AIBUto think it's actually more impossible to work full time with teenagers than younger children?

[bbcessex]

Just that really. I work (more than) full time; I have a high profile role in my area of specialism.. I work long hours, I travel, I have a lot of tight deadlines etc. I am fortunate because I can to a large degree dictate my own schedule, and I can work from pretty much anywhere.. I have very much a role measured on success rather than input (although it needs a lot of input to be successful).

I've seen a number of threads on MN recently that have made me realise that maybe I'm not alone in thinking that it actually gets harder to hold down a demanding job when your DC are older...yet every headline or article on the 'working mum / parent' front seems to centre around availability of childcare / cost of childcare / guilt about 'leaving' your children etc. etc.

I've never once seriously thought about cutting back or stopping work before; but my DC are 15 and 13 now and I'm currently dropping the ball in numerous areas.. none of which I've done when they were younger and it IS all child-related stuff.. I've always been fortunate enough to be able to pay for the exact sort of childcare I wanted.. but now - I don't really need 'childcare' and I should be experiencing some 'freedom' at this stage - or at least I thought.. but looking back, when then most stressful part of my day was getting to the nursery by 6om and getting them into bed by 7pm, I'm thinking that those were the golden years!

AIBU to think that actually - it's much, much harder to work long hours in a demanding role when your DC are revising / taking exams / needing you to push them / arrange tutors / challenge them / cajole them / threaten them! / console them.. none of this can really be done by a childminder / nanny / third party..

AIBU? or am I doing it wrong? HELP!

I'm going to go against the grain here and say I've been able to increase the hours I work outside the home as my DC have become teens.

Three things have helped a lot.

First, DH is now so senior he can run his own show and does lots with/for the DC. Ten years ago he was building his practice and was far more at the beck and call of clients/colleagues.

Now, he just tells people what time he'll be in, if at all.

Second, we moved back into London (for part of the week). When the DC were little, we lived in the HC. DH had to leave at the crack of dawn to get to the office. DC had to be ferried everywhere. Now they're far more independent and public transport is fantastic. And DH's travelling times are minimal.

Third, their schools provide a lot of on site activities which means a. they don't need to physically get there and b. they're often at school until reasonably late. This means that even if DH and I both have work commitments, the DC are unlikely to be at home on their own for long.

It does, however, still come as a shock to me sometimes to realise that I have almost no evening left after the children are fully settled in bed. On the other hand, I used to be able to get nothing done while they were up and now I can, so I have to remember that and plan things differently.

This is really interesting to me as I had a discussion with a friend recently on this. She has put a lot of thought into it and has decided that she is going to work as hard as she can to get as high as she can in her career now so that she can work less when her DCs reach secondary school age.

At present she is something of a high-flyer. She's the co-head of HR for her company and has to travel a lot. Her DCs are in school and they have a full time nanny but her plan is to slow down once they reach secondary and, hopefully, be in a position to take NEDs.

She canvassed a lot of her friends before having children about this. It was something I had never considered before but it definitely resonates. Even the level of homework and extra-curricula support my Year 4 DS needs is considerable and I'm only expecting it to increase.

The physical side of parenting is definitely harder when they are little but the emotional and mental side is so so hard when they are teenagers , at least it has been for me .

When they were small I could go to work and know that they were safe and having a good time and frankly concentrate on my job .Now they are older I am wondering what they are doing , I get calls to tell me that so and so s mum called and can they go over ( brilliant but he needs a lift) ?Then I get an email from college to say that ds2 has a meeting to discuss his support tomorrow ( he forgot to tell me ) I find home encroaches on work far more now that they are older

.Get home to find ;no food in the house, all been eaten during the day , orthodontic appointment has to have parent present because treatment complex with lots of parental imput needed so dash 10 miles for that , shower has broken yet again ( overuse by 3 teens) plus out of shower gel!

Other son calls in bits due to some complicated job application , graduate recruiters have really lost the plot with all these Skype interviews , endless computer generated tests and in some cases disembodied interviews with automated voices .Not to mention the fact that they want 'evidence of leadership' at every level and so on and so forth .I would never have even got an interview nowadays and I was a supposed high flyer ,

To the graduate recruiter who posted up thread about them having no initiative , if you want the. To have steer exams , a first or high 2:1 , have been on the committee for any club they have ever joined , they are likely to be pretty busy and not have time to catch a bus

outtoLunch so like my life.

Sorry that was a bit of a rant and I meant stellar exams in the last para !

Oh and most of the parents of teens I know also have some involvement with managing the lives of older relatives as well which doesn't make things any easier

"if you want the. To have steer exams , a first or high 2:1 , have been on the committee for any club they have ever joined , they are likely to be pretty busy and not have time to catch a bus"

Has that changed so much since the 80s, though? I mean, I fit the bill for all of the above (good exams in school and college, serious participation in out of school activities including playing in a high level youth orchestra), and as per my post above I did use the bus, all the time - at least once a week I'd get the bus straight from school to music then home afterwards (I'd sometimes meet my dad for the trip home if he was going to be on the same bus), same every Saturday morning. Very occasionally I would ask my mum to drive me to something I usually got myself to, sometimes she would, sometimes she quite reasonably said "no".

I know I seem to be harping on about this one point but I do find it implausible that I was able to get myself around easily as a teenager, while my DC - we live in the same city I grew up in - clearly won't be able to make an almost identical bus journey to eg the big music school and any parent who really cared about them doing well wouldn't make them do so and should be around after school to facilitate them. Again, obviously this is with the caveat that you need to be somewhere with a decent bus service - if you live somewhere rural things would be very different. And obviously the emotional support etc. is a different issue.

I'm already wondering how it will work and considering whether that might be the time to change jobs so I can be around.

Due to a move for dh's job, I stayed home when mine were 13 and 15, and really looked forward to being all involved and volunteery finally. I discovered breaking into the SAHM/dedicated volunteers social group was impossible. They had known each other for years. They were glad to see me show up to work with them at activities and planning meetings during school hours, but it's damn lonely to go to a coffee hop after, and there they sit. Once I sat down as if I expected to take part, they were using a large communal table. The woman nearest me turned away as if she thought I was just randomly sitting there. I tried for some weeks, but short of blatently saying, 'so, you bitches, I can come count smelly gym suits in and out of storage, but I can't come moan about it with you after?" I couldnt see a way in. i found a better coffee shop.

My kids meanwhile, were confused by my presence. They had long ago learned to be independent re: activities. They learned to appreciate transport, so did their friends whose parents worked. After once though, I had to draw the line at feeding kids on weekend events. Really, your kids will be away from home from 6am to 6 pm and came out of the house eating a granola bar, with no packed lunch or cash for the rest of the day?

I went back to work the next fall.

Leedy I do think the graduate job market has changed yes , I certainly wouldn't have got the jobs I got in 1986 now , in fact they wouldn't even look at me .I think the expectations are ridiculous and very stressful for many young people .

I suppose what I meant was that I see many teens now who work much harder than I did at school, who feel that they have to have lots of appropriate work experience , not just a Saturday job and I have a relation who graduate recruits for one of the big four accountancy firms ( actually my alma mater ) and when I listen to the list of things he expects recruits to have done I wonder when they are meant to just live .

Public transport is non existent where we are. One bus a day if you are lucky .My eldest learned to drive early because of this and the next one will do too , except that that's a whole other area to worry about !!

I think that the transport issue may be a red herring here?

It's not just that the DC's need to be independent... if they do a lot of activities, and/or need to fit in training / competitions around homework, then often being driven to and from is the sensible, most efficient option. I certainly think that transport of small or primary children can be just as demanding as teens (although probably with an earlier finish).

The logistical things aren't really the things I find the toughest anyhow, although it does make for a busy evening. I am fortunate that I can do my non-client work from anywhere I can set up my laptop and connection, so I'm happy to sit for the 2 or 3 hours and work whilst DD or DS do their thing.

It's the dilution of the focus that I find hardest.

"Leedy I do think the graduate job market has changed yes , I certainly wouldn't have got the jobs I got in 1986 now , in fact they wouldn't even look at me "

I actually had the "fun" of emerging into the job market in the early 90s in Ireland, which was probably nearly as grim: almost everyone I knew either emigrated, tried to get funding to do even more postgraduate work, was unemployed, or had a relatively crap job. I did get a good job eventually when the economy took off again, but yes, I know it's not definitely going to be as easy for the DC as "get a masters from a good university and then stroll into your choice of professional jobs". Fingers crossed it'll be slightly less awful by the time they're at university-leaving age.

I know a high-flyer with 3 under nines at boarding school, who intends to stop work when they're in the teens so she can spend more time with them in the long school holidays

I work less now my dc are tweens than when they were babies, toddlers and a nanny was fine. Now, I find, they need me.

Also nodding at the usefulness of being able to work remotely/from home. I'm hoping that'll come in handy when the DC are older.

leedy I'm sure your DC will be able to bus to their music things if the routes and times are right. I love a good bus route.

I was beyond joy when one of mine changed to a Rugby Club near a handy bus stop. No more twice a week thru rush hour traffic to training. I sometimes take pity on the other passengers and pick him up though ( 9pm). So they don't have to sit next to him stinking and covered in mud. ( He doesn't care)

So depressed reading this thread.

Dc are 4 and 1 and am am praying there is a lot of rose tinted glasses going on here.

I just can't get my head around the idea that a teenager is harder than small kids. I long to be able to nip to the shops for 2 mins (we live on a high street) without having to take them with me. Turning a 2 minute job into a 20 minute pain in the ass.

Or being able to nip upstairs without the baby getting into some sort of disaster.
I long to be able to lie in past 6.30am.

I think it's hard for me to get my head round how much help parents need to give kids now. From the age of 9 I used to let myself into my house and take care of myself till mum and dad got home.

Never had any help with homework, was just expected to get on with it.

I am a bit taken aback at this thread. And as someone who does recruit staff, I do find more young people do not take the initiative these days. For example, I was taken aback to find young people these days criticising us if we hadn't given them information on what buses they could get to an interview at our offices. In the past, I had never heard anyone saying this, although pre internet, the information was actually more difficult to find.

Whenis , all those things do get easier , and it's not all bad , they are great fun, good company and very loving , it's just that I and I think many others have found work harder because I do want to be there for them , I do want to be the person they ask advice from about the fact that they want to break up with their girlfriend or talk through their options , or vent their frustration at still not understanding something at school etc etc .A nanny Isn't much use in these circumstances and I have learnt the hard way that just because everything looks like it's going fine it doesn't mean that it is

Whenshewas - rest assured, all those things get a lot easier. The challenges that you describe, however, are the sort of issues that, to be blunt, you can throw money at.

They get replaced with challenges which, whilst far less constant and time consuming, cannot really be met by anyone other than a parent (and often, a specific parent, although not the same one for everything)

I agreee Dillution of focus is an issue bbcessex.

I've got so much better at cutting thru the crap, picking my battles and getting to the point of things. And that could be age and experience or something. Because clearly lots of people develop that without teens/kids etc But it helps!

" From the age of 9 I used to let myself into my house and take care of myself till mum and dad got home. "

whanshewasbadshewashorrid- do you think that is an ideal situation?

Would you do this with your own children?

i do agree that some children need to be managed/encouraged/cajoled more than others. My 2 are 11 and 10, so one school year apart. DD1 is extremely organised, very good at getting on with things and sets herself high standards.
DD2 on the other hand is probably naturally brighter but chronically lazy and also lacks any degree of self-criticism. If we just let DD2 to get on with it (as we can do with DD1), she would quite happily hand in work well below what she can do. Does not really matter now, but does concern me a little for the exam years.

cutting thru the crap, picking my battles and getting to the point of things
I should have said this is at work.

Still feel I'm only just finding my way with the teens. ( 3 plus an 8 yr old )

Whenshewasbadshewashorrid it's just different not better or worse. They are far more rewarding too as they get older as you can have lovely conversations arguments with them.

Agree that letting yourself in to your home at 9 years old doesn't sound great. My mum was a senior nurse but took private work on whilst we were children so that she could always be there when we got home. That was 40 years ago.

From the age of 9 I used to let myself into my house and take care of myself till mum and dad got home

I did this too and it was absolutely fine for me, I ended up at Oxbridge (if you count this kind of thing as important) and have had a happy, well-adjusted life to date. But, annoyingly, times have changed: there would be shock and horror if I allowed my dcs to do this and schools do, I think, expect far more parental input thatn 20 years ago or whenever.