Working with young kids

[SkyBlue1987]

Can you tell me about your morning routines with young kids and how it fits in with your work etc? I don’t generally have a set start time as my work is flexible but am going to be involved in some training over the next few weeks which requires
me to be at a place 50 mins away by 8.30am. My husband travels a lot for work so is not always around to help out. The earliest my kids can be dropped of is 7.30am but they are in two separate locations 10-20 mins apart so I mean if everything falls into place I’d be there right on 8.30am but it’s cutting it fine and getting there earlier is logistically impossible unless I guess I find a babysitter, I’m unsure how easy or reliable that would be. I don’t think parents should get special privileges at work I’m just feeling like the standard workplace hours are so set up against parents and there’s no good reason why things need to start so early or finish late when people cannot usually focus well for a whole day anyway. Anyway keen for thoughts or how I should approach this with my work.

Could you access the training via Teams? If not any friends or family who could help short term?

No unfortunately it’s in person training. We have tons of family around (not that close to our house though) but they all work as well, or have their own kids to get to other schools (not the ones my kids are at) and grandparents are not retired yet.

After your training how many days will you work and what hours?

Are DC nursery age?

Can you ask any school or nursery friends to temporarily help out, and return the favour with eg half term play dates?

So you drop off one kid at 730, drive 10-20 minutes to drop off the other child and then have a 50 minute journey and need to be there for 830 (as in parked, in the building)? Definitely need to ask someone if they can take one child for you, if not both!

Or are there any local childminders who do school/nursery drop offs that you could engage for a few weeks?

Otherwise I think you're just going to need to be honest with work that you may be late if there's traffic etc. All the companies I've worked for have been very understanding with working parents. I appreciate you don't want special treatment, but I can't see how you can manage it without help and without being late.

In terms of generally handling working mornings with young kids...Have everything ready the night before, including as much as possible in the car ready to go. Shoes/socks out by the door, lunches packed, table set for breakfast... Some friends have toothbrushes downstairs for example. Other friends get their kids dressed for school instead of pjs, that's a step too far for me 🤣 but I have found giving my daughter a silk pillowcase means I put her hair in braids on a Monday and they can stay like that until we have swimming later in the week without getting frizzy. Gets a wash and refresh after swimming then back up till the next sporty day. Saves us a few minutes each morning.

Genuinely anything you can think of that would save time of a morning, do it.

It’s so difficult to manage generally - but I particularly loathe people planning work things from 830. It is just impossible to do a commute and drop kids off at a reasonable time.

I always push back on an 830 with a very explicit - ‘I cannot drop my children off and get here at that time, so will require finding alternative childcare. Is it critical we start at 830?’

Almost universally, it is not, and it is moved to 9.

I think unless you’re doing these routines, people don’t realise how challenging it is.

Local WhatsApp or similar group to find a local person who wants to earn some extra cash.

I got up at 6, showered, housework etc then got children up and to nursery when it opened at 730, I found it helped to get myself ready before they got up.

So in this case, Dh would be home and do the school run, assuming we had enough advance notice to plan that around any travel he needed to do.

On the rare instances when we both needed to be somewhere and neither could be rearranged. We have had family do the drop off. We don’t generally have family help for anything, but I can think of a couple times when a grandparent did it.

Alternatively, I’ve had friends of my dc who have been dropped to ours at 7am before and then I did the school run. The tricky thing is you will need to drop to two different friends going to two different schools, but if you could do that between 7-7:30, you could get there and be ready to begin by 8:30. Offer to have their dc for a day in half term or similar if they need help too.