it humanized me even more.
Often, I find that letting my kids interrupt my conversation allows the person that I am in a meeting with to not see me as a cold, robotic salesperson, but as a human being with a family. Usually, I think that the other person feels reassured to see that I am empathetic and caring towards my family.
My children also understand that I'm working. I will let them know that I am in an important work meeting and ask them if they would like to say hello and tell the person that I am in a meeting with about their day. This usually does not take longer than five minutes.
Often, when my children speak to my colleagues, it feels like a "bring your child into work" day, which lightens the mood. Sometimes, people would say something along the lines of, "I can't even imagine you as a parent, but that child looked like a tiny version of you, and now everything about you makes sense."
Although some people may see the things that my children speak about as insignificant or a waste of time, those specific things mean a lot to that child. And as I said before, we are raising the next generation of workers. We shouldn't diminish that for the sake of the other person on the call being patient for two minutes or so.
I get a lot of positive feedback for my views, but some people strongly disagree with what I am doing. Sometimes, people would ask me why I would have meetings at 4 p.m. if I know that my children are home. But, as I said, that's not realistic. Our jobs can be demanding sometimes, especially if we are running a business.
Other people have said that my children have no boundaries, which I don't believe is true. Some have even asked why my husband can't take care of my children when I am on a work call. But the point is that if I am in the house, my children are always going to want to say hello to me; I'm their mother.
My children have appropriate boundaries
My children understand that I work and run a business. My husband and I have tried to instill in them what that means and why we, as their parents, must work. We tell them that it's to put food on the table, to keep up with the increased bills, and to pay for the things that they like. Although they are nine and seven years old, we still speak to them about the cost of living crisis and explain why we sometimes have to work long hours.
The positivity I received from the people that I have meetings with has encouraged me. Although I have never cared about other people's reactions, I like watching my children interact with the people that I am on work calls with, and I will not apologize when they interrupt my meetings.
Chloe Sweden is the founder of Plants + Perks. You can find out more about her here.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com
