On this page and who it is for
Who Touchtypely is for
Online sellersTeens and parentsStudentsSeniorsOffice workersDevelopersJob seekersNo pressure, no guilt
Whether you are home for a few months of leave or for several years, this time belongs to your child and to you. It is not a productivity project. If your days are full of feedings, diapers and broken sleep right now, feel free to bookmark this page and come back later.
Some parents, though, want one small thing during these months that is only theirs. Something you can do at home, with no commute and no fixed schedule. Touch typing fits that well: all you need is a computer and a few spare minutes.
Touchtypely will not nag you. Your streak shows how many days in a row you have practiced, but if it breaks, nothing bad happens. You simply pick up again with everything you have already learned.
If you have no energy for learning right now, that is completely fine. If you do, ten minutes a day is a small enough dose that it will not crowd out anything that matters more.
No plan you have to stick to. Just a few minutes when you can find them.
Ten minutes during nap time
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, babies from 4 to 12 months need 12 to 16 hours of sleep in 24 hours, naps included, and toddlers from 1 to 2 years need 11 to 14 hours. Every child is different and not every nap goes to plan. Still, on many days there is a moment when you can sit down at the computer.
A Touchtypely lesson takes 5 to 8 minutes. If the baby wakes up early, no problem: you just repeat the lesson next time. Daily training can be set to 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, depending on how much time you have that day.
Spreading practice over many days pays off when you learn a keyboard. In a classic 1978 study, adults learned to type on different schedules. Hour for hour, the people who practiced one hour a day learned most efficiently, and the group with two two-hour sessions a day did worst.
It helps to have the computer ready before you need it. The page open, the laptop charged, a cup of coffee or tea nearby. When the baby falls asleep, you do not lose the first minutes hunting for a charger.
If your baby only naps on you, in a carrier or while nursing, ten minutes at a desk may not happen during the day. That is fine too. Try the evening, when another adult is home, or the weekend.
Five to eight minutes. That is one lesson.
Getting ready to go back to work
Going back to work is common for American parents of young children. In 2025, 68.0% of mothers whose youngest child was under 6 were in the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 78.2% of mothers whose youngest was 6 to 17. When and where you go back is your decision. If it is an office job, you will almost certainly be typing.
A lot can change at work in a year or two. A new system, new apps, more communication in writing. Touch typing does not depend on any particular program. It works in email, in a spreadsheet and in software you have never seen.
If you are not sure what your next job will ask of you, read a handful of job postings for roles that interest you. Notice how many of them mention computer skills, email or spreadsheets.
After the course you will also know your own numbers: speed, accuracy and error rate. If an interview turns to computer skills, you do not have to speak in general terms. You can say how many words per minute you type and how accurately. For a sense of scale, the average in a large study of about 168,000 typists by Aalto University and the University of Cambridge was about 52 WPM. It is not a bar you have to clear, just a reference point.
If you are thinking about a career change, say from retail to an office role, typing is a skill you can build ahead of time, at home and without driving to a class. And if you are considering a business of your own, such as an online store, you will type even more.
Software changes. Ten fingers on the keyboard stay with you.
Working from home
Remote or hybrid work can sound appealing when you have a small child. It is also common in the US. In the American Time Use Survey for 2025, 35% of employed people did some or all of their work at home on the days they worked, women more often than men (38% versus 31%).
Remote jobs involve a lot of writing: emails, messages in team chat, meeting notes, documents. Microsoft found in data from its workplace apps that the average employee spends 57% of their time in them communicating, in meetings, email and chat.
When you type during a video call, it helps to be able to look at the people on screen instead of at the keys. And when you answer a coworker while your child plays next to you, every minute you do not spend hunting for letters is a minute you keep.
When you work remotely, colleagues may know you mostly through the messages you send. A reply that arrives on time, reads clearly and has no typos becomes your calling card.
If you are weighing remote work, it is worth asking early what the job expects during working hours. Typing faster will not solve childcare, but it does make the writing part of the day lighter.
In remote work, much of the job happens in writing. It helps when the writing comes easily.
Office and administrative work
Office and administrative roles are built on typing: assistant work, billing, bookkeeping, HR, customer service. Lots of text, lots of numbers and lots of checking.
In these jobs it is not only words that count, but numbers too. Touchtypely devotes its entire sixth module to numbers and symbols: the top-row digits, punctuation, @ and $, and an optional lesson on the numeric keypad for amounts and spreadsheets. If your laptop has no keypad, you can skip that one.
Accuracy matters as well. In the large Aalto and Cambridge study, faster typists generally made fewer errors. Every mistake has to be noticed and fixed, so fewer errors also means more speed. After each exercise you will see corrected and uncorrected errors and your most frequent key mix-ups. With numbers, watch for swaps between neighboring digits such as 6 and 7, because a spell checker will never catch them in an amount or an account number.
In office work, accuracy shows up most in these places:
- emails and replies to clients,
- invoices, purchase orders and dollar amounts,
- dates, account numbers, ZIP codes and phone numbers,
- meeting notes and notes taken during phone calls.
In an office, speed is only half of it. The other half is whether the number is right.
Confidence you bring with you
After a long break, it is natural for everything at work to feel new at first. New faces, new processes, long email threads. When at least the typing takes care of itself, you have more attention left for everything else.
During training you can choose practice texts from a genre you like, for example business or science. After each text comes one short comprehension question, so your mind gets a workout along with your fingers.
The typing test runs for 30 seconds, 1, 3 or 5 minutes, and you can repeat it any time. Before an interview you will know your current numbers and see how they have changed over the past weeks.
If a computer skills test or a work sample is part of the hiring process, take a 5-minute typing test a few days before. You will get a feel for staying focused on continuous text for longer than a short lesson.
There is also something good about finishing a thing you started. The course has a clear beginning, a clear end and a final exam, which earns you a certificate with a public verification link.
When you know your numbers, you do not have to guess.
A skill that stays with you
Touch typing is not tied to one employer or one program. Once you have it, you will use it for every email and application, and later when you help an older child with homework. It is handy at home too: forms, emails to daycare, insurance claims, returns and online orders.
To be honest, though, speed fades without practice. In the 1978 study mentioned above, people who did not type for one, three or nine months after training had lost roughly 30% of their speed. That is why Touchtypely does not stop at the course. The basic 5-minute daily training stays free forever.
Daily training is built from your weak keys, keys that are starting to slip, and a text from a genre you choose. If you already know what trips you up, for example B and N, you can pick those keys to drill.
The course has an end. Daily practice does not have to.
How to start when every day is unpredictable
You do not need a big plan. One small agreement with yourself is enough: when the baby falls asleep, the first ten minutes belong to you. Not to the laundry, not to the dishes. To you.
If you skip a week now and then, that is fine. You start where you left off, and daily training automatically focuses on the keys that slipped in the meantime.
Here is what we suggest at the start:
- in the first week, just the typing test and the first lessons, no goals,
- set daily training to 5 minutes and make it longer only when you miss it,
- if you can, practice on the keyboard you will use at work later,
- do not check your speed every day, once a week is plenty,
- if specific keys bother you, choose them for focused practice.
When the baby falls asleep, the first ten minutes are yours.
For dads too
Most stay-at-home parents in the US are mothers, but more fathers are home with their kids than a generation ago. According to Pew Research Center, dads made up 18% of stay-at-home parents in 2021, up from 11% in 1989. Everything on this page applies to fathers just the same.
And if you have a teenager at home, you can practice together. Touchtypely accounts are for ages 13 and up, and we recommend teens use a nickname rather than their full name. A family typing test makes a decent rainy-afternoon game.