My position isn’t unique. I’m not the first stay at home mom who is ready to jump feet first back into the workforce. I’m not even the first who has worked hard to gain new skills to jump into a better career than the one I had before kids.

Over the several years I have been home raising carbon copies of myself, I have been learning how to code. It started with refresher courses in HTML and CSS to get my motivation and ego primed. Then the hour JavaScript crash courses to learn the basics. I discovered freecodecamp and went through their lessons. I took a 24-hour JavaScript course and got certified. Then, finally, took a full frontend course through Udacity.

From where I started, I feel an incredible sense of pride that I have enough knowledge I could hold my own in a junior dev position.

Getting that first dev job, as anyone trying to break into the industry knows, it is not going to be easy. Competition is fierce, I don’t have a Computer Science degree, and, as of writing this, I have only two freelance sites under my belt.

But what else do I have? What sets me apart from the competition? My soft skills.

In the midst of surviving early parenthood, I have been honing many desirable soft skills for years. What do SAHMs have to offer? A ton!

1. Problem Solvers/Creative Thinkers

SAHMs are faced with hundreds of problems a day. They are hit with unreasonable demands by tenacious negotiators hourly. We’re quick on our feet, can come up with dozens of solutions in minutes, and are resilient in our quest to find the right answer to make all happy. It can get incredibly stressful amidst the screams, tantrums, and even meltdowns, but we meet every challenge with compassion, kindness, and endless patience.

2. Time Management

No one can deny that SAHMs are incredible jugglers. Our to-do list is constantly growing, but we never let it defeat us. We know how to prioritize, multitask, and change tactics for maximum efficiency when needed. We have learned how to see three steps ahead, and we act accordingly.

3. Organization

Even if we live amongst chaos and disorder, our minds are steel traps of order. Lists, notes, schedules, names, appointments, etc. We’ve got it all covered. We have our own systems, honed with experience and time, that make us, in my incredibly humble opinion, basically superhumans.

There are so many more qualities we possess, but these blanket the main assets we’d provide to any company.

As SAHMs, we make tough decisions, perform under pressure, and have incredible inner strength to keep calm and cool. We know how to get things done fast and efficiently. The gap of work on our resumes in no way means that we haven’t been working.