[burmanm]

Mostly teaching them. "When dad works, don't bother him". And since I do come out of the room in any case often enough (coffee/toilet/eat/etc), they saw me enough often. But it's not like single productive period is a long time, rather it's a patches of smaller events during the day.

Of course now that they're bigger, everything is a bit different.

[JonChesterfield]

This strongly implies you had a partner watching the kids while you work, which has scaling problems if you both want to work at the same time.

[hzay]

Let me ask this directly. Is your wife watching over the kids while you get productive time?

If so, then that's not a luxury many people (including, you know, many wives) with small children have. Hence the comment that you originally replied to makes sense.

[burmanm]

Yes, she was on maternity leave (which isn't unusual in Finland and more like a norm).