Where in the World is Mommy? How to Stay Close to Your Kids While Traveling for Work

This guest post is by Dr. Susan Giurleo of TheVirtualCake.com.

If you’re a parent of young children and working in your own small business, you know that somewhere someone once said to you, “You’re so lucky! You get to make your own schedule, be home with your kids when they need you, and make a great living!”

That’s what we who do the parent/business/work thing call an “urban myth.” When you work for yourself and have to support a young family, you work longer hours and need to travel to connect with people who you call colleagues, even if they live half way around the world.

Traveling when you have young kids is a blessing and a curse. When you’re away from the younger generation, you’re amazed at how focused you can be in the midst of a busy airport  while waiting for your flight. No one is asking for juice, in need of a ride to soccer practice, or stomping around because they can’t find their homework. Compared to a busy home, the airport is quiet and relaxing.

But of course, you miss that chaos, being a part of your children’s every day, celebrating their new milestones that they seem to achieve every time you’re 3000 miles away.

And your kids miss you. Lots.

It can be a real strain on your relationship with your children when you travel often. They don’t know when you’ll be around or if they can count on you to do the last-minute fun stuff that always comes up—pick up football games, tea parties, trips to the mall. The kids don’t resent you so much as they just sort of start to function without you in mind. Their other parent and other adults fill the void left as you are out working your butt off to make a good living for them.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Lucky for you and your family, you can still stay close to them when you’re away. Here are 5 ways to stay close and important to your beautiful kids.

1. Make time to connect.

This can be tricky, especially if you’re not in the same time zone. But you can do it!

Before you leave for your trip, calculate what time in your new location matches your kids’ wake up and bed times. Then set aside the time to call them. Try not to schedule anything too pressing during those times. If you must be in a meeting, duck out for five or ten minutes to make the call. Remember: your kids are more important than ten extra minutes with that business connection.

If it’s midnight where you are, and 7 a.m. at home, still make the effort—wake up or stay up until you can make the call. This will send the message to your family that they’re important and on your mind during the day.

2. Use Skype.

If possible, use streaming video to chat with your family. The connection is deeper and you can see their daily life—the excellent test score, their new PJs, a hair cut. And your kids can get a sense of where you are and feel a part of your trip, too.

3. Connect throughout the day.

Send the family an email, post a YouTube video of yourself showing a bit of the location you’re visiting, tweet a shout out to the family on Twitter.

These things don’t take a lot of time, but they keep the connection between you strong.

4. Get a map.

When my son was a preschooler, my husband traveled quite often. AJ didn’t understand where daddy was, so we got a big map and a globe and stuck pins at the locations where he was that week.

This allowed my son to better understand where his dad went in the plane, gave us some cool geography lessons, and let us search for pictures of the places online. It was fun, and let AJ feel that his dad was actually somewhere —not just missing from his life that day.

5. Bring back something meaningful.

Forget bringing back t-shirts or kitsch souvenirs. Bring your kids something that represents the place you visited or the business you conducted. Maybe it’s sand from the beach resort where the meeting was held, a cool schwag item from a conference bag or exhibitor, or a book from an author you visited. This brings the trip home, makes it relevant to your children, and again, reinforces that you were thinking of them even while you were away.

Remember, your kids don’t need you to connect with them for hours on end—just a few minutes at the beginning and end of their day will mean so much to them. They’ll look forward to your calls, save up things to share when they talk to you, and feel included on your trip.

What other ways have you found to stay connected to your family when you travel? Please share so we can all get better at maintaining the work-family balance!

Susan Giurleo is a mom, wife, psychologist and social media fan who blogs about work-family balance on TheVirtualCake.com. She also juggles running three businesses and figured out how to meet her kid at the bus stop after school three days a week. She feels this is a major accomplishment. Connect with her on Twitter @susangiulreo.