Kids teach you a lot of things about entrepreneurship.

I am learning the importance of planning right now. As a mother of two kids, I have to plan my day in advance, not just in terms of work but to make sure I keep my children engaged with various activities throughout the day. 

When you are a recent migrant and don’t have many friends, all the planning and execution rests on your shoulders. They say home is where it all begins, and I am learning the skills needed to excel in both worlds by setting up some ground rules beforehand. Most importantly, I really want to engage my children in a more meaningful way that promotes creativity and keeps them grounded in our core values of empathy, integrity, and resilience.

My mompreneur origin story

My drive to become an entrepreneur started when someone said, “You can’t.” You know within you; you can rock the world and make it better.  So, I went for it with every ounce of my strength. That’s the feeling I carry with me now from when I made my decision to start this journey and work in AR and VR technology.

My career began as a software engineer, fueled by a passion for technology. Starting in IT, I expanded my expertise to include web design, content writing, digital marketing, and project management. These skills paved the way for my entrepreneurial journey, which took off in Singapore, allowing me to explore and test my abilities in the business world. Despite early challenges, my perseverance and patience helped me navigate through. 

In 2021, amidst the pandemic, I founded Next XR Group in Australia, which now boasts a global footprint across six countries, providing innovative XR, AI, and software solutions. As the CEO, I drive our corporate strategy and design, ensuring we remain at the forefront of technological innovation and customer satisfaction.

But time has its own way of making you a mature person by teaching you important things. It stops you when the time is right and helps you to reflect on those decisions. Destiny decided it’s time for me to pause and ponder when I delivered my first kid and again gave me a break when I delivered my second.

Looking back, these two are the most beautiful things that have happened in my life. They gave me a feeling of immense gratitude. 

I’m thankful to be an entrepreneur and a mother.

My mother was a homemaker, and I enjoyed the luxury of her being with us all the time. I grew up in a culture where my parents dedicated all their lives to making us excel in ours. 

Becoming a mother myself, I learned that home is a most complex workplace. All kids have different needs, and each one is as important as the others. Managing all these demands to ensure the end goals of nutrition, culture and development are met is, in my experience, more complex than putting together the business strategies I developed for my company.

But I am fortunate because I have different choices than my own mother did. I have a choice to enroll my kids to daycare for all five days of the week and concentrate on my work. In the end, I made the choice that I would want to send the kids to daycare for only a couple of days a week to balance the benefit of my presence in their early years with the desire I had to keep progressing my entrepreneurial goals.

Mompreneur magic for my kid-friendly activities 

My usual mornings at home are more chaotic than the M1 or Westgate freeway traffic. My 1-year-old spilling his food everywhere and my four-year-old screaming all over the place to shed the morning jitters. 

For most of my morning work meetings, I attend but switch my camera off to prevent the jury from passing a verdict about the messy toys in the background. 

I used to have a work to-do list and a home to-do list. But who has time for two to-do lists? Now my to-do list includes the activities I have planned for both my kids. 

I’ve found that little things make a huge impact on kids’ lives. Singing a rhyme or repeating their favorite song improves their cognitive and emotional development. 

To help build my list of activities, I started looking for sources and discovered a few to-do lists of things to try with kids to ensure there were ample opportunities for them to express themselves.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that everything is an experiment. If you succeed, sustain. If it fails, improvise. 

I’d like to share three successful experiments of mine and the activities that are now my go-to for parenting my kids. 

Activity 1: Pretend play

Pretend play helps in language development, problem solving and can help kids find their own identity.

When I was a child, I used to climb trees, build a treehouse, and imagine myself to be the queen of my kingdom. The leaves were my loyal subjects. I used to give them orders and pretend they were doing it. 

This creativity helped me hone my imagination, writing and storytelling skills (look at where that got me today!). 

My four-year-old daughter has always been interested in listening to stories. She has read close to 900 books by being part of the 1000 books before school program. 

One day, she started enacting the scenes from her comic book at home during her playtime. The toys were her subjects, and she pretended to protect and work with them in various areas. Sometimes it’s crossing a bridge, other times it’s bathing together. 

Every time I noticed, it was a new story and a reflection of the book she had read the previous day. I was happy to see her engaging in pretend play based on the books she read.

I noticed my daughter loves to play as a mom character most of the time. Already she is looking upon me as her role model and that is motivating me to excel in my life. As she grows in confidence, it turns out that I do too.

My second child is often intrigued to see what the elder one is up to, and he will sometimes quietly sit beside her and be in the audience. Believe it or not, he actually gets a role in his sister’s stories most of the time.

Activity 2: Painting together or solo

My daughter loves painting just like I do. Our walls are full of her scribbles. 

At this young age of four, she has the confidence to dabble with a variety of paints such as acrylic and oil pastels. Her choice of colors is always bright; she personifies her exuberance.

Our favorite mommy-daughter pastime is to paint together. We spend hours painting; this gives me an opportunity to converse with her on various topics. 

We talked about friends, food, travel, and her likes/dislikes during these painting hours. It’s more fun than taking a break at the kitchen sink at my office and gives me a perfect blend of relaxation and meaningful connection.

I believe these painting hours give her an opportunity to open more and express herself. This helps me understand her more and ensure I am always giving the right care to her. 

She also paints alone; solitary play gives confidence and makes them independent. This also gives me the opportunity to take calls and reply to emails. And sometimes I take this time to look after my second child, feed him or get him ready for a nap.

A confident, independent kid is always a mother’s dream. My mom gave me the opportunity to be what I am today, and through sharing an activity with my daughter, while also showing her what I can achieve as a working mother and business owner, I am passing that confidence on to my daughter in my own way.

Activity 3: Dance baby dance!

We dance a lot as a family. 

Dance helps build stamina, coordination and physical fitness in kids and adults. It helps in building common interests and makes it easier to coexist at home. My husband, daughter, son, and I play our favorite song and dance freely. 

Dancing is a good de-stressor; it helps you wind down and relax your mind. 

My husband is a good dancer, he and my daughter always dance to their favorite songs and now my 1-year-old is joining the party.

‘Alexa’ always will have a playlist ready for us to dance and the best part is my daughter will not allow a song to finish except if it’s from the movie Frozen.  

When I am working on my laptop, I sometimes put on music, show them my dance moves, and then let the kids have fun with theirs while I am hustling away. 

I’ve learned that setting a stage is very important for kids especially when they’re young and need stimulation to start playing. But once the stage is set, it’s fun to watch them dance on it, and join them when I can.

The juggle is real

It can be hard to keep young kids entertained for long, especially if the kid is an extrovert and wants human interaction or generally doesn’t like to play for long in a solitary way. 

As a mompreneur, it’s always a juggle between the demands of work, the demands of life and the home and the needs of your children. But in the end, I’ve learned it’s the time I spend with my children that is most important, both in helping in my kids’ development and in building a lasting bond between us.

Sri is a Mompreneur, Co-founder & CEO, and a parenting writer with SAARI Collective. She has co-authored three children’s books and is passionate about the arts, books and nature. She also paints in her spare time.