Working
Around Children:
Management Tips for HomeBiz Moms
by Barbara Brabec
Many moms have told me that the trick in successfully
working at home with kids underfoot lies in being flexible. "I
won't postpone my creative instincts until my children are adults,”
says one mother. “I've simply changed my perception of work, altered
my view of distractions and interruptions, and adjusted my work schedule
to accommodate the needs of my children. This means, of course, that
clients must be chosen carefully. We think about the kinds of jobs
we can handle and those we can't." Here are some practical tips
shared by Moms in my home-business network:
If your children could ruin the business illusion
you are trying to create, a separate business phone should be
considered. And don't let children answer your business line until
they're educated in the proper way to do it. The last thing you
want is a child yelling into the ear of a prospective client,
"It's for you, Mommy!"
Develop a series of hand signals you can use
to communicate with young children when you're on the telephone
with a client. One Mom told me that her girls grew up knowing
that a ringing telephone meant that the TV or stereo or most recent
fight over a toy or article of clothing went off immediately,
and they learned hand signals early on. One signal indicated business
(when they were expected to disappear into another part of the
house); another indicated they could play nearby quietly.
To get extra uninterrupted time for your work,
hire a baby-sitter or mother’s helper for a certain period each
week. Except for emergencies, give the sitter the authority to
handle whatever comes up. If your child will be at home under
someone else's care during your uninterrupted time, choose for
your workspace an area of the house where you aren't in sight.
At the appointed hour, close the door and try not to listen. (This
gets easier with practice.)
To ease stress, take a nap. The smartest thing
she ever did, says one Mom, was to start making the whole family
take a nap every day. “Every afternoon we turn off all the phones
and whoever is home has to lie down and at least rest so Mom can
nap,” she says. “This is a real mind-rester for me, and it gives
the kids some relaxation time, too."
Lighten your load by making your children
responsible for their own laundry duties. Years ago when
her children were very young, a mother of five accomplished
this by giving each child a personal basket for carrying
dirty linens to the laundry room and carrying them back
when removed from the dryer. She put shoeboxes into drawers
for her youngest children to hold their unfolded underwear
and encouraged them to make a game of matching socks.
Today, this home-business mom says she folds no laundry
except for her husband's T-shirts and their bathroom towels,
and irons only a few special shirts and dresses.
Consider giving your son or daughter a tiny
corner of your office or workroom so they can "play with
mother" all day long. One mother told me she gave her daughter
her own little desk, toy typewriter, an old, defunct telephone,
and lots of blank paper, pens, pencils, crayons, paints and colored
markers. “Because she was free to touch and play with everything
she could reach--except the papers on my desk--she learned to
respect this at a very young age,” she says. “By the time she
was four, she was extremely bright and artistic, confident, and
secure, owing greatly, I feel, to the fact that I was always with
her during her formative years."
If you need to see clients on a regular basis
with no children around, consider using an incubator facility.
I'll never forget the mother I met at a home business conference
who explained how she handled client meetings. At that time she
was renting an office in an incubator facility one hour at a time
as needed. And she had this interesting little box that contained
a couple of pictures for the wall, a calendar, and desk accessories--all
those little office touches a client would expect to see. She
set everything in place just before the client walked in the door
and, at the end of her meeting, she packed her little box and
went home. Her phone setup was also amusing. In order to legally
advertise her phone number, she had all her calls forwarded through
the incubator facility. The only problem was, after fifteen minutes
there was an automatic disconnect--which meant that every time
her phone rang, she had to start a fifteen-minute timer, and if
a call happened to run long, she had to get inventive and come
up with a good reason to hang up so she could call back.
Set time aside for children's activities so
they don't become resentful of the homebased business. To avoid
missing anything important, keep a calendar for each child showing
all ball games, practices, meetings and other appointments so
the whole family has a clear view of what's happening each day.
As your children grow along with your business,
try to get them involved in it by giving them certain responsibilities
and paying them accordingly. In addition to the tax advantages
of hiring your children, this will give them a greater respect
for what you’re doing, and may even spark entrepreneurial efforts
of their own. Don't take advantage of a good thing, however. Sue,
the owner of a sewing business, once told me about her youngest
child, Jason, then five, who had been brought into the business
as a "runner." Her business was spread all over the
house, on different levels from the garage to the attic, and Jason's
job was to carry work in progress from one location to another
or "gofer" things other family members needed as they
worked. One day when I was speaking to Sue, she told me Jason
wasn't happy at the moment. On that day, he had literally stomped
his foot and said he was tired of doing all this "home business
stuff," tired of running all those errands! Hiding her amusement,
Sue simply gave her youngest some time off--plus a special reward
for being such a big help to the business.
