Lotus Work At Home Mums Blog

Childcare Ideas For Work At Home Mums

By Leigh Hunt on November 28th, 2007

If you are a work at home mum, or thinking of becoming a work at home mum, you probably made that decision so you could spend more time with your children. However, there will most likely be times in your business when you will need to arrange for childcare. The following are some creative ideas for your childcare needs.

WAHMs in direct sales are very often faced with childcare predicaments. A large part of their business is conducting sales presentations, usually held at someone else’s house.

If you’re a party plan WAHM, the most obvious choice would be to schedule these presentations when your partner can watch the kids.  But what happens if your partner has an unusual work schedule or you’re a single parent? One idea is to hire a local high school student to come to the party and look after the kids. Check with the hostess first, but she will probably love the idea (and so will the other guests, and since they won’t have to worry about getting a babysitter for their children, they will be more likely to come to the party and the more guests you have, the bigger your profits!).

If you just need a babysitter every now and again, try setting up a child care group with your friends and neighbours. Each woman can designate a set time on a certain day of the week or month when they will be ‘the sitter’. Any of the Mums in your child care group who need a babysitter that day can drop their kids of at the designated babysitters’ house. The children will get to play and interact with one another and each Mum can get free childcare on an ad hoc basis.

Check with your local library as they may have story hours where you can drop your children off and the librarians will read the children a book and after the book is read, the children can participate in a craft, game or activity.

If you just need some quiet time to do some work, you can hire a local teenager to come over and play with the kids while you are tucked away in your office. You will have some uninterrupted work time, but will still be there in case you’re needed.

If you have regular meetings away from home, check with friends and family to see if they can help out by watching the kids. Offer your product or service in exchange for their time. They may jump at the offer!

And don’t feel guilty if you need to put your children in day care part-time. Yes, you may have had every intention of working at home in order to spend time with your children, but, there may be times when your business will need your total focus. By taking that time and completing your business tasks, you will be able to focus 100% on your children during family time.

Comments

#1 - By Antonia on November 28th, 2007 at 03:13 PM

They are all good tips Leigh. I guess I’d just add that you may need to use several different ways of childcare...we’ve been through nursery, then a great local playgroup for dd, and had a lovely local lady who was like a third grandma to babysit. However, then dd moved on to school, I had another baby, and our ‘grandma’ had some health problems so it was back to step one! I now drop dd at school, have ds at nursery a couple of days a week AND we have a regular mothers help who can cover at pretty much any time of the day, collect the kids from school, or babysit on a saturday night, which is great.

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