To find work easier than being home with my toddlers

I appreciate this is your experience but I’m sure you’re aware this is not how it is at work for many many people right?

i resuscitate people for a living. The most well-rested I’d been in years was on mat leave. I actually laid down in a bed at least for a short period every night! Amazing. It was also the time I was most consistently able to do things like drink water, eat food or wee once within a 12 hour window.

It’s always relative and how easy you find being at home depends on how easy both your job and your children are.

They are hard ages.. it will get easier :)

‘Magic years’ what a load of crap
I hated the toddler phase and like you sought reprieve in work.
I now love being a mum to a 6 and 8 year old

I think it’s just children are unreasonable and behave oddly at inconvenient times. I mean if Sandra at work shoved a carrot up her nose and you couldn’t get it out. Then the kindly GP who squeezed you in Couldn’t get it out as she went into tantrum mode and then the next day you had to drive 60 miles when you were supposed to be doing a really important bit of work to see a consultant with a magic pair of tweezers to hoik if out you’d probably be thinking it was harder.

23 month old and 8 month old SAHM here. It makes zero sense for me to be at work. I’d need 4K a month to have them both in daycare

I’m exhausted, keep getting ill, I now have mastitis and an infection and I still have to manage and feed two babies

I’d love to chill with a warm cup of tea and biscuits without anyone shouting or crying or trying to snatch my food

Doesnt help MIL keeps saying I’m lazy and she managed okay and had a spotless house. (She had a 12 year gap with DH the youngest, not 2u2 and both kids were in school and her husband worked part time to sort out house chores for the first 3 years of my partners life. She first said this when I was 7 months pregnant with number 2. Something I have hated her since. Can’t stand her now

YANBU to find whichever is easier easier. Personally I found being at home with my small dc way easier than work. It obviously depends on what your particular dc and job are like though! My job involves being in charge of 30 kids at a time, vs 2 of my own...

It’s a major reason I go to work

This sums it up for me. There can be lovely times. And then DS will have a horrible time because of some slight to his two year old world view. I didn’t feel the highs and lows people talk of during the baby stage, but I get it now!

Yes it’s harder and that’s why I don’t dodge it 🤷‍♀️

I used to feel that a bad day at work was better than a bad day at home, but a good day at home was better than a good day at work.

We’re going to a farm tomorrow. There will be lovely moments like the above but I also know there will be tears, tantrums, sunburn.

I think it must depend on the job...
I'm a social worker and there is not a moment of my job that is easier than being with my 2 lovely little children. Yes of course we have the odd moments but generally being at home with them is a billion times easier!! Monday was spent at a local farm bottle feeding lambs, holding Fluffy chick's, tractor rides and lunch out.
Today at work I have been threatened, abused, dealt with crisis, chaired meetings and responded to over 70 emails.

Please don't feel guilty! Parenting is exhausting! I'm a full time doctor and find that all aspects of life are exhausting currently. I generally enjoy my job, but overall at the moment I feel too exhausted to properly enjoy my clinical work and also too exhausted to parent in the way I imagine good parenting to be.

What I believe to be true though is that I love my career and need to have that part of my identity to be a happy human being and therefore a decently good parent. I'm also proud that my children will see me working and hopefully feel empowered to also work hard in the future. But I'm not disregarding the hard work of stay at home parents either, if that makes them happiest then they are modelling a different kind of sacrifice and hard work to their children, which is of equal importance.

Twins here. Work is much easier than parenting for me.

There are pros and cons to working / not working as a parent, you just have to decide what is best for you and your family -it's not a one size fits all thing.

I'm a SAHM, and i feel guilty too -guilty when I'm doing house stuff rather than "cherishing every moment", guilt that I am not modelling the "women can work and be mothers" life, guilty that we could have far more money if I worked too, even though we have plenty. Low level shaming from others that "I work and do everything you do on top of that" -the thing is, you'll always question your choices if you are a decent parent. If you weren't, you wouldn't care. Just do what is best for you and try to enjoy it.

I have a 3 year old (nearly 4) and my son has just turned 2. I am absolutely exhausted, I work free lance from home and have bits of help here and there from a lovely lady who’s part time cleaner and nanny. I am always desperate for her to take them off my hands and I’m constantly shattered and in a fairly fed up mood with this age at the moment. Don’t feel guilty. It’s impossible to enjoy every moment - I certainly don’t and by the time I get to bed I am so over it 😹

I cannot tell you what a relief it is at the end of every half term and holiday to throw the kids at the nursery gate and retreat to sit on my own in quiet at my computer.

My 2 year old goes to nursery one morning a week when I’m off work and DP drops her off. I refuse to feel guilty about it, it’s my favourite morning of the week 😆

Personally I found being at home with children easier than my job as a secondary school teacher. However, my age gap was much bigger as my daughter was 4 when my son was born.

Not at all unreasonable but I would say with small kids it is easier when you spend more days with them in a weird way; everyone gets into the swing of it basically. I have worked 3 days and 4 days and found my one day with the kids more tiring when I worked 4 days,
maybe because my own or the kids expectations were too high whereas with 2 days off a week or on maternity leave we all got used to more chilled out days together? But anyone - not being unreasonable at all and it sounds like all have a great week.

It’s much easier. I often don’t get a lunch break at work and probably managed to brush my teeth more assiduously on maternity leave, but other than that dealing with fully developed frontal lobes has a lot to recommend it.

Of course it’s easier, you can go to the toilet whenever you need to, and without two small people following you or shouting ‘Mummyyyyyyy’ because you’ve dared to disappear.

You don’t have to hide to eat food, you get a lunch break, and it doesn’t take 3 hours to leave the house because your small person doesn’t want to wear their shoes.

It’s easier, which is why men stay at work.

I’m a SAHM to two similar aged children and I find it really frustrating when people (not you btw) imply that it’s not real work or that I have it easy, it’s really really hard and there are many many days when I would love to be at work 😂 however to your point, there is always guilt with children. I often feel guilty that my two male children aren’t seeing their female role model working in a traditional sense, I feel guilty that some days I perhaps don’t do enough with them and don’t make things magical enough. I sometimes feel guilty that they are not having as much interaction with other children as their peers who may be at nursery etc. it sounds like you are happy and your children are happy and that is enough

Someone who's not happy being a sahm will be a crappy sahm. Better for the children to be in professionnal care at nursery etc. Your job as a mum is to care for your children which you do if you put them in nursery while you work. They are happier there than hanging out with a reluctant miserable mum @2under2mamamoo so nothing to feel guilty about.

I don’t have children but all my friends say this to me regularly simply because they can eat and use the toilet alone!