Alone Time and the lack of a warning label

While I agree that many people think working from home is an ideal situation I also know many others who work outside the home to have an escape from the kids and the nagging spouse. Basically what I think this boils down to is a person's need for "alone time." If you work from home and have kids you won't get much "alone time." I think the optimal solution here is to arrange with your spouse/nanny/babysitter/parent one or two days a week where the kids will be somewhere else.

Working during the odd hours such as "early in the morning, around nap times, and late at night" should have been preceded with the label "WARNING! Do not try this at home!" This only leads to distracted, sleepy or pressured ("I've gotta' hurry up and get this done before the baby wakes up") work environments which will in turn make you grumpy and less able to deal effectively with your kids and spouse during non-work hours (I've lived through these effects and would not recommend it). Additionally, hiding in the office with the door barricaded shut will only cause your kids to resent your work time which in turn makes it harder to quickly jump on the computer to send an email when they are around.

Instead I think this should be handled from a managerial point of view. Assign the kids tasks to work on while you work. Make them feel needed and helpful and most importantly pay attention to them as much as possible as they help. This will be a really difficult task at first and especially so if your kids aren't old enough to follow directions well but will pay off immensely as the kids realize that you being on the computer is not a bad thing.

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Jason (who spent many days as a child in his dad's office having to keep himself entertained using only a pencil and a post-it pad)