Sometimes I answer, but try to keep it short.

Sometimes I don’t answer the phone, based on who it is and how important it might be (caller ID). But with that, it is still distracting to hear the phone ringing and someone talking on the answering machine.

Sometimes I turn the ringer off and the volume way down on the answering machine. That way we don’t even hear it and it isn’t a distraction to us. The only thing about doing it this way is that I tend to feel guilty and worry that someone might actually NEED something or there might be an emergency while I have it set to where I can’t hear the phone.

Most of it depends on the mood I am in, how much we have going on that day, and whether or not I feel able to deal with the distractions LOL

Company dropping in at the door, that can be a bit harder to work with because you cannot screen that. About ten years go we had moved to a house a mere mile down the road from my parents after living 780 miles away in another sate. My parents began dropping in on a whim quite OFTEN for a visit or arrive announcing that they wanted to take the kids shopping in the middle of a school day. Now THAT was disruptive. I often felt out of control back then beacuse I didn’t want to hurt their feelings nor have to be the bad guy saying no to a spontaneous shopping trip for the kids.

It wasn’t easy, but now my parents accept that plans need to be made ahead of time and we work around homeschooling in that planning.

A lot of our clients however, know that we homeschool and some actually make the effort not to phone in the mornings which is nice.

We rarely have relatives that call in the morning. They’ve all learned not to.

That way, I could establish with the caller that school is the priority, not the phone. Especially with relatives who always seem to think they are exempt from the “no calls during school” rule.

LOL

So here goes: 1. Let your family know what your school hours are. 2. Get talking caller ID. 3. Turn your ringer off so that it will not disturb your lessons.

If anyone calls now you will hear their name or phone number in the background and it is up to you if you want to take that call at that time. I hope this helps.

Really, if you have an answering machine, you could let it get all of the calls. If it’s an emergency, you’ll hear it and can pick up if need be. 99.99999% of the time, there’s no real need for you to pick up the phone right then.

I “trained” everyone not to call me during the day our first year of HS’ing by having dial up ‘net access. Since our curriculum is delivered online, they always got busy signals. Once we got DSL no one still called. We didn’t have CID at that time, but now we do and it’s soooo nice to have to screen calls. I do the same on my cell b/c many people, when they don’t get a person on the land line, they try the cell. I just let them leave a message.

Answering service for cell phone. And caller ID

Most people know that the best way to communicate with us is through email or IM.