Busy Work at Home Mom

While your kids may never become small business owners, teaching them business skills can be important for their life.  Business skills encompass everything from customer relations to accounting.  Business management, time organization, and responsible work ethics will help your kids no matter what career they choose.

A great benefit of being a work at home mom is having the ability to teach your kids these business skills every day.  One of the best ways to teach your kids is through setting a good example.  Every small business owner who works at home must be good and time management, have a strong work ethic, be a self starter, and maintain responsible action.  If your children see you modeling these behaviors, they will adopt them in their own lives.

Began when your children are young, and teach them to appreciate work and to understand the relationship between work and reward.  This can be done through chores, every day activities, and play time fun as well.

As your children get older they can begin to understand the workings of the small business.  Teach them and computer skills, task and time management, and how to prioritize the activities they need to complete in a day.  Learning about sending long-term goals and determining how to complete them is another important skill.

All of these business skills are also general life skills.  More specific business skills can be taught, especially if you intend for your small business to become a true family business.  No matter what type of business you have, kids can learn the fundamentals of how it works.  For example, if you own a mail order business or sell on eBay in or from a website, you can’t teach your children about the shipping and postage rules, basic photography skills, and how to design a web site or product description.

My living room floor looks like a very small, very colorful city exploded all over it. Mini-figure body parts lay still amid the remains of garages, spaceships, and strange robots. It’s hard to tell who was the attacker and who was the defender.

What I do know is that, for the last half hour, my sons left me blissfully alone while I hurried to finish three articles before they needed me again. I did have to put up with loud explosions, crashing noises, and a running commentary about… something.

A work at home mom’s secret weapon is selective listening. If I let every make-believe speech enter my brain, I would never get anything done.

I struggled for a long time with the concept of being a professional. To me, a professional was a person in a suit with a briefcase and an ulcer. I work at home full time, and make a living at it. I’m not an amateur in the home business realm, so I must be a professional.

Another explosion sounds from the living room, and my younger son lets out a cry of distress. His brother has just attacked his Lego house with an alien ship.

Feverishly typing the last line of my current article, I get up from my desk chair, the invisible robe of professionalism slipping away with ease. By the time I reach the next room, I am all parent, and ready for the federation counterstrike against the encroaching hoard from Mars.

Juggling parenting and professionalism requires practice, dedication, and a healthy dose of craziness.