From How to Stay Sane and Be a Work at Home Mom
By Jennifer Dugan, http://www.duganstravels.com

If you are working from home with children, you have probably run into the same problems as most work-at-home parents. You are in the middle of a phone call and a screaming child comes barreling into the room!

Here are some things to help

• First, realize it is going to happen at least once no matter how hard you try for it not to happen.
• Relax if it does happen because if the person you are speaking to gets upset, it is his/her problem. I usually explain to whomever I am speaking to that I work from home and that was my child. Most people understand and if they don‘t, it is their problem. They can‘t be that nice of a person if it offends them. Most people just laugh about it.
• I try to save my phone calls for when my kids are napping or provide an hour or so of quiet time. My youngest will take an afternoon nap but my 4 year old does not. So I let him watch a movie and have a special snack, which keeps him very content and happy.
• Utilize e-mail when you can. Great thing about e-mail is it doesn‘t matter what is going on around you. You can have kids banging on pots and pans, but no one except you (and your headache) will know. Ask customers if they have an e-mail address that you can send information to. These also help if you had a busy day and want to work at 10 p.m. and send your customers information without disturbing them.
• You can also use fax to communicate. I tend to have to send clients a lot of prices and schedules with my travel agency business. It is much quicker and easier for me to fax the customer the information so I try to get fax numbers when I can.
• If the phone rings and your house is a madhouse, let voicemail or an answering machine do the work for you. Most people will leave messages or call back later. I don‘t answer the phone if I am in the middle of something like changing a diaper or when I am doing something with my child like reading a story. People can wait and if they can‘t, then they may be difficult to have as a customer.

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