Children interrupt parents constantly especially on important phone calls

There  are two sure-fire ways of getting your child to appear at your side within 10 seconds: announce that you’re handing out cash, or start making an important phone call.

• Fear of failure
• The year of the chore

There are two sure-fire ways of getting your child to appear at your side within 10 seconds: announce that you’re handing out cash, or start making an important phone call.

That second rule was proven with side-splitting results last week by a viral internet video of a professor trying to give a serious live interview to the BBC, only to be gatecrashed by his kids barging into his home office.

Here’s how it played out: an American expert in South Korea was delivering some political commentary when his four-year-old daughter jauntily marched into the room.

As the bemused BBC anchor observed: “I think one of your children has just come in”. The professor – still trying gamely to carry on – deftly pushed back his child … just as his baby son also burled in, by way of a walker contraption.

Professor Robert Kelly tries to keep his cool after his children interrupt him on air.

The comic scene got better with the high-speed slide entry of their mum – after watching the calamity unfold on the actual BBC on their living room telly – to pull out the kids.

Of course, the video went global and was then analysed in a bajillion ways – sliced and diced for parenting flaws, work-life balance, gender bias and racial stereotyping.

But most of us just wet ourselves laughing at an all-too-familiar domestic comedy for anyone who’s ever worked from home with interrupting anklebiters about.

Children are the natural enemy of the phone call. The minute you start speaking will be when your offspring tugs at your sleeve to ask about the meaning of life, or for help with supergluing their fingers together.

Robert Kelly, right, a political science professor with his wife Jung-a Kim, left, and children James and Marion, at the university in Busan, South Korea. Picture: AP/Ha Kyung-min

If you’re gonna embark on an important conversation – be it for work, or catching up with Auntie Beryl, or an eternity’s wait for Centrelink to pick up – you need to 1) safely occupy the kids and 2) find a quiet area.

First, set up the littlies with the TV and a battery of other electronic devices around them so the living room looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

This isn’t enough, though. You could put on a bootleg preview of Frozen 2 and they’d still track you down the moment they sensed your finger dialling – so you need to establish a secure zone for yourself.

Professor Dad freely admits he failed to lock his office door, which indeed seems the most logical tactic until you’re disrupted by the insistent pounding of a four-year-old who wants his Pokemon cards NOW.

The family give a press conference after the video went viral. Picture: AP/ Ha Kyung-min

Essentially you need to hide; think trampoline, behind the bins, attic, dog’s kennel, bathroom. Sure, they’re not great backdrops for a Skype call … but how much do you need the work?

Of course you need another responsible carer to be in the house if you’re making yourself scarce. If it’s you alone with small kids, you’ll just have to let the toddler take your conference call.

On that note, I must apologise to any colleague slightly revolted at the telltale echo and the knocking on our last phone conversation – yes I was in the bathroom, no I was not going to the toilet … though I may have been sitting on the lid.

Miranda Murphy is a mother of three and a journalist at The Australian.

Follow her on Twitter @murphymiranda