How far away from your children are you when you are at work?

[Clearasmuddypuddles]

I’m looking at a bee job but it is 20 miles and 35 minutes away from my children’s school and nursery. My husband is 40 minutes away in the other direction.

I think i’m probably being silly but I feel uneasy at being this far away and not being able to get to them quickly in an emergency. Would this worry anyone else? I do have form for ove thinking things!

15/20 minute drive when working
Currently on furlough so 2/4 minute drive
Ds/Dd

15 minute drive from the office. 5-10 from home.

I'm not; I'm part of dd2's class "bubble". It made more sense for me to be there rather than y2 where I originally was in Sept.

In a morning (before work) 15 mins ish walk away from school for dd2. & maybe half hour at a slow pace from dd1.

I was 1hr 40 away but grandparents and aunties were 10 mins or less away.

Now 15 mines

16 miles, half an hour in the car and I consider myself grateful to live really close to work

before lockdown 3 hours one way by train and bus which is how I commute.

Now- if at home 40 minutes drive.

well- 3 hours 10 mins to be exact. depending on what time I arrive at waterloo.

Not work but my uni is 1.5 hours drive away. Some placement locations 2.5.
DH is 20 mins away though.

Oh- and yesterday I WAS called. But i was in court. So I had to let my silent phone ring on while making submissions to the Judge.

It was horrific.

School didn't ring DH though.

Anywhere up to 7000 miles away. DH works from home. Guess who they call when DC forget their thing they had to take in! 🙄

3.5 miles away 10min by car. Same town. Dh is slightly closer and probably about 5min

10 minutes. The furthest away I've ever been is 10 miles and that was down a dual carriageway with my office at one junction and the nursery at the next.

Both 1h to 1h30 away. I have had calls to come back and it is just managed. One of those times was to go to A&E. that was a horrid trip back but again nursery managed it well and looked my child until I could get back. If it has been an emergency, they’d have gone in an ambulance with the child. One of my friends once had a flurry of calls they had missed where the child had an allergic reaction to a bee sting that was compromising their airway. The manager went with the child in the ambulance until the parents got to the hospital and met them there. In that sort of case, it doesn’t matter whether you were 20 mins or an hour a way- the chances are an ambulance would be there and gone before a parent could arrive back.

Well right now they're either downstairs or a 5 min walk away because we both WFH, but when we are in the office we are both 1h10 - 1h30 away.

I can't say it's ever occurred to me to be the slightest bit concerned. They're with people who are looking after them perfectly well and would continue to do so until we got there, in the unlikely event that anything happened to them.

Used to be a 10 minute walk away but now they are at high school it's about a 15 minute drive

20-30 minute drive depending on traffic usually takes me 45 minutes door to door in rush hour as car park is 10-15 walk away Husband is currently working at home so is 10 minutes away. Only time I have had to pick her up from school it was my day off and hadn't even got home from dropping her off.

I'm half an hour drive away, although that rather assumes I'd be able to leave straight away, which is not necessarily the case. I'd have to say least set emergency cover work for my remaining classes that day. Although I would hope in a proper emergency then my colleagues would step in and just wing it for a lesson or two.

Dh is closer when he's working from home, about a 15 minute walk. But if he's in the office it would take him about an hour to get back as he has to rely on public transport.

Normally DH and I are about an hour away and fairly often one of us would be in another county or country due to the nature of our jobs.

We have arrangements with local friends that someone could be with the children in an extreme emergency where an hour is far too long. Children are teenagers now. We never had to call up the friends. We have both left our desks/clients/meetings suddenly to pick up a sick child at some point. Didn't get sacked. Didn't lose the client. People know how it is.

What a strange post. Obviously if they need to go to hospital, they go in an ambulance with a staff member. Happens several times a year (usually sports injuries or we have had a child who has run into something and sustained a head injury). If parents are close they come but usually the ambulance would come first anyway. If non-emergency they wait for parent to arrive.

I mean we have parents who are surgeons and can't even necessarily come at all themselves.

About 10 minutes drive. It means I can avoid DS using the bus at the moment (glad about that as there’s been a C19 outbreak linked to one of the school buses).
I’ve stayed in a local job in order to be able to take DS to sports training rather than to be specifically near school. That will need to be the way things are Neil he can drive himself.

Neil? No idea who he is! until

I usually work in London (pre Covid - currently working from home), and was an hour away from DD2, and probably 1.5 hours from DD1. DH was 20 mins from DD2 and in the same location as DD1 (teacher at her school).

However, loads of my London colleagues were in couples where both were at least an hour from their DC, maybe more. I really don’t think it’s a problem. I can’t think of a single kid in all the time my DC have been at school where someone in their class went to hospital during the school day. It seems odd to base your job options on a very very rare possible situation.

I’m an hour or so away, I can honestly say that in 17 years of being a working parent I don’t think I’ve been called to any school for any child more than about 4 times in total. I certainly wouldn’t choose a job based on the minute possibility of being called to pick up once every 4 years.

At least an hour and a half when in the office. My husband is about 40 mins away so in the occasional nursery emergency he's been the one to go. Far less of an issue with school.

We are both always contactable by mobile and one of us is always within 15-20 minutes of school. Most of the time I can drop everything and be there in more like 5 minutes. But we get phoned a lot as one child has special needs and sometimes needs to come home for things most children just deal with (grazed knee for example). We are fortunate we can do it, I do wonder why school staff think parents should be automatically contactable at all times - presumably teachers aren’t. Surgeons. Deep sea divers.