Here's an interesting article on the perception of teleworkers as not being as strong of a worker as someone who shows up every day: http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/jobseeker/tools/ept/careerArticlesPost.html?post=42

What bothers me is if I show up to an office and run around for 8 hours with a cell phone pressed to my ear, I'll get promoted, even if I'm not actually accomplishing something. Even though we telecommuters are getting more done, and executives will admit to it, because we don't show up and have face-time, we're not considered as serious.

So what can we do to change the perception? One step at a time. We increase the numbers of telecommuters, and we do focused work so no one can ever complain or point fingers towards us as being anything less then stellar. We may be working in our jammies with kids running around, but we must never let that show up in how we present ourselves.

And we learn quickly from our mistakes when it does happen.