Traveling For Work

Traveling for work can be an exciting and stressful time both at home and at the office. Preparing to be away from the office (or whatever your workplace) can be time consuming all by itself. Let alone when you add in the mix of your family and personal life that has to be altered as well.

When it comes to leaving your family for a few days, you want to be sure to plan for it ahead of time. Especially if this is your first time away for an extended period of time. There are plenty of tasks you’ll need to complete for work before, during and after the trip. But what about the steps that need to be taken at home?

Before you Leave

• Make arrangements with pre-school, daycare, etc. if someone else will be picking up or dropping your child off.
• Make arrangements for travel to and from airport.
• Prepare a few meals and freeze. May be a fun time for dad (or caregiver while you’re gone) and kids to go out to a restaurant, spend time with grandparents or cook together.
• Talk to your kids about how long you’ll be away. Set a time each day (possibly multiple times per day) when you’ll be in contact. (see below) One amazing mom, has her kids count “sleeps.”

Keep in Touch

In this day and age, there are many ways to keep in touch. The cell phone is probably the quickest and easiest way to keep in touch. And if you’re away on business you more than likely have some kind of smartphone, whether it’s a Blackberry, iPhone, etc. So sending emails to your spouse or care giver is now easier than ever. You can even have your daily childcare report sent to you via email each evening.

Also, don’t forget that kids LOVE getting mail! Be sure to send a postcard whenever possible. Try sending it on your first day, that way it has a better of chance of making it home before you do. The kids will love to see where you are, and that you took the time to send something.

(web video conferencing). This is a great way to interact with the family (or care giver) while you’re on the road. What do you need for Skype and how does it work?

1. You’ll need a computer, with an internet connection and a webcam.
2. Make sure the webcam is setup (usually drivers need to be installed) and plugged in.
3. Download and install Skype (follow directions from the site).
4. Make sure both mom and dad have accounts.
5. Connect & voila!

Take time for yourself

If you don’t get much time away from the family (or even if you do!) be sure to take some time for yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad mother to soak up some personal time while you’re away from home for work. With your busy schedule, this may very well be the only time you get to focus on you.

Returning home

Ahh… YES! Coming home is always the best part! No matter how great of a trip you’ve had, it’s always nice to come home. Your family will be excited, but you will probably be tired from traveling. Try to spend some time with the kids, before you get right back into the swing of things. They will be missing mom, and will want some one-on-one time.

There are so many reasons for travel, and so many types of families that there’s no way to cover all situations. I would love to hear about how you handle traveling for work.

Jennifer Sable Lopez is the Development Team Lead and Technical SEO for an online company. She manages multiple blogs, is a sucker for social networking and also writes for and manages momsbyte.com and codejen.com.

Photos of globe and NYC hotel courtesy of Rudy Lopez at picherthis.com.

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