Top Tips for Entertaining Your Kids While You Run Your Online Store

Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called “Spark an idea Thursday.” As part of this tradition, I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and interpretations for each week’s topic for those of you who sell products or services online.

I invite you to grab our image over there to the right and carry the tradition through to your own blog. If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!

So, let’s get started with the topic at hand: Spark an Idea that Entertains the Kids while you Work!

I’ve been training myself for or running a web hosting, design and ecommerce business for more than 7 years now. I started when my son was less than a year old and continued through a pregnancy and birth of my daughter. He’s 9 and she’s 6 now. So I’m going to break this down into age groups.

Babies

If you’re nursing, babies are easy. Just buy a Boppy Pillow and make yourself comfortable in your office chair. You can type while your little guy (or gal!) is nursing and napping. I did some of my best work done this way and actually built the foundations of my business while nursing babies. I did cut my hours back as much as possible during those early baby months, making sure I napped with my baby and followed his or her schedule.

Toddlers and Preschoolers

This is where it gets more challenging. Toddlers have very short attention spans and are still very much attached to you. Depending on your child, you may be able to put some interesting toys in front of them and keep them entertained long enough to answer a couple of emails or work on a few orders. My son, Chris, would be entranced by anything mechanical, or that he could take apart. He loved his cars and toy hammers. (I had to watch him closely or he’d get out Daddy’s screwdriver and start taking things apart that he shouldn’t… We used to joke that if we blinked for two long, he’d have the TV in pieces…LOL!)

My daughter, Aimee, on the other hand, was very talkative. (And still is!) Toys were not going to hold her attention long. She wanted to be in my lap, doing what I was doing, and yakking about it the whole time. She’s also the one who thought she could nurse upside down and then take off across the room. Ouch! With her, I just had to take more breaks to give her the attention she needed.

Elementary School

The one nice thing about homework is, it gives me a little extra time to finish my work after the kids come home from school. We live 15 minutes from the school, so we talk about how things went that day on the way home. At home, Chris does his homework and Aimee has her afternoon snack. Then we start working on chores. Sometimes, my chores involve work. Imagine that!

Now that they’re in school, I have from 8 am to 2 pm to concentrate solely on my work. Once we’re done with homework and chores, we usually end up outside playing (we’re a baseball family so this often involves playing catch and practicing batting) or watching some of our favorite TV shows. Or going to ball games. Or going to church.

Final Thoughts

In any age group, it’s important to have help from your family. My husband, in our kids’ early years, would come home from work and entertain them while I finished up a project. Now that they’re older, he’ll supervise while they play outside, riding their bikes or kicking a soccor ball around.

I also discovered the beauty of virtual assistants. If you have someone who understands your business, and who is capable of handling customer support or order fulfillment or blog writing, whatever you need help with, she can take a load off of you, giving you the time to spend with your kids.

So, those are my thoughts. Tell me, what are your ideas for entertaining your kids while you work?