While I don’t have detailed statistics, I can’t help but wonder how many kids stand at the daycare window…every single day… 5 days a week waving goodbye to mom or dad.

When I was a kid in the 60′s, there was no such thing as daycare. My mom was my daycare. She got us up and ready for school every day.

And there was no greater feeling of security that I had when I would walk outside after school and see my mom by that same tree every single day. We’d go home, have a snack, I’d change into my play clothes and play outside until it was time for dinner or homework.

All these years later and that is still one of my favorite memories.

What About Summer?

Summers when I was a kid were spent outside from after breakfast until dark. There were so many kids on our street, we could have had our own football team.

The house 2 doors up had 14 kids! (Catholic family) We didn’t have minivans back then, yet somehow they managed perfectly fine with their wood-grain station wagon.

We were never without someone to play with and we didn’t have to leave the block.

There are probably about as many kids in our neighborhood today, yet nobody is home. The majority of both parents are working, so these kids are either in daycamp (just another word for summer daycare) or they are so over-scheduled with activities, that parents are running ragged getting them from one place to the next.

It’s Like a Ghost Town

Our family is in the minority in our neighborhood, and for the most part, I could yell and scream outside all day and I don’t think there’s anybody home to hear me.

So, you can imagine how few of the kids Emily has to play with, and I would bet to say that our little slice of ‘suburbia’ is pretty typical of most of our society.

Now, I understand that the work at home lifestyle is a choice and not everybody wants to make that choice. That’s what is so amazing about living in a free society, the freedom to choose.

I truly now understand the meaning of ‘bedroom community.’ I watch as many of my neighbors leave their house at 6 or 7 a.m., only to return 12 hours or more later.

What time is there to enjoy life when you’re spending 8-12 hours / 5 days a week away from the people you care about most?

Quality vs. Quantity Time Myth

I never bought into the quality vs. quantity time agenda. Yes, I say agenda because I truly believe that ‘quality time’ is an ideal that we were ‘sold’ in order to make ourselves not feel guilty about leaving our kids in daycare all day.

Having two older sons, who are now in their twenties, I know all too well how fast time goes by. One day, you’re dropping them off at kindergarten and the next thing you know, you’re dropping them off at a dorm room.

There isn’t a person I know that, when they reached their senior years, has said they wished they spent more time at the office. We all want MORE time with the people most important to us.

The Memories We Create

And our kids want our time… they could care less about the ‘stuff.’ How many kids grow up and say to their parents, “Oh, gee mom, I wish you would have left me at daycare even longer or… how come you didn’t give me that fancy birthday party when I was 3?”

Life is about the memories we create with the people we care about most.

It’s about relationships, it’s about kids feeling that same sense of security when mom or dad picks them up at the end of the school day AND has time to play on the playground.

It’s about bringing families home from corporate America…so that no child has to stand at the window and wave goodbye to his or her dad.

The Internet Offers Endless Possibilities

Having an web-based business offers endless possibilities to create the work at home lifestyle.. to have the time freedom to enjoy life.

That’s my personal mission…to show those families, who want out of the corporate prison, to become a work at home family.. so that they can create amazing memories for their family and live life the way it was meant to be lived.

So that kids can be kids, to run around and play outside the way they are meant to, to enjoy the time with their parents, the way they’re supposed to, the way we did as kids….rather than from waving goodbye from looking through from the daycare window.