When you first decided to work at home, you probably weren´t thinking that you would need someone to look after the kids. After all, that´s part of the reason you´re working at home, right?

The fact of the matter is that there are times when it is simply not possible to work, at home or elsewhere, with your children underfoot. Particularly during the summer when you don´t even have the reprieve of school! With that in mind, here are a few options you might consider, keeping in mind that you don´t need to send your kids off all day every day. It might be possible to get a few hours two or three days a week in order to work on really important stuff and do the rest while they are with you.

1. Daycare. For smaller children, toddlers and preschoolers, you might want to consider a couple days of daycare per week. It not only frees you up to work, it also allows your kids to make new friends and join in fun activities in a group setting. Great for social skills, but you may notice disease resistance dropping. Kids in a daycare setting tend to catch more colds and childhood illnesses than those who stay at home.

2. Family. If you have parents or a sibling who lives nearby and would be willing to take your kids for a few afternoons a week, go for it. You can either pay them or do something special for them each month as a thank you. The advantage of having a family member care for them is that you know exactly what their values are and they are generally more trustworthy.

3. Friends. Do a kid swap with a friend who also has children. You can alternate days, or, if there are several of you who only have one kid to swap, try setting up a round robin, where the kids go to a different house each day, freeing up all the other moms. This keeps kids busy because they are with their friends.

4. Mother´s Help. You might consider hiring a young person (usually a preteen) to watch your kids in your home while you are working. This has the advantage of keeping them close, so you are right there if anything happens. However, it can also be quite distracting still.

5. Babysitter. This is pretty normal. You leave your kids at the babysitter´s house. It will run you more than a regular daycare, though. The advantage is that the kids are out of the house!

6. Au pair. Similar to the mother´s help option, but you can have a young woman from another country. This is great to teach your children another language and culture. Au pairs often help with laundry and cleaning, too, which is another advantage, but you will need to provide her with her own room, which might be a problem. Very affordable.

7. Nanny. This is somewhat similar to an au pair, but will cost more. The nanny can either come every morning or live with you. The advantage here is that she can take the kids out to the park and will usually have several years if not decades, of experience.

8. Camp. This shouldn´t be about getting rid of your kids, so choose a camp that they are enthusiastic about. The side benefit is that you get time to work! Day camps usually run for anywhere from a week to a couple of months and you will have the day to yourself. There are also full on camps for older children, where they leave and don´t come back for a week or a month. This should be fairly carefully considered, since some children aren´t yet ready for that level of separation (neither are some moms!).

Do you have another childcare option? What do you do to keep your kids out of your hair? Share with us in the comments section below!

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