How to Balance Kids and Business and Keep Everyone Happy

By startupprincess | Published November 16, 2009

Fairy Godmother Stacey Kannenberg writes the following article: I am a Home Based Working Mom as well as an author, publisher, consultant, speaker, motivator, keynote, spokesperson and Mom CEO. My publishing “house”, Cedar Valley Publishing, has sold over 60,000 books and was voted as a top 50 Children’s Publisher! And I mean “house” literally! Here are my tips on how to work at home with kids and balance it all

• Plan to do something fun each day for the kids: host a lemonade stand for a few hours, have a pie or water fight, do the water balloon toss, create a chalk masterpiece on the sidewalk, have a picnic lunch at the park, go to the beach for a few hours, take a hike, ride bikes — the more you make it fun the more they are willing to let you work.

• Empower them into the process. Find things that they can help you with for your business! From adding postage on mailings, to helping balance the checkbook, answering the phone, helping me think of things to tweet about, to being involved in video blogging, add them to the team! My kids know my email backlog and will often ask me how many I am behind and they motivate me to get caught up and celebrate when I can get catch up! They will challenge me to get say 20 more done and then we can play!

• Work around their schedule: take them to dance lessons and bring the blackberry; have a picnic in the park for lunch and if you end up spending more hours playing, make up the hours before they get up or later after they are in bed.

• Find backup: a college student or stay-at-home mom to help during days when you simply can’t be interrupted during conference or client calls and media requests. Find sitters that your really kids want to “play with” who are home with you while you are working in another room.

• Set the boundaries with your kids and explain they get to be at home with you, rather than at a daycare all day, but this is a privilege that can not be abused or off to daycare they go. If you have older kids who have never experienced a daycare, see if you can do drop off service for a few hours and then ask them to make the choice: home or daycare. They might like the activities of playing with a room full of other kids and if that is the case, try to build in this drop off service as a once a week treat, depending on your budget or they might love being at home and help to work hard with you to make this work.

• Have a safe area where you can see kids playing outside. They sit outside my work window and have tea parties on the covered porch and make that into their playhouse while I working inside or they drive up and down the driveway, outside my window on their bikes or dribble the basketball up and down the driveway or play catch where I can see them! If they are playing in the backyard, away from my window, I grab some work and take the phone in the room that I can see in the back yard. While they are in the house, I fold laundry in the same room that they are in and make it into a family activity!

• Other ideas that work: If I am on the phone and snap my fingers they know they are being too loud and I explain to my clients that I work from home around the kid schedule. I can make their lunch while I am on the phone and multitask with only my kids knowing that we are all in the same room. I have done conferences from the car, using my speaker phone and letting them listen to the conversation from the backseat, playing their hand held video games with the mute on their sound and they like to hear what is going on in the business. They often get to listen to my phone messages to give them a taste of what running our family business is all about! I ask their opinion and make them feel a valued team player because they are — they are made up if the demographic I am trying to reach.

• Network with other work-at-home moms and do day swaps – I will have all the kids on this day if you can take them on that day — no money changes hands and it is a win/win for you all. Many times the other kids occupy your kids and you can actually get a bit of work in between the fun!

• Take time to practice balancing! A tight rope walker doesn’t just wake-up and walk around a rope, 500 feet up in the air without first practicing!
Smiles – Stacey
Stacey Kannenberg, Cedar Valley Publishing

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