The phone call from my daughter was unexpected. Most calls from our college age kids involve funding requests. So it was a rare pleasure to hear her ask for help with project planning.

She was pretty small when I started this PM business. There were some tough phone calls early in my career - calls to say good night to kids with bedtimes earlier than my last test run of the evening. There were a lot of incidents over the years of juggling schedules around kick off meetings, soccer games, status reports, scout activities and out of town trips. Frankly, I've always had that nagging guilt about the amount of time the PM life stole from my family. And then there were all those jokes the kids made about adding an "I" to my PMP certificate. I doubted that they were very happy about what Mom did for a living.

But then my daughter called home, looking for PM help. The circumstances were extraordinary. She had gone to Mississippi with some other students from her university, to help clean up after the hurricanes. She was so shocked at the conditions there that she organized two more trips that school year. Then, with the encouragement of the chancellor's office, she began creating a permanent organization at her school to run campus volunteer trips. She worked to get some grant money, presented the issue to her department and to the administration. She called because she needed help writing a class to teach students to plan and manage volunteer projects. Her scope had expanded a bit to include creating this class so students could start up their own projects. Wow.

I'm the first person to admit that I wasn't exactly a June Cleaver kind of mom. I doubt that I've baked my share of bake sale cupcakes. It's worried me a bit that I was short-changing my kids - but my daughter's call has made me re-examine that notion. I believe my PM skills also benefited my children.

I used those planning skills to run a scout troupe and help organize fund raising events. My friend Mary and I tackled the basketball concession stand staffing problems using RACI charts and process documentation. We used MS Project to figure out schedule constraints for the school theater department. Our children watched us set goals, make plans and execute schedules. So my daughter's emerging skill and passion really shouldn't have surprised me. It's as much a legacy of all those years as the ability to master a family recipe.

I'm about past my child rearing stage. My youngest is a senior in high school. So now I'm thinking about inviting some of the older grandkids to go into the office with me. I'm sure they'll get under foot, just like their aunts did. But maybe I can show them what we all do for a living. And maybe they'll learn to write down goals, break up work into manageable pieces, schedule things out. And maybe it will make them more successful at whatever they decide to do with their lives. After all, we've been telling our employers for years that PMBOK methodology makes business more successful - so why not teach it to our kids? Socioeconomic impact, indeed.