About a year ago, I left my office job to work from home. It’s a bit more stressful than working for someone else, but much more rewarding. Now I split my time now between designing games and writing.

The biggest challenge initially was getting the kids to leave me alone when I was in my “office”. Since we were forced to address that issue, we expanded the lesson to include recognizing when someone else is working and not interrupting.

It has worked very well. With the kids out of school now, though, it’s a tougher lesson to stick to.

Friday afternoon found me in my bedroom working on the laptop. N, my soon-to-be-four-year-old son , walked in to the room and stopped about a foot away from me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Are you almost done?”

“I can take a break soon, sure. Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” and left.

He came back a few minutes later. “Are you almost done?”

“Just a couple more – ” I started.

“minutes.” he finished for me.

“Okay,” I laughed. “It really will be. Just let me finish this. I’ll be just – “

He spread his hands “a couple more minutes!”

Ouch.

He left – and then came back a couple minutes later. “Has it been a couple minutes?”

I shook my head. “I just have to get this last thing done. I’m going as fast as I can.”

He turned to walk away, and then came back. “Daddy, I think it’s running out of juice.”

“Juice?”

He pointed to the computer. “I think it’s running out of juice.”

I laughed. “No, I don’t think so. It’s plugged in.”

“Daddy, what’s juice?”

“It’s what some people call electricity. Can you say electricity?”

He shook his head. “Are you done now?”

“Yes,” I said, standing up and trying not to look back at the screen. “As done as I need to be.”

“Hooray!”

Hooray indeed. He took me out to the kitchen to show me the model plane they were building for Grampa, and we started our Father’s Day weekend a day early.

There are some lessons I hope the little guys never learn, and I hope you all had as great a Father’s Day weekend as I did!