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When I have video conference with my supervisors during pandemic, it happens often that her/his child would e.g. barge into the room or he/she appear in the video with his/her child in his/her arm. He/She would almost always apologize to me for the child e.g. barging in. I would always say "It is OK".
I wonder whether I should compliment the child? E.g. by saying "Look what a cute child you have"?
(I am in Germany, but tips for other countries are also welcome.)
Your best bet would be to act as if the child isn't even in the room.
If it's not having an impact on either their or your performance it's irrelevant. The professional thing to do would be to continue on about work business.
It's a tough time for a lot of people, many I imagine are finding childcare hard to come by. There's a good chance that your supervisor isn't entirely happy about the merging of family life and work, but sometimes it can be unavoidable.
If they bring it up be polite, but don't bring it up yourself.
I am a fellow parent and manager. I had to un-stick Lego, wipe little bottoms (off-cam) and stop fights during professional presentations. Or tell my 5 years old to put on some trousers before he comes into the camera.
Other answers talk about ignoring it if it doesn't affect work performance.
Having to take care of children while trying to work does affect performance. It will make your boss more distracted during meetings. He might work less hours or be less effective during working hours.
Still, that does not matter. It is a hell of a time to go through, and literally hundreds of millions of people have to work while juggling childcare.
In my company, senior managers (of one of the largest in the world) made a point of normalizing that by bringing their own kids to video meetings.
As for how to respond:
And last, please don't forget that while the world has, by now, got bored of everything the pandemic landed on us, the children's needs are the same as they were back in spring, when all of us were taken by storm by the shock and and stress of the sudden changes. Parents need the same patience and understanding.
As a parent working with no child-care and a lot of meetings, I've needed to navigate this a lot, and I'm not really satisfied with any of the current answers.
The problem is that the current answers all make assumptions about what the parent would want. Instead, I recommend a simple, adaptive heuristic: match the parent's level of talking about the child.
My kids have been in many hundreds of my meetings since the pandemic began. But every day is different and parenting is always a moving target.
As a result, what I want and need from my colleagues is often different at different times. For example:
In every case, the last thing that I want is for a helpful person far away to assume they know what's best for me and my kids with respect to my professional life. If you focus attention on my kids in a way that rewards disruption, you may be undermining my parenting and making my work-life balance more difficult and stressful. If you want to act like nothing is happening when I've asked for tolerance as I'm dealing with a crisis, then that's a problem of another sort.
In short: don't assume you know what the parent wants or needs. Follow their lead, and be generous in your tolerance for interruptions and challenges.
I'd assume that having the child visible in the video / present in the room does not affect the work. If so, then:
I don’t have kids, but I have worked in both Germany and the United States. While the top answers are both right, there are some contextual considerations you might want to make.
Relationship to the colleague - if you’re very friendly with each other, it might be weird not to acknowledge the kid, honestly. If you’re more like strangers, then a short acknowledgment (“don’t worry about it”) - as other answers state - is fine. That said, it can also be a good icebreaker to get closer to said colleague.
Your personality - if you’re generally pretty friendly and complimentary, saying the kid is cute is probably not going to be construed as “inappropriate interest,” especially if you are a parent or expecting children. (Even if you’re normally quite reticent, it might be endearing to your colleagues if you’re suddenly super sweet when a child is in the picture.)
The workplace culture. If you’re in a stuffy or highly competitive environment, then by all means be as professional as possible. But a LOT of places are trying to promote a “startup” culture with a “laidback” atmosphere. This is true in both Germany and the USA. If you’re at such a place, I don’t think it hurts to be friendly to your colleague about their child’s surprise cameo.
The circumstance. This is probably an obvious one, but you’re not going to drop everything you’re doing in a presentation to acknowledge a surprise guest. But if your colleague brings in the child (“hey ___, want to say hi to my coworkers?”), you’ll think differently. For this consideration, I agree with jakebeal’s answer: match how the parent speaks about the child.
I’ve been based in the US since the pandemic started. So far I’ve been in a couple of meetings where one colleague or the other will have their toddler sitting with them, and you can hear a bunch of people saying hi to the child (before we carry on with the meeting or the child scurries off). While this could simply be a cultural thing, I think it’s more likely dependent on the group dynamic.
In short, these answers are right but you’ll have to decide for your own circumstances what makes the most sense.
To add one thing to previous answers: You said sometimes the child "barges" into the room.
There's a well-known, pre-COVID video of an economist being interviewed in his home office. When his toddler daughter comes into the room behind him and he doesn't notice, the off-camera interviewer interrupts to tell him the girl is behind him.
I think that's wise. As a parent, your supervisor needs to know that the kid is -- unsupervised. When you say "Did you know your little boy is behind you?", be sure to sound helpful, or even amused, not annoyed.
(BTW: While the economist in the video tried his best to handle the little girl and continue talking, her baby brother followed her into the room. Then their mother leaned in and extracted them both. It's adorable.)
