RELATED TOOLS RELATED ITEMS Easing the Burden of Elder Care Finding Time When Little is Left Columns Archive

Summer camp ended eons ago, it seems. We've just returned from the annual two-week vacation. And yet there's still a week and a half yawning ahead of us until school begins for my six- and nine-year-olds.

It's the period I've dubbed Hell Week, the time when children need to be occupied but mom and dad need to get back to work. Several such migraine-inducing child-care gaps occur throughout the year. The period between Christmas and New Year's comes to mind. But none seems so nerve-wracking as the end of summer, perhaps because we're already facing another strain, the transition from the ease of vacation season to the return-to-your-desks feel of autumn.

What's a working parent to do? If you're like my husband and me, you open your wallet and cajole the part-time baby-sitter into working full-time for a spell. You also feel grateful that, with the sitter, at least the children will be safe, happy -- and not plunked in front of a television set.

PUT 'EM TO WORK. Leave it to entrepreneurs to come up with more creative solutions. Before I left for vacation, I used the Internet to spread the word that I was looking for accounts of how small-business owners cope with child-care downtime, both for themselves and their employees. The responses were gratifying and ingenious.

Some people, such as Dawn E. Ringel, senior vice-president of Gumpert Communications Inc., a public relations firm in Needham, Mass., deal with child-care gaps by being super-organized and finding a way to free their own time. "I have it set in stone that at the end of December, when day care is closed, I take a week off. And the last week of August, when day care is closed, I take off," she says. This is an arrangement she worked out some time ago with her boss, and it has worked fine so far for her now eight-year-old daughter.

It's probably not surprising, but a number of entrepreneurs bridge the August gap by doing what comes naturally. They put their kids to work in the family business. Earlier this month, Leslie C. Freidrich, owner of Friedrich Software Resources, a software-distribution company in Houston, enlisted her nine-year-old son to help around the home office. Joseph had spent most of the summer in basketball camp, chess camp, and bible school. When that came to an end, Friedrich kept Joseph busy assisting her with filing and running daily errands to the post office and bank. Joseph also became the company receptionist. When I called the office recently, he answered with a polite: "Friedrich Software. May I help you?" It was mom who had taught him his phone manners, Joseph told me.

Risë J. Birnbaum, head of Z Communications Co., a 14-person marketing company in Arlington, Va., is another parent who believes in using downtime as a way to teach children something about the world of work. Birnbaum usually hires two summer interns. This year, she also brought aboard her 14-year-old daughter, Jeni, who earned $50 a day during gap time faxing, photocopying, and learning the ways of the telephone system. "She was scared stiff her first time," Birnbaum wrote me in an e-mail, "but was wonderful at the job."

SCRUB TIME. Frank Guerra, the co-founder and CEO of Guerra DeBerry & Co., a 23-employee advertising company in San Antonio, Tex., came up with some clever assistance for his office, which, he says, is filled with parents. The company already runs an on-site child-care center for employees (yes, Guerra insists, even small companies can do it). The center normally looks after preschoolers. During a gap earlier this month, however, the child-care director arranged activities for older children as well. One day, the 10- to 13-year-old crowd could be found setting up a car wash. While the older kids scrubbed employees' automobiles, the younger ones helped collect the fees, which were set aside to pay for a field trip.

John Christopher Mammen, vice-president of Mammen Glass & Mirror in Irving, Tex., got in touch with me to express an entirely different point of view. He believes parents could forgo the difficulties of the gap by eliminating it altogether. In other words, Mammen would like to see more couples consider the possibility of mom or dad staying home to raise the children rather than working.

That's the decision he and his wife, a former teacher, made before they were married and started what has become their family of four. Yes, it has meant financial sacrifice, Mammen says. Still, he likes the arrangement. "It's a choice," he says. "It drives me nuts when people don't think it's a choice."

It seems we have lots of choices for dealing with gap time. Maybe following some of these suggestions given will make Hell Week a bit less punishing next time around.

Send your questions to frontierlife@businessweek.com.

Pamela Mendels is based in New York City. She wrote about small business and had a workplace advice column at Newsday, and has written about workplace matters for Business Week, WorkingWoman, and the Web site iGuide.