If you’re a working parent, you might already have a lengthy list of reasons why you’d like to work from home. Perhaps you want more time with your kids before they start school full-time, or maybe you want to escape a demanding 9-5 job so you can have more energy left for your family at the end of the workday. If you don’t have a job outside the home, the thought of an extra income might be enough to start your imagination spinning.


Whatever your reasons for wanting to work from home, here are five more that might convince you it’s time to go for it – and they’re all about your kids.

1. You’ll teach your children self-reliance. Even a very young child can play by themselves for a few minutes while a parent works, and an older child can supervise younger ones. In either case, your child learns to depend on his or her own resources for a time.

2. One ring of your business phone and you transform from Busy Mommy to Business Owner. Your vocabulary switches too – from mommy-speak to that of a well-mannered professional. Kids will learn more etiquette by overhearing your (hopefully) courteous business conversations than from any amount of lecturing you do.

3. Your kids learn the value of doing their best and that hard work is rewarded. Any business - home based or not - will succeed only if you do your best work 100% of the time. When your kids see how hard you work to finish a project, or when they celebrate with you because a satisfied customer gave you a referral, they’re seeing real-life evidence that giving your best effort is always worthwhile.

4. You will forever debunk the myth that money grows on trees or magically comes out of the ATM. Money is one of the rewards of hard work, and one of the reasons why mom or dad can’t go to the park until after lunch.

5. Kids of work-at-home parents learn fundamental lessons about how businesses work. Denise Willms, owner of Willms Business Solutions and member of CalgaryWAHMS.com, tells of hearing her 12-year-old son say, “I have a great idea for a marketing plan for...” Ms. Willms says, “My first reaction was, who’s been teaching him about marketing plans? Then I realized that he had been listening to me!”

Don’t forget the best reason of all to work from home - a better balance of family and work. Working from home is a practical way to show your kids how important to you spending time with them really is.

Britt Raposo helps Calgary moms work from home with her online business club, CalgaryWAHMs.com. She connects Calgary work at home moms with affordable home business resources, ideas and support.