A note for managers/coworkers of people trying to work from home with young kids.

I've seen a couple snide comments in various conversations about this, like "but their partner is home too." Please knock that off. People are trying their best.

First: if two parents are working from home, two parents are WORKING from home! That does not mean "my employee has no excuse because their partner should be doing all the child care," and that goes triple if your employee is a dude whose partner is a woman. Knock it off!

Second: children who are too young to be left unattended but old enough to understand object permanence can have a visceral fear reaction to being denied access to their Preferred Parent. If Preferred Parent Is in the building but inaccessible, that's a recipe for a meltdown.

And that's not kids being bratty, or your employee spoiling them. Things are stressful for all of us right now, but young kids cannot process their stress the way adults can. These meltdowns are basically panic attacks.

Kids are not toys you can turn off and put away when they're inconvenient. They are human beings. And their needs may be inconvenient to you right this second, but I assure you that their parents are aware of that, and are doing everything they can to do as much as they can.

What definitely will not help is trying to backseat drive their parenting by telling them to "just" close the office door (if they even have one). They know their family and their kid/s and they are in the best position to figure out how to manage an impossible situation.