From Susan Ward,
Your Guide to Small Business: Canada.
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Do you feel guilty because your home-based business takes too much time away from your kids? Or frazzled because caring for your kids interferes with the time you think you should be spending on your home- based business?

You're not alone. Many home-based business owners with kids share these same conflicting feelings. Running a successful home-based business with kids can make you feel like a hamster trapped on an exercise wheel; you just run round and round and don't feel as if you're accomplishing anything.

But you can have both a successful home-based business and happy kids, if you set some ground rules and stick to them. Here are seven ways to help you make sure your home-based business is still a happy home.

1) Establish a routine and stick with it.

Kids like routine, and you'll find that having a routine makes you more productive when you're working at your home-based business. If your kids know, for instance, that mommy works from 1 to 3 p.m. and should not be interrupted except for emergencies, you'll find you're interrupted much less often. 

2) Make time with your kids part of your routine.

Whether it's the story before bedtime, having breakfast with the kids, or an hour spent helping your child with homework, kids appreciate predictability, and scheduling regular time with your kids will help you avoid getting too obsessed with the demands of your home-based business.

It's too easy to get wrapped up the new project or the new client and put off spending time with the kids. You know the cliché about tomorrow and how disappointing it can be for a child when tomorrow never arrives. Scheduling daily time with the kids will help you remember that your kids are just as important as your home-based business activities.

3) Organize child care.

You have to accept that you can't run a home-based business and be a full-time mother. You have to accept that you can't work full-time hours at your home-based business and do justice to your kids. Figure out how much time you can actually work and arrange child care for your kids while you're working. Some home-based business owners work only when their kids are in school and/or in bed. If you can only work three hours a day, so be it. You can get a lot accomplished in 15 hours a week if you have that time to work at your home-based business free of interruptions.

If you have a spouse, you may be able to spell each other off and arrange your schedules so that one of you minds the kids at certain times. You may be able to trade child care with other parents in your neighbourhood. Or you may have to pay for child care, either in or out of your home. But if you can possibly afford it, the increase in productivity when you work at your home-based business will be well worth it.

On the next page are more tips for successfully combining your responsibilities to your kids and your need to work on your home-based business. Click to continue reading.