April 24 was Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day and to be perfectly honest, I feel like I'm shortchanging my kids. While I used to take them to work where they'd run through the halls and harrass my co-workers, ever since I left the corporate world, my office has become my basement, my sunroom, Starbucks, the outside of a library and a temporary office in Manhattan that I use from time to time but don't actually know any of the other employees that work there. And so, when my daughter announced this week that she was kind of bummed out that I no longer have a real job anymore, I decided to figure out a way to incorporate them into my busy schedule. At 8 am, after having my morning coffee, my five year old assistant wandered into the kitchen while I was hard at work checking my emails.

When the phone rang, I asked him to field all my calls. From there, my daughter had a brief consultation with my husband/CFO who decided to take a day off from his own job and was busy taking care of all the things that had slipped through the cracks (like fixing our minivan's windshield that has been broken for two years) since I've been busy building my business.

Next it was time for a brainstorming session. Let's figure out what the kids can do today on spring break so that they won't go stir crazy. As I surfed the Net finding activities they could do outside the house, my son visited me in my basement office where he grabbed a stapler and proceeded to use it to create a paper hat.My daughter in the meantime, was put to work in the file room, where I handed her a garbage bag and instructed her to separate my papers from her school projects and art work.

After 15 minutes, the kids were thoroughly bored with Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day and decided to ditch the home office for the den where they flipped on the TV to watch Akeelah and the Bee for the 37th time. By 10 am, they were ready for an outing and so my CFO decided to take them to the zoo.So here I am, a work at home mom who's been deserted by her two trusty assistants. I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about not having an office to take my kids to anymore. I mean, who gets to see elephants and monkeys while visiting their mom at work?

Beth Feldman is the co-author of Peeing in Peace: Tales & Tips for Type A Moms and the founder of Role Mommy, a website and events company created to inspire and entertain busy parents. She is also the President of BeyondPR. She is married with two children and lives in New Rochelle, NY.

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