One of the greatest gifts for a work at home Mom (WAHM) is that you get to set your own schedule and spend lots of time with your family and kids.
The bad news is, without boundaries and with the kids around, it’s all too easy to get nothing done.
For party plan and event consultants who juggle many different tasks at once many of which could make or break someone’s big day, it’s more important for a WAHM to compartmentalized their work and family times.
Working with the kids at home requires discipline and focus for you and a bit of routine for the kids.
Work At Home Mom Tips
Every family has its own dynamics.
When you’re working at home, in all families, no matter what your occupation or product line, the most important element is structure.
Your kids aren’t going to leave you alone for eight hours or six hours or even four hours. If you break the day down into small, manageable chunks and let your children know that you are absolutely not available when you’re working, they’ll be much more likely to resist the urge to barge in and show you their latest drawing.
There must be consequences for interrupting you without justification and there also must also be a reward for completing the very hard task of leaving mom alone for what seems to them to be an infinite amount of time.
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Incentives For The Kids
Incentivize your kids by using the in-between time to play their favorite game or eat their favorite food.
When you take a break, as much as you just want to decompress, make sure that break includes them. They may claim to be starving for pizza, but the reality is, they’re hungry for attention.
If you take a half-hour break, spend 20 minutes of it playing Candyland and eating crustless sandwiches, or whatever it is your kids do, and then reserve the last 10 minutes for ‘you time’.
If they know something good is waiting, they’ll wield infinitely more power over their creeping urge to see what mom is up to.
Work At Home Mom Schedule
Whenever possible use your kids’ schedule as your own work schedule.
Depending on their age, the kids might take naps, do homework, or be allowed to indulge in an hour or so of TV or video games.
Identify the times when they are incapacitated by sleep, by books, by playing outside, or even by the tube, and do your heaviest lifting then.
The frequent times when your kids aren’t going to make a peep are the times when you need to get the tough stuff out of the way. Schedule your work time to coincide with these short-lived opportunities!
Flexibility For WAHM
If the first rule is structure, the second rule is room to maneuver within that structure.
You must provide elasticity within your compartmentalized work day for interruptions — screaming, things breaking or perhaps being set on fire, arguing among siblings, or simple lapses in concentration that lead to the inevitable knock on the door.
The more time you budget for miscellaneous shenanigans, the more smoothly things will go.
Make sure you give your kids the incentive to stay quiet when it’s time for you to get down to business.
Being a parent and working from home are both dreams come true. They don’t, however, always mesh together.
Set boundaries and structure for your day with built in flexibility in a way that keeps the kids at bay as you plan your party or your event. It is possible to balance the two, and when you find the sweet spot, working with your kids at home can be more fun than any party you could plan.