Ask HN: Parents, what are you doing for school this fall?
Background: We&#x27;re in the bay area and our kids are 10 and 8.<p>We were lucky enough to get an au pair right before the lockdowns started in our area (literally picked him up the night before local lockdowns went into effect). We&#x27;ve had really positive experiences with the au pair program in the past, and our current one has been great, so we&#x27;ve treated him really well. Because of that he&#x27;s agreed to extend until next summer, and that application went through before visas were locked down. This means that there&#x27;s a dedicated person here for the kids for 45 hours per week, or about 9 hours per weekday.<p>We have a decent sized house, but it&#x27;s hard to get any real focus time because even with the au pair and school the kids don&#x27;t really respect boundaries. So the kids do most of their schoolwork in their rooms or at the dining table. They work in blocks of about 2 hours, and I schedule breaks to coincide with theirs. During the breaks we try to go for a short walk or something to get the wiggles out, and then it&#x27;s back to work. Tuesdays (and sometimes Thursdays) I go to my spouse&#x27;s office where I can isolate and get some real work done until late. We trade that time for Fridays, when I stop work a couple hours early so the au pair can leave if he wants to. If I need to be able to really focus I leave the house and go to a park where I can tether and crank out some real work. This is difficult though, as I need 2 laptops and a phone to get work done.<p>This wasn&#x27;t a traditional au pair experience, so we plan on some really nice thank you gifts for our au pair at the end of his contract, and hopefully we&#x27;ll be back in school next fall and can go back to something a little more normal.