Let's be honest. While most women who work from home or run their own businesses around their families wouldn't have it any other way, many find that their families, the very reason they are working from home in many instances, can be less than wonderful at times.

Most WAHMs cite the flexibility, the sense of achievement, the control of one's destiny, and the ability to get close to a happy life/work balance at least sometimes as bonuses they couldn't live without. Their family, however, is sometimes quite another matter!

So why is this?
Isn't it supposed to be the answer to everyone's prayers? Didn't you decide to work from home so you could spend more time with the family?

Yes, obviously, and most of the time it is. However, sometimes, just sometimes, there is a degree of everyone else taking the working mum for granted creeping in. Perhaps it's one too many request to 'pick up that' or deal with that that can make the WAHM feel like she isn't actually a working person per se, let alone a business woman, more a glorified housekeeper. Mind you, that's a scenerio that is hardly unique to WAHMs, but it can be magnified when work and life is in one basket with sometimes not even a closeable door  betwee them.

Maybe a child, partner or other live in relative may start feeling neglected because your attention is on a client, a report, a telephone call or an important email, rather than them, regardless of whether it's the 30th time they're interrupted you that morning.

Sometimes I hear tantrums have been thrown. Heck, sometimes I even throw them myself!

So why does it happen?
I mean, aren't you providing a valuable service to the household budget, perhaps the only contribution to the household budget? Didn't you talk about it in great detail before you started? Didn't everyone promise they'd be supportive? Ahhh, well, disregard the lip service because what we're talking about here is either a lack of consistent boundaries or deep held belief that are stopping them respecting those boundaries.

Setting boundaries
Difficult as this is for some people to do, it's actually beneficial for you and your family to have set boundaries and to have theem consistently applied. In fact, it's pretty much impossible for you to be successful as a WAHM if you don't because there is no boss or manager fighting your corner saying "no, you can't interrupt her at the moment, she's busy on an important call" - there's just you.

Having people trample all over you and your feelings is a fast track to making yourself stressed, overloaded and miserable, so if you've never been very good at being assertive, now would be a good time to learn how.

Deep held beliefs
These are beliefs adults hold from a very early age that may have no bearing on reality or that person's actual life as it is now. We all have them to varying degrees and they can pop up in strange situations or show up as completely out of character. Most of the time people aren't aware they hold them, and depending on who is acting out they could be along the lines of "my time is more important than you", "mum doesn't mind", or perhaps "working at home isn't really working," or maybe "women are there to serve their husbands, just like my mum was".

It can even be your own deep belief that's doing the sabotaging. Perhaps you don't believe you can do, or think you are not entitled to be rich and/or successful. Perhaps secretly you'd much rather not being doing this and so let everything else get in the way so it all falls around your ears. Perhaps you simply can't bring yourself to say no!

So what to do about it?

Dealing with your family - and other animals
• Be assertive - stop saying yes all the time and start saying no occasionally - and mean it, whether that's to the kitten, the kids or your partner.

• Set boundaries - perhaps you claim an undisturbed hour every day, when the door is going to be shut and no one can interrupt unless it's a life or death emergency. 

• Believe in yourself - You want to do this, you can do this, you just need time and space to do it in, so don't let that little voice allow you to be so distractable you can point at the family at a future point and say "I could have succeeded if it wasn't for them".

• Deal with unhelpful deep beliefs - sometimes just having a think about your patterns of behaviour and talking it over with your closest and dearest is enough. Other times you might want to use the services of a life coach. Whichever route you follow, however, it's worth doing - as I know to my cost, some of these unconscious beliefs can keep you poor and overstressed for years.

 

© Claire Burdett. No content to be reproduced without written approval of the author.

Claire Burdett is the Founder and Director of Funky Angel. She is a Writer, Journalist, and Editor, Integrated Marketing Expert, and Home Business Mentor.

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