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Reality of Working At Home with Children

Dear Leslie,

I have recently starting doing freelance work at home. I have two children ages 9 months and 3 years old. I have been having a difficult time finding time to get my work completed. I want to be home to be with my children but I need to make some money too. Do you have any ideas to help me? Tori in NE

Dear Tori,

Many parents underestimate how difficult it is to work-at-home with children. Regardless of their ages, children need time and energy. While they do well with routine and structure, they don't live their lives in set blocks of time. Throughout the day they need snacks, help finding missing toys, answers to important questions, and more. You can ask them not to disturb you during certain times, but in many cases its too much to ask.

Working at home with children requires organization but also the ability to be very flexible. With young children, you may want to consider co-op childcare with another stay-at-home parent or hiring someone to come to your home for a few hours so you can get uninterrupted time. If your children are 2 to 5 years old, you may want to consider a 3 to 5 day a week preschool that will give you several hours in the morning for work while enriching your child's social life.

When your children are school age, you will have 6 or so hours a day to work. It sounds like a lot but trust me, it goes by fast. If you will home school your children you may want to consider hiring them to help you in your business. They can sort, file, lick stamps etc. It will also allow them hands-on opportunity to experience entrepreneurship.

Some tips and tricks that many people use when working at home is to have a special basket of toys that are allowed only during times you want to work. Have a child's desk area in your office with all sorts of office supplies that they can use to "play" business. The trick is to make sure they have something that is interesting to them to keep them occupied. This only works for as long as its interesting to the children. With really young kids, you will likely need to schedule shorter blocks of work time because little children just can't be unsupervised and they have difficulty keeping themselves busy. But, just like preschools have structured routine, the kids can too. You can have an art time, TV time, nap time, outside time (if you have a lap top you can work while they play outside), where you can work and in between those "time" you can give some focused attention for snack time and lunch time. If you need uninterrupted time, you will need to schedule that during nap times or later at night when your spouse is home to help.

With older kids, you can use "cueing" when you need uninterrupted time. I tell my children, "I'm getting on the phone. Is there anything you need right now? What are you going to be doing while I'm on the phone." This tells them that I need to work and they need to find something to do. They are not to bother me unless there is bleeding or a fire. When I'm done, I spend time with them and thank them for letting me get my work done. Does it always work? No. The longer amount of time you need, the harder it is for your children to have unstructured, unsupervised time. I try to limit my "don't bother me" time to no longer than an hour. That means I have to organize my day so that my "don't bother me" time is scheduled into certain blocks. For example, I may have uninterrupted time from 11 am to 12 pm. Then I stop and have lunch with my kids. Then I might have another uninterrupted time from 1 to 2. That doesn't mean I only work 11 to 12 and 1 to 2. But those hours are the times that I can't stop to get them juice or play a game. Other work time I'm more flexible about and can stop if needed.

One final thing to is reward children when they do let you work. Thank them and praise them for allow you to work. During the summer, the sooner I can get my work done, the sooner we can go to the pool so the kids usually do a good job letting me work. When kids are praised or get special time they are more likely to comply to your requests.

Ask WAHS Leslie is Leslie Truex a stay and work-at-home mom who has been helping people work at home since 1998 with her web site Work-At-Home Success. She is also the author of Jobs At Home: A Complete Guide to Finding a Work-At-Home
Job. Ask WAHS Leslie is a weekly column. You can submit a question to Ask WAHS Leslie by emailing here.