One of the hardest things about running a home business is coping with family. No matter how understanding a family you have, there’s a lot to deal with.

If you have small children, running a home business can be very difficult. You have to find times when the kids won’t mind that you are busy and steadily teach them how to behave when you need to work.

Right now, I have one of the more difficult family situations for a home business, which also makes it very rewarding. I have a toddler, who is about to turn 3 years old, and an infant, who is going to have surgery on his head soon for a condition called scaphocephaly, which you can read about on my other website. This makes succeeding with my home business a very high priority, yet I have to make time to play and care for my children.

Thank goodness for naptime!

When you run your home business, make sure you don’t forget your family. Take the time to have fun and talk with your children and your spouse. Your business won’t mean as much in the long run if you lose contact with what really matters.

How do I cope?

As I said above, thank goodness for naptime! Naps allow me to focus entirely on work without ignoring my children. But when my daughter, Ariel, is awake, I have a rule that she can interrupt certain activities very freely, such as time spent on discussion boards. I try to reserve activities that I do not want to have interrupted for naptimes or after she goes to bed if her nap wasn’t enough. I also make sure she has things she can do to pretend to work with me, or even work with her on my lap as I explain what I’m doing. Of course, none of it makes sense to her, but I do like to think that it will encourage her own entrepreneurial spirit when she is old enough.

My son, being just under two months old, is easier to deal with. Once again, I do a lot of work with him on my lap (yes, I do spend a lot of time with one or both children sitting with me at the computer), typing one-handed while nursing or trying to come up with something interesting for him to look at. There’s not much a two month old can do, so he’s really pretty easy, just very, very time consuming as he loves to eat.

In many ways, the person I have to be most careful to not ignore is my husband. After all, he has to compete for my attention with my business as well as the children, and that’s a lot. He’s very supportive, thank goodness, as well as pretty good at getting me away from the computer when he wants to! But since I can tell him that I need to get things done, it is all too easy to do that to excess and not feel guilty.

Finding that balance between working at home and family time is one of the most challenging aspects of home business. Make sure you make time for yours.