A low-grade fever I barely noticed in my first trimester eventually changed almost every part of my life.
At the time, I had no idea I had contracted CMV, cytomegalovirus, or that it had passed to my baby before he was born.
My son was born hearing. By two, he was profoundly deaf.
What followed were cochlear implants, therapy, learning Auslan, appointments, language support and eventually seizures. We later learnt that the same virus that had damaged his hearing had also affected his brain.
For a long time, I thought about those changes mainly in terms of what they meant for my son.
It took me longer to understand how much they would also change the kind of working life I could realistically have.
I had trained for a teaching career I loved
Before all of this, I had a fairly clear idea of where my career was going.
I had trained as a teacher, worked hard to develop my skills and genuinely loved education. I was particularly interested in curriculum and could see myself eventually specialising more deeply in that area.
I did not leave teaching because I suddenly stopped caring about the work.
The problem was that full-time classroom teaching stopped fitting neatly around the reality of our family life.
Appointments did not conveniently fall outside school hours. Therapy needed to happen when it needed to happen. Medical needs could not always be predicted in advance. There were school calls, fatigue, seizures and the days when my son simply needed me to be available.
Eventually, mainstream schooling stopped working well for him and I brought him home to homeschool.
At that point, one thing became very clear: I could no longer build my working life on the assumption that I could drop my child at school each morning, go to work and know exactly how the next eight hours would unfold.
I needed another option.
The problem was not that I did not want to work
I think this distinction matters because special needs mums are often spoken about as though caring and working sit on opposite sides of a decision.
That was never how it felt to me.
I still wanted to work. I still wanted to contribute financially. I still wanted to learn, build skills and have goals outside the day-to-day demands of caregiving.
But the type of work had to change.
I did not need someone to tell me to become better organised so that I could squeeze our family into the structure of a traditional job.
I needed work that could fit around my son.
There is a difference.
And that became the question I started asking:
What could I build that would allow me to earn around my son’s needs, rather than constantly asking our family to fit around work?
That question eventually led me online.
“Work from home” and “flexible work” are not always the same thing
When you first start looking for work-from-home options as a parent, it can sound as though remote work will automatically solve the problem.
It does not always.
A job can technically be done from home and still require you to be online from 9am until 5pm. A role can be labelled “flexible” while still expecting you to be available for meetings at fixed times or meet deadlines that do not care whether your child has suddenly needed you for three days.
In Australia, flexible working arrangements can include changes to hours, work patterns and location, and eligible carers can request them from an employer.
There are also genuinely flexible remote and part-time roles available. Current Australian job listings include work-from-home and flexible roles across a range of industries.
But for me, I realised I was looking for something slightly different.
I was not simply looking for a job I could do from my house.
I was looking for a way of earning that could move with the unpredictability of our life.
What I actually needed from flexible work
Once I stopped asking, “What job should I get?” and started asking, “What does our family actually need?”, my criteria became much clearer.
I needed to be able to work from home.
I needed to be able to build in pockets of time rather than relying on uninterrupted eight-hour days.
I needed something I could put down when my son needed me and come back to later.
I needed the freedom to work around homeschooling, therapy and appointments.
And importantly, I wanted something with room to grow.
I was not looking for an activity to fill my spare time.
I wanted the possibility of meaningful income.
That mattered to me because flexibility and financial contribution were not competing goals. I wanted both.
The online options I started looking at
There are many ways to earn online, and I do not think there is one perfect model for every special needs parent.
Freelancing can give you flexibility, particularly if you already have a skill such as writing, administration, design or consulting. There are also remote employment opportunities that offer genuinely flexible or part-time arrangements. Current parent-focused job sites explicitly position themselves around work that can fit around school pickup and caregiving responsibilities.
Digital products and online education can also create income, although they require time to develop, market and sell.
Content creation can open doors to brand partnerships, affiliate income or other opportunities, but an audience does not automatically become an income stream.
And then there is social selling, which is the path I eventually decided to build alongside my own content and personal brand.
None of these options is effortless.
The important question is not:
“Which one is easiest?”
It is:
“Which model genuinely fits the life I need to build it around?”
Why social selling became part of my answer
The model I chose allows me to partner with an established skincare and wellness company rather than creating a product from scratch.
I can build from home.
I can create content in the pockets of time available to me.
I can have customer conversations when I have capacity.
I can continue learning skills in storytelling, social media, personal branding and marketing that interest me anyway.
And if my son needs me, I can step away.
That does not mean the business builds itself while I am gone. It still requires work.
But there is a very big difference between work requiring effort and work requiring me to be physically present in a classroom at 8:30am regardless of what is happening at home.
That difference matters in our family.
I also found something I had not realised I was missing
When life becomes heavily centred around therapy, medical appointments, education and caregiving, your world can become very small without you necessarily noticing it happening.
Building online gave me another space.
I met women outside the medical and disability world.
I learnt new skills.
I started understanding social media, storytelling and marketing in a completely different way.
I had conversations that had nothing to do with the next appointment.
And I began building something that could coexist with being the mum my son needed me to be.
That has been important to me in ways that go beyond money.
What I would tell another special needs mum looking for flexible income
If you have found this article because you are searching for work-from-home options as a special needs parent, I would not start by choosing a business model.
I would start by getting very clear about the life it needs to fit into.
Ask yourself:
How unpredictable are my weeks?
If appointments move regularly or your child’s health can change quickly, a job requiring fixed availability may still be difficult even if it is remote.
Do I need to be able to stop working without asking someone’s permission?
That was an important one for me.
How much uninterrupted time do I realistically have?
There is no point building a plan that requires three uninterrupted hours every morning if your real life gives you twenty minutes here, forty minutes there and the occasional longer block.
Do I want employment, self-employment or a business?
They solve different problems and carry different levels of responsibility.
What am I willing to learn?
Anything you build online will involve learning something. That might be technology, marketing, sales, writing, content, customer service or building relationships.
Does this option still work during a difficult week?
This may be the most important question of all.
I do not build around my best week.
I have to build around real life.
I stopped trying to recreate my old working life
For a long time, I think part of me was still trying to solve a new problem with the plan I had made before my life changed.
I had worked hard for my teaching career. I knew where I wanted it to go. Walking away from the traditional version of that path was not as simple as deciding I wanted something different.
But eventually I realised I did not need to recreate the life I had planned.
I needed to build one that worked now.
My son needed me available in ways I could never have predicted when I first trained to teach.
That is our reality.
But being available for him does not mean I have to give up earning, learning or building.
It means the way I do those things has to fit around the life we actually live.
If traditional work no longer fits around your child’s needs
Maybe you are reading this between therapy appointments.
Maybe you have had another call from school.
Maybe you are homeschooling because mainstream education stopped working for your child.
Maybe you have been searching “work from home jobs for special needs parents” at night because you genuinely cannot see how a traditional job is supposed to fit around your week anymore.
I understand why you are looking.
I was not searching for a shortcut.
I was searching for another option.
And finding ways to earn online has helped me see that work does not have to look exactly the way I once thought it would.
If you are at the beginning of that search, start by asking yourself one question:
What would work need to look like for it to genuinely fit around my child’s needs?
Not around an imaginary perfect week.
Not around what everybody else can manage.
Around your actual child and your actual life.
That answer will tell you far more about what you should look for next than another list of “10 side hustles for mums”.
Want to see what I’m doing?
I’ve linked a short video that explains a modern way to earn in social selling and what it can look like to get started.
If it feels like something that could fit around your life, you can fill out this short application and I’ll personally follow up with you.