Business Travel – As a Mom
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How do you handle business trips as a mom? Is there anything you can do to prepare your kids for your business travel? How do you balance everything? Reader A wonders:
I am a working, single mom and happen to be taking my first of quite a few “extended” business trips next week. My sister and parents are helping out with my lovely 4-y/o for the 4 days/3 nights I’ll be gone, but I want some tips on how to make the whole thing easier. I’ve read the pieces on business trips on Corporette, but haven’t been able to find one on the Moms side of things. Can you help?
Interesting! Whenever I have to travel away from my family there is a mix of dread (I have to leave them for X days!) as well as eagerness (I get to leave them for X days!). I’m curious to hear what the readers have to say, but here are a few tips:
Maintain routine for your child. Emphasize to your caregivers that you really want your four-year-old’s life to continue as it normally does. Attend all the usual classes… see the usual babysitters (if any) during the week for the same amount of time he normally does… Particularly, the bedtime routine should all be as close to “normal” as possible. That said…
Skype or FaceTime regularly. Build in a regular time for your child to Skype with you — the regular check-in should make him, and you, feel better. If you don’t already Skype or FaceTime regularly with your childcare team, walk them through the process so you know that they know how to do it (or so you can see where confusion or other problems might come up).
Leave a printed itinerary in your house with your contact information and whereabouts at all times.
Make sure your caregivers have the emergency information they need, as well as any insurance info. I keep a photocopy of my sons’ insurance cards in the diaper bag, and we have a laminated sheet on the fridge with the numbers for their doctor and poison control, as well as what their last recorded weights were (and on what dates).
Prepare yourself for a gamut of emotions. Your child may barely know you’re gone… or he may be excited to see his caregivers… or he may resent you for leaving him for so long. Brace yourself for whatever comes, and make sure you allow for extra time to get out of the house for your departure.
Tell your son about your trip when you get back. Why you were gone, what you saw and did — share some of the wonder.
Finally, it doesn’t sound like pumping is in the mix for Reader A, but we have talked about the logistics of pumping in a different office on Corporette.
These are some of the Corporette readers’ favorite items for business travel…
Readers, what do you do? Do you have any tips for traveling without your kids? How do you coordinate things at home and at work? Here are some other articles on the topic that may be helpful:
- Juggling Family and Work Travel [Motherlode]
- Survive Your Time Away: Tips for Traveling Moms (And Dads) [Devex]
- 10 easy, no-tears tips for working moms who travel [MBA4Success] (great tips with a lot of fun ideas!)
- Keeping Mom’s Business Trip from Being Mom’s Guilt Trip [Smart Women Travelers]
- Travel Without Kids [Kids’ Health]
- The Working/Traveling Mom [Proud Working Mom]
- When Mom Travels for Work [NY Times]
- Parents’ travel for work puts strain on families [Chicago Tribune]
Current images (airplane aisle) via Stencil. Originally pictured (2014): Airplane, originally uploaded to Flickr by Shai Barzilay.
I have found short videos of me (at airport, in new city, etc) saying hello and telling my son that I am having fun and I love him work better than Skype for us – especially if there is a time difference or it is hard to make the pre-bedtime call work. You can make one during the day to watch at night and one later a night to watch in the morning.
I’m not a mom but this topic made me think of something important. I originally thought of it when the ATL article about the mom bringing her baby to court was posted. Even if you have zero family in the area and no close friends, it is imperative that you find one person, even if it is a boss that you could call in a dire emergency if no one else was available. Put this person’s contact info attached to your registration in the glove box.
My husband is a former first responder. He saw many car accidents where baby was just fine but mom/driver was unconscious. What happened next varied by who was on duty, what hospital mom was going to, etc. They will know from your license who you are but will they be able to figure out who to call to come get your baby? They weren’t allowed to take the baby home. One hospital would allow the baby to go w/ the driver for up to 48 hours. The other hospital would not allow a baby to go w/ the driver if they were at all unconscious or impaired from the accident. They didn’t want the responsibility I guess. Basically, if no one came forth quickly, they would have to call social services and baby would go to an emergency foster home.
I can’t imagine being a semi-conscious mom and telling the cops that your family and husband are a flight away and learning that your baby would be going with social services until your family arrived in town. That’s assuming you could talk and tell them who to call. Sorry to be a total downer but everyone has to think of emergency contingencies.
If baby is staying with grandma and grandma has a heart attack, who will watch baby until mom gets back? In reality social services did a great job in those cases and the babies were so safe and loved on but my husband always felt like the evil jerk because even severely injured parents freak out about the baby going to “social services” even for a day. When you think about it, why would you trust the nurse or the fireman or the police officer with your baby more than social services but most people wanted him to “just keep her until my husband can get here.” He wasn’t allowed to do that for more than an hour or so. He had to get back to his other calls.
I travel a lot and luckily my husband stays home so that helps with our childcare issues. If I am going to be gone for several days, I try to leave a small present to be opened later. Usually it is a new book or coloring book. Then my 4 year old can tell me all about it because usually 4 year olds don’t really want to talk more than 2-3 minutes on the phone or FaceTime. He likes me to send pictures of where I am and I try to send him a pic of thr planes at the airport. Also don’t fall into the guilt trip of bringing home a present. The few times I find something thst he would really like, he asks for a present the next 4-5 trips.
I have also taken my husband and kids with me for shorter trips. Hopefully as they get older, they will be able to travel more with me.
just one anecdote I’d add – my mum flew a lot at one point when we were kids, she was a single mom at that time and felt VERY guilty. So she’s try to call us as much as she could, all this was before the days of internet, skype or mobile phones of course, and she was travelling to Africa where reliable phone networks were a challenge.
Long story short – one day she called for maybe the second time, and my 6-year old baby brother told her ‘ why do you keep calling?’ and hang up … she stopped feeling so guilty after that!
good luck to you all!
I have occasional travel to annual meetings of professional associations. This year after lengthy deliberation, my husband and 24 month old daughter will be accompanying me. Our family has experienced some recent transitions and new childcare situation for my daughter. I felt that it would be very challenging for me to be unavailable to her. It means some compromises in that we’re flying out of an airport that is further away to save money on the cost of my husband and daughter’s tickets (my employer is paying my expenses.) I’m also leaving the conference a half day early to accommodate my husband’s work schedule. We’re fortunate that my husband has a relatively flexible work schedule and that the event is in a geographic location with family-friendly activities nearby.
I know not every mom would be able to do this and it would not be appropriate for every occasion, but this is what we’ve decided in this instance.
there is a great chapter on this in “Balance is a Crock, Sleep is for the Weak”
We don’t travel that much for work, but we’ve left our child at our house with the grandparents or sent him to stay at the grandparent house (for up to a week) many times for school breaks or adult trips. We keep a healthcare power of attorney and a copy of his insurance information/pediatrician contact that travels with him and we leave written instructions/tips about his routine for reference. We text pictures back and forth and sometimes talk to him on the phone, but don’t bother with video chats. At this point, he is really comfortable with them as caregivers and he’s getting quality time with family so we don’t worry much about leaving him.
Don’t make any promises to your kid that you can’t keep. For instance, don’t say “I’ll Skype you every night before you go to bed” – because if your flight is late or your hotel or home internet is down and it can’t happen, your kid may flip out at their caregiver “but Mommy promised” and make both their lives miserable, and you feel guilty. We had better luck with my husband texting me pictures of the kids in PJs or bed blowing me kisses – they liked sending pictures to Mommy.
Have your kids spent the night with your sister or parents before? Are they staying at home with parents coming to them, or going to the sitter’s house? If going to the sitter’s house and they live nearby, can I suggest a one night trial run sleepover?
Also, since this is the first of several trips, I’d caution your parents and sister not to set up anything too elaborate that they will have to keep up. If they start the first trip with ice cream for dinner and special trips to the zoo, the 4 year old is going to expect that for every trip, which could get ugly when it stops happening. Special dinner or staying up 1/2 hour past bedtime is one thing – over elaborate special days when there is preschool the next day is asking for a disaster.
Your caregivers should also have a power of attorney to deal with medical issues, which should be included with the medical information summary (which should also include any relevant health information, not just weight). Also, my kids like it when I send pictures of where I am…
Put pictures on the calendar! I draw a plane taking off, and me waving out of the plane windows, so when the kid is outside playing and sees a plane he can think of me. Then I draw big numbers on the calendar to count down the days until arrival again – 2 more days, 1 more day, and then I draw a plane landing, with an arm sticking out the window waving. Also on the days in between – draw happy faces for the child & his/her caregivers – distinctive hair, glasses, favorite stuffed animals, stickers, whatever. Then, when you arrive home, just be sure to realize the kid doesn’t really register that you were Somewhere Else. The kid just thinks you were Not Here. So s/he is not going to ask too much about Somewhere Else, but want to tell you all about what happened Here.