Been remote for 2 years now and I thought it would be perfect. No commute means more time with the kids right? Wrong. Now my boss thinks I'm available at 6pm, 9pm, weekends. My wife gets mad because I'm "home" but I'm not really HOME you know? I literally walked out of my son's birthday dinner to take a call yesterday. How do you guys actually turn it off when your office is 20 feet away?
This is real. I work from home too and the expectation that you're always on is exhausting. You gotta set actual office hours and stick to them or it never stops.
Set a hard stop time and put your laptop away. Your boss will adjust if you're consistent about it. The boundary thing isn't going to fix itself automatically.
The commute used to be my decompression time honestly. Now I just walk from the kitchen table to the bedroom. Have you tried setting up a dedicated workspace so you can at least mentally close the door?
This is the trap nobody warns you about. You think remote work is the dream but then you're working through dinner and dealing with kid interruptions all day. I had to literally schedule end of work time and stick to it like my job depended on it.
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Real talk, you gotta create boundaries your family respects. We use a closed door as the signal that dad's working and can't be interrupted unless someone's bleeding. Changed everything for us.