Is it just me, or is this working from home with children completely unsustainable?

[Lovemyphone]

I'm terrified that the schools will remain closed until September.

I'm wfh with two dc. Youngest is 4, as the weeks go by it's becoming more and more unbearable and I can't do it much longer. I'm on my own because dh is still out at work. My employer have been pretty good and taken a 'just do what you can when you can' approach. But the work is picking up again, at the same time the dc are climbing the walls now.

I can't even make a phone call or do an online meeting without constant "mummyyy", or one of them hurting themselves, or asking for snacks, or trashing the house.

Surely it's neglect to essentially leave your children unsupervised for 7-8 hours a day? Which is essentially what you're expected to do.

Is anyone else in this position and just cannot possibly see how this can go on?

I have no problem at all with the schools and teachers for my DC. They are doing their best. My issue is with my employers and others like them making no concessions to working parents, and with the government for allowing them to do so and not having any sense of a plan in place for children.

This thread just goes to show how different we all are and how different our kids needs are. We would love some more online presence from school - there is none. Nothing!

Not daily, just once a week, a pep talk for the whole class, set a topic, literally 15 minutes once a week. Instead we get a weekly update from the teachers on their new found hobbies, which is rubbing salt in the wounds to say the least.

I KNOW this isn't all teachers. I don't hate teachers. You are wonderful and if you've got your own young kids then by all means I'm not suggesting we amplify the problem by demanding more.

But in the same way we make time for a few Zoom calls once a week and catch up on some work in the evenings, teachers should be doing the same (I KNOW MANY ARE DOING SO). This should be consistent across LA's and the provision shouldn't come down to the the willingness of the headteacher. We are all in this together.

I think that clearly some schools could be doing more, some could be doing things differently, but regardless of what school does if is fundamentally a problem for parents of primary aged kids to be expected to work and care for their children.

At the moment for some people it's manageable with the furlough scheme, but if that ends before schools and nurseries open and grandparents and other significant adults are able to support parents then parents, and mothers in particular are screwed. What I would like to see from government is an acknowledgement that parents are in a very difficult position. We need some action that protects parents jobs if we are going to avoid them taking a huge financial hit. All this talk of dependence on furlough and weaning off it misses the point. There is nothing school can do whilst closed to most children that will allow a parent to look after small children and put in a 40 hour week.

Agreed @wonderstuff - my last few comments have been about schools but you are absolutely right, there's been very very little in the way of acknowledgement from government that this is unsustainable, damaging to our kids, and that we need a publicly available plan and timescales for going forwards. Leaving everyone clueless and expected to homeschool into September or beyond, with no consistent support for working parents, is abhorrent.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/coronavirus-mothers-economy-schools-shut?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3LxJZULWITAejkGGm0ipOsxR_CG94q0cDxgknlYHVQ9VMZlRODxRwEfuY#Echobox=1588950377
American but still relevant.

Someone said up thread they should let the childminders open.

Childminders can open for key workers. I’m a key worker and my
CM decided to close for the safety of her family; she has that choice because she can get 80% of her wages from the self employed scheme.

I have wfh since dd was 3. I leave the house, drop her at child care, and then go
Home to work. At that time DH also wfh. We still needed child care.

We are managing now because dd is 11. She doesn’t really need care anymore, but we still sign her up for holiday clubs so she isn’t bored.

Can either of you change to work the weekend? So the other can do childcare?

Can your DH start/finish either earlier or later to provide childcare

I been WFH for the past 11 months anyway but it's hard even for us WFH parents;my 3 eldest leave at 7:30am for school;My youngest starts at 8:40am and I'm back home ready to work by 9am.I down tools at 2:30pm to sort myself out and leave for the school run.One day a week youngest is at an after school club until 4:30pm.After the school run is when I do my cooking,cleaning/sorting the kids (I only do laundry in short bursts during the day so I can get the washing on the line)

The day my youngest is in an afterschool club is errands afternoon.

Now I'm in a position where 9-3 I'm having to do homework with the kids;I cannot leave the youngest to get on with it;he has SEN and has a one to one worker at school.After 3 is spent trying to catch up with work,we're currently as busy as the Christmas season which is nuts and basically my house is trashed,cooked from scratch dinners are out the window,I can't remember the last time I peed in peace,I'm exhausted constantly,the kids are at each others throats and my DH has been a useless turd through this and doesn't understand why I'm so snappy or tired.

We're already doing that Porridgeoat. Roughly our schedule is someone works 7-1, the other 1-8, we have to put a few hours in each on a sat, then one day is spent completely off.

*Can either of you change to work the weekend? So the other can do childcare?

Can your DH start/finish either earlier or later to provide childcare*

Yes. We have been really fortunate that our jobs can - partly - be done out of normal office hours. So I log on at 6am and do 3 hours whilst dh is in charge of the dc. This, combined with more screen time than I would like, makes it possible for us to do our jobs with the dc at home in the short term. But sustainable? No.

Clearly unsustainable for the majority, they need to reopen schools and childcare providers and let parents make their own decision for their children.

IamNotDarling I have the same thing. I am a key worker but my childminder decided to close anyway to protect her family. She is still charging me full rate though - to 'save the place'. I have to pay as I won't be able to get any new childcare at short notice at the end of this.

I only returned from maternity in January. At this rate I'll have paid for more childcare I haven't had than childcare I have 😩

@Porridgeoat I realise the sentiment of your post is to be helpful, but this is what most are already doing. One of us is working from 6/7am until gone 10 pm, 7 days of the week. Weekdays and weekends just blend into one. There’s no family time, no couple time.
Just eat work childcare sleep repeat. Can we do this for a few more weeks? Probably.

Not it is NOT sustainable and as other posters have said, it’s the having no idea how long this might so on for or even in what order things might open up. Can we personally do this for another 5/6 months? No.

So glad we aren’t the only ones.

Have a 7yo and 4yo. Both me and DH are trying to work full time high pressure jobs from home and we are just exhausted with it. I’m on reduced salary (not reduced hours), still being asked to pay 30% nursery fees, spending a fortune on Amazon on things to distract / bribe the children with. Have given up with home education. Spending a fortune on food as the children are snacking all day.

We are run ragged with it.

Everyone we know has at least one furloughed or non-working parent.

I’ve come off social media because of the blissed out family posts, wonderfully creative home education projects etc.

I spent a lot of time in tears this week. My mental health is shot. As is my actual health as eating too much and not going to gym. Take children out for a walk every other day and run every other day in turn with husband but feel I hardly see him and never spend any time with him as we are both catching up with work from when we wake to when we sleep. Children are horrors going to bed too as not enough stimulation and too much screen time.

Had holidays booked and now uncertain they will go ahead.

I can’t keep working like this. I’d love to be furloughed and spend time with the children but it’s not an option.

Your post at 10 past midnight was dead on wonderstuff.

I have been doing some weekend work porridgeoat but I can't go into work to that bit of my job at weekends because it's closed and DH (who needs to be in work more than me) also has the same issue. I also need colleague input for some things and since they (rightly so) aren't working weekends, it's not much use. Also doing shifts with your partner, working evenings, working weekends is a short term solution. Doing it long term means parents won't get down time and is unsustainable.

Can either of you change to work the weekend? So the other can do childcare? Can your DH start/finish either earlier or later to provide childcare

Wtf do you think people are doing already? But it turns out that it's not sustainable to spend 6 months from April to September with two people relentlessly working, looking after young children, homeschooling, older children, cooking and doing housework from at least 6am until 10 or 11 every single day of week, with maybe a few hours of time off on the weekend. Even more impossible for a single parent.

Wtf do you think people are doing already? But it turns out that it's not sustainable to spend 6 months from April to September with two people relentlessly working

Yup. I was ok for the first few weeks flicking from work for childcare when DH got home and on his days off. But I’m burnt out now. DS has been getting up at 430am. When DH gets in at 5pm I’ve been up 12 hours. To then sit at my laptop when I’ve had my toddler tugging on my trouser legs all day is just too much.

I started with the whole weekend working thing. Getting up at 5. Cramming as many hours as I could. Within weeks I was just depressed, anxious and on the verge of getting signed off.

Turns out as a family we need some time when someone isn’t frantically working just to eat and relax and do things as a family. For a month or so it is do-able - for longer? No way.

I was just depressed, anxious and on the verge of getting signed off.

Exactly. It’s not a sustainable pace. I feel like I have two options now, resign or get signed off.

We do the tag-teaming thing but a lot of our work still happens during the day and things need to be responded to urgently, conference calls overlap and so on.

So even trying to stagger it as much as we can we still have times when we’re both working while trying to keep an eye on the children, including one toddler who wants to climb everything.

I have no complaints about DD1s school at all. She’s only primary 1 right enough. Her teacher is wonderful.

They had SeeSaw. She sets a grid every Monday morning (it’s always up by 7am) of what they would like us to cover that week. A new reading book is uploaded. There are various SeeSaw activities to complete. A few short video lessons that the teacher has recorded from home, covering some topics. DD loves those. The rest is up to us how we teach them (eg giving suns, getting them to write sentences etc) and we then photograph it and upload it to seesaw. The teache comments on EVERYTHING. Sometimes in writing but usually by voice recording. Loads of encouragement, or wee ways we can improve etc. It’s as good as she can do just now. I love her passion for it.

We don’t get through as much as we would like (DD is getting lazier about it as time goes on, which doesn’t help) but the school seems to be falling over itself to say there is absolutely no pressure for any of it. Which is great although I do wonder how they’ll ensure that no one is left behind when schools do reopen.

There's another thread where someone's asking how many hours they think someone should be able to achieve under these circumstances, and the answers make me want to weep because they're so robotically timetabled, without an element of "oh hey maybe humans can't just work relentlessly – including childcare because childcare IS work – for 18 hours a day."

Examples are: work 2-3 hours before the kids get up in the morning, have breakfast and play and homeschool, work 1-2 hours over lunch, do activities all afternoon, 1-2 hours during their tea, 2-3 hours after they're in bed, you should manage 50 hours a week this way and have weekends off! Yeah maybe if your children don't need help wiping their bums and never fall over and don't throw food and accept the first snack offered and go off for naps themselves and just LOVE homework, especially solo, etc.

Someone pointed out that there's also cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc, to do and, without irony, was told "you don't need to do that during work hours though". You do when work hours have now stretched from 5am to midnight, with no lunch break.

Something has to give soon and in all likelihood that something will be "women's careers". I want to find a bat and drop-kick it into the fucking sun.

@burritofan that’s ridiculous. And what isn’t mentioned in that as well is meetings. I am constantly booked in for many meetings during the working day. I try and schedule as many for lunchtime but my colleagues without children don’t want to work over their lunch break, and then it means my own lunch break is a few minutes long!

I have to say though this isn’t just about women. My husband is suffering in his job just as much and doing his hardest to help not let my career stall as I am constantly losing out on opportunities against my full time childless (female) colleagues. His own career is suffering because of the childcare we are trying to juggle between us alongside trying to keep both of our jobs going.

I have to say though this isn’t just about women. My husband is suffering in his job just as much and doing his hardest to help not let my career stall as I am constantly losing out on opportunities against my full time childless (female) colleagues. His own career is suffering because of the childcare we are trying to juggle between us alongside trying to keep both of our jobs going

Yes. This is my experience too. We are splitting it all 50/50 and working around each other’s calls and commitments. Or trying our best to do so anyway.