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Balancing Family and Daycare
By Cyndi Beauchemin

Working at home with your own children as a daycare provider offers many rewards and challenges. Having a positive attitude and operating your daycare in a business-like manner plays a major role in the success you may or may not experience.

Your attitude can greatly affect how you act or react to the challenges you may encounter while caring for other children in your home.

Simply talking to your children or daycare children and being creative in how you handle certain behaviors or situations, allows you the opportunity to deal with those instances as they occur. Quite often, you can turn an unpleasant situation into something that is laughable or at
least manageable.

It is imperative that your children feel special and loved. They need to know that even though they share you with other children during" daycare hours," you love them and are available when they need you.

Following a daily schedule and being organized should allow the time needed to complete the necessary tasks of maintaining a home and running a business, in addition to spending quality time with your own children and family.

Enforcing strict hours of operation for daycare parents should reduce the number of early and late arrivals, which can greatly impact your family life and your children's behavior.

It's also important when you spend so much time at home as a mother, provider and wife, to make time for you as a person. Go for a walk, go to the mall, the library, take a class, do whatever it takes to get away from the house that is not only your home, but your business. Make time for yourself on a regular basis and focus on you.

Scheduling ample "time off" not only for yourself but for your family to attend school functions, vacations and doctor appointments is also an essential element of providing home daycare. This allows you time to refresh yourself and spend more quality time with your family.

Cyndi Beauchemin is a childcare provider and a freelance writer. She is the author and creator of the Daycare Starter Kit and the Daycare Provider's Workbook, which can be viewed online at the Daycare Hotline http://www.daycarehotline.com.