The Art of Working at Home with Kids

Parents who work at home with kids are growing as a percentage of the group from 46% in 2007 to 48% in 2008. As more and more moms and dads get laid-off with unemployment a solid 10%+ or more they are turning to working from home. Mainly it starts with saving money and spending more time with the kids, but few realize the reality of a high percentage cutback in their overall income and what that means to the family.

So in time they turn to a hybrid situation of working from home with kids. But this also presents some problems that were underestimated at time of the decision to work at home. Like what to do with junior when you have an important tele-conference to attend electronically?

Here are some tips to making the art of working at home with kids a little easier.

1. Hire a neighborhood student to manage your children after 4pm. This will enable you to make calls, conferences or virtual work meetings late in the day if you have associates or customers on the west coast.

2. Team up with other work at home parents and hire someone to manage all your children at a different house everyday.

3. On Saturdays go to garage sales and buy coloring books, picture books, kids toys and anything that makes a good cheap reward for behavior. This will help to control the kid's actions while you are working away near by.

4. Create a playgroup with other parents in the neighborhood so a near by parent is always watching your kids, but be ready to reciprocate at least one day a week. This is a good time for having fun with the kids while being able to work uninterrupted the other four days of the week.

5. There is always daycare but this is an expensive option and needs to be weighed with the savings of working from home.

6. Also, nearby relatives are good for watching kids and in a lot of cases need the money. Did you know that 48% of single moms have a relative watch their child while they work?

7. Watching a few kids for other working moms could be a great business in itself. Helping you to earn some income while helping other stay at home moms to work uninhibited.

These tips take into consideration that your child is not of school age. For school age kids, hiring a student to baby-sit your kids for the late afternoon is very effective, because younger kids like to hang around the older kids.

Whatever business your in there are always ways to make ends meet without breaking the bank with child care. Use some intuition or realize that a job for you might just be 15-20 hours a week.

Sources:

www.childstats.gov The Federal Governments site for child statistics.

www.babycenter.com A blog and forum for parenting young children. "How Much You Will Spend on Child Care" Sept. 20, 2010