• Surviving the Holidays

    Date: 2010.10.04 | Category: Home business | Tags:

    I’ve just been through a week of mid-term break. Unfortunately, my children have yet to realize that just because they are on school vacation, does not mean that I am too. I find it exhausting, this being on holiday!

    In addition to the usual ‘Moooom, I’m bored’ litany, my daughter turned 11 this week – on a week day. On this particular day I had three deadlines – one for a proposal for a website design to be presented the next day, another for 14 articles that were already a day overdue (I have very understanding clients), and two new landing pages to write for one of my internet marketing sites. Now, I love my daughter to bits, and I understand that this was a special day for her – but there’s only so much one can achieve in the middle of the night before you nod off on your keyboard!

    So, this got me thinking about the many methods I have used over the years to keep my kids busy while I get on with work during school vacations. When my kids were under 6, it was a huge novelty for them to pull up a small table and ‘work with mom’. This could be anything from scribbling on a page, coloring in a picture, or doing a few worksheets. The challenge came in when they wanted a chance to ‘type their work’, but there’s always something else you can do while they take a turn on the PC.

    I also found that if I set time limits, they would keep themselves occupied for close to the time we had set. So if I said I would come and play for a while in 1 hour, I usually got about 45 minutes of work done before the nagging started again. I will admit that I am distracted and less organized during the holidays, but at least I get some work done.

    As they got older, I discovered the joy of playdates. Yes, they still needed supervision, and summer and the swimming pool still present a challenge, but with a friend they keep out of your hair a lot more. The best thing about having a friend over to play is that the favor is usually returned, and you can get a full day’s work in two or three times a week. My daughter has a few friends who live in the neighborhood, and we take turns having the kids (four or five them) for at least one day of each holiday. This is great! In exchange for one day of noise and occasional interruptions, you get three or four days of peace and quiet. I recommend this plan to anyone with kids!

    There’s a 9 year gap between my kids, so they’re not very good company for each other, although my son does try to keep his little sister busy when I need help.  I sometimes wonder if the big gap was a good idea, but when I hear friends complaining that their kids who are much closer in age do nothing but fight with each other, I think maybe it was a good thing. Also, my son is old enough to understand that I have work to do, and he’ll often do something fun with his sister just so I can meet an urgent deadline.

    When your kids start school, you can still do the ‘work with mom’ game, but now my daughter does her homework with me instead of coloring in or worksheets. This can be a little distracting, especially if she needs help, so I use the time to do tasks that I don’t have to concentrate too heavily on.

    The one thing that I remind myself of when I start getting irritated with the kids, is that the main reason I started working from home was to have more time with them. If that means I sit blogging at midnight instead of at midday, then so be it. It also means that I can take an afternoon off to go and watch them play sport, be home with them when they’re ill, and take a break from work and do something silly and fun that is more inspirational and enjoyable than anything else on earth.

    I do have some tricks so that my work can survive the holidays, but I can’t imagine spending 8 or 9 hours a day away from my children. And yet, when my daughter was 4 months old, I trundled her off to day care and went back to a full time job for a year without thinking twice about it. Now, I love working from home – for the freedom it gives me and my children, and the career that I have managed to build from the ground up.

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