Business Opportunities Weblog

June 7, 2006 by Dane Carlson | 1 Comment

Startup Journal:

For many parents, the whole notion of creating a home office centers on walling yourself off from family life, creating a space — whether an entire room or just a desk tucked into the kitchen or den — where your world is private and removed from all the commotion and demands of spouse and children. It’s the place where you set the rules, whether they involve access or the acceptable level of clutter or noise.

Rule No. 1 in many home offices: The kids are not allowed to touch your computer. Let them use another computer in the house. Because even if you aren’t working at the moment, you don’t want to have to clear the decks in your office to ensure that paperwork isn’t lost or destroyed by a spilled glass of juice.

One problem with this rule is that kids want to be near you, and packing them off to another corner of the house makes them feel as if your job is more important than they are. Moreover, you have no clue what they’re doing on the computer when you’re not around to monitor the sites they visit and the chat rooms they stumble into.

And then there’s this: the lost opportunity to educate your child about work in general and your job in particular.

Photo by rsepulveda.

In Work at Home | 1 Comment