How do you work full time when the children start school?

[mummyclare]

It's a year off for us but I've been panicking for some time. We have had luxury of workplace nursery so far. I am going to try to reduce my hours - but that's only going to help with some drop-offs and pick ups and will do nothing for hols. Also local playscheme takes from 5. So what are you meant to do when they're still 4?

Help please. All ideas warmly welcomed.

dp and i both went down to 4 days when ds1 was born. hope that spreading hours out, alternating drop-offs/ pick-ups, using breakfast/ after-school club a bit, working from home a bit and swapping with friends will cover it when he goes to school.

we will be like harriet in green wing with her massive chart... or miaou with her motherboard

It's a proper embuggerance isn't it Compo?

Agree with taking each holiday at a time.

ATM we have half term covered - dh will take two days off and I will take one day (the other two days I'm off anyway)

Christmas we are in the process of sorting, unfortunately dh and I both work in an industry that is exeptionally busy over Christmas, I only get the bank holidays off and dh might be able to take a couple more days above the bank holidays. So someone (as yet not arranged but either my Mum or the IL's) will come and spend Christmas with us and look after dd whilst we are at work.

We are lucky with grandparenal availablilty especially when you consider that they aren't local. My Mum is a TA so only works term time and the IL's are retiring at Christmas so will be more-or-less permanently available.

Btw has the OP come across the policy of gradual starts to reception. In some ways I think it is quite a good policy as it immediately highlights to parents what exactly is going to happen to them for the next 14 years or so.

We have switched from nursery to CM this year with the hope that when dd goes to school next year CM will continue, including holidays. I'm hoping I can pick-up one, preferably 2 days/week but not sure if I can get the hours to suit that. Dh travels irregularly and can't be factored in at all, and no other family.

Getting the CM in place this year will hopefully be easier than trying to start that routine and school at the same time (yes they do book up months in advance, but places tend to come free at around Sep so you cuold try and book ahead). My biggest ear is losing my CM!!

LOL ladymuck. Have recently been scraping my jaw off the floor when hearing about graduated starts. The school we're hoping to get her into (fingers crossed) does two weeks of mornings only - as she's first grandchild on both sides I'm hoping a bit of novelty factor might entice a grandparent to help.

Tigerfeet - the school we want her in also has shared afterschool care with other schools and I feel the same way about the bigger kids there being a bit off putting. TBH I hadn't thought about childminders and I prefer that idea to an aupair. We're lucky enough to have space for one but I'm not keen on idea -YET!

Some of our local schools have graduated starts for the entire first term. You'll be getting off lightly. And having grandparents who can help - you'll be one of the lucky ones.

Have to say that it was one of the unexpected things about life at the school gate - I know an awful lot of my friends' parents now.

biggest 'fear' even ...

Ah, Kew, the innocence with which you say that...

Ds's school's after-school club (run in conjunction with neighbouring school) do lots of lovely wholesome activities as well: fencing, ceramics, football, drama, art, the whole nine yards.

And will my delightful ds allow himself to be signed up for any of these activities? He will not. He likes to race around the playground with the rougher end of his friendship group playing games called '120 ways to commit suicide' or 'How to drop a nuclear bomb' (I shit you not). I'm guessing this involves climbing up onto perilously high surfaces and chucking yourself off them, but I don't really want to know, tbh.

And then there are all the times when you get a (small, easily-overlookable) slip home in the bookbag informing you that the after-school club will not operate on x date (usually no more than three days hence) because the school's boiler has broken/ there's a unison support staff strike/ the neighbouring school is having a parent-teacher evening/ our school has no staff to walk them over to the other site/ random other reason (delete as applicable).

And the phases where your child's lunchbox/water bottle/ school homework/musical instrument disappears and turn up mysteriously three days later stuffed down the toilet/behind the radiator /sodden in a corner of the playground and smelling strongly of urban fox (delete as ditto). None of these incidents will ever be fully explained because there is little or no overlap between school staff and the after-school club staff.

Aargh.

And the after-school club won't take reception or nursery kids anyway, so should you have one of those in tandem with an older child, the wheels will come off the whole arrangement very rapidly.

Double aaargh.

I want a live-in housekeeper/nanny/cleaner /driver with high educational standards, endless patience and deep love of my children who is prepared to work for a pittance and do whatever needs doing. Oh yes, that's me, in between earning the household income. Doh.

Bitter? Me?

i agree with everyone else that its a nightmare.

and remember even when you get something worked out you should still have a back up plan incase the first option is ill/ rushes to hospital etc.

I paid someone to do pick ups after school. But after being let down at 5 mins notice on a regular basis, people deciding they didn't want to do it anymore, moving out of the area, etc, I had no choice but to negotiate a 2.30pm finish at work.

Poor DS had 5 childminders in less than a year.

I heard of one school that did 2 terms of graduated starts and another that did half the class doing mornings and the other afternoons for an age AND THEN swapped them round. IMO- That's just sick.

How many kids have never had any institutional care before starting school?

Does anyone think graduated starts are a good thing or am I a cold, uncaring mother? (My eldest is outgoing and enthusiastic and perhaps I'd feel differently if she wasn't)

'graduated starts'

CM can only do the 'normal' school run. I haven't found out about ours yet - I'm almost afraid to as I really don't know what we can do about it.

lol Ladymuck at

"In some ways I think it is quite a good policy as it immediately highlights to parents what exactly is going to happen to them for the next 14 years or so."

So true!

lol at miou's motherboard too, I need one of those and I've only got 2 children.

God we were so lucky with the school start thing - she started on the Weds and that week and the following week were half days. Full time after that. I did have to take both weeks off work though as I have a bit of a commute and couldn't manage it with half days at school. BANG

lol frogs, I so agree. I open bookbags with trepidation.

graduated starts are the work of the devil. Either let them go to school and us go to work or bloody well don't, please.

Oh yes, and the notice of parent-teacher meetings handed out two days before the event with no choice of dates.

"Dear Mrs Frogs, an appointment has been made for you on Thursday 25th September at 4.15 to meet your child's teacher and discuss his progress. May I remind you how important it is to support your child's progress by attending these meetings."

Fine, you write my report for me then, attend my meetings and deal with my invoicing. Blugh.

And today, for an extra-special treat, I have to go for a Reception parents meeting at 2.15 () to sit for 50 minutes on an impossibly small chair while been informed at length about the schools phonics programme, and how to teach my 4yo (who can incidentally read pretty fluently already, as it happens) about SSSSammy SSSnake. And there's no point going in and saying, "Yes, I've taught three children to read already, I think I can probably cope with SSSammy and Biff and Chip without any further support, thank you", because they'll just mark me down as a lippy unsupportive pushy parent.

Aargh.

Reception meetings?

It's worse than I realised...

frogs, I have a meeting at school today from FIVE til seven. Thankfully (?) am working from home so can attend.

There are meetings about starting school, meetings once you've started, meetings about 11+, meetings about school trips...

What motivates the schools to be so inconsiderate?

Wait until you have 2 or more children at school. This morning I had to be at school at 6:55 (ds1 doing swimming practice) and 8:15 (ds2's usual start), and will pick up ds2 at 3 and ds1 at 4:15 (after music lesson). There is also a separate harvest assembly for each son, though thankfully parents aren't expected to attend!

In fairness I will just stick them both in after school club and pick up any time from 4:15 onwards. But there is still homework, and whilst ds1's homework would take me 10 minutes to do at most, it still takes home most of an hour.

my current pet peeve was an invitation to dd3s "french cafe" where the children would serve their mummy's using the french phrases they had learnt. all very sweet - but to be told on thursday that this was happening on monday at 3pm was not ideal. dd3 took it very well that she would have no customer because daddy was abroad and mummy had a meeting - but i felt dreadful about it. her best friend volunteered to share her au pair so she could have half a customer - which was a lovely gesture from her friend.

there is a relatively high contingent of SAHM at the school but that just makes it even more thoughtless to punish the children without a parent at home in this way.

for me it's not the scheduled problems of school holidays etc that cause the most pain - you can plan for those - but the thoughtless "lovely ideas" which emphasise the difference between the children with working parents and those without.

I am dooming DD2 to a lifetime of illiteracy because I simply cannot face the Reading Meeting.

Even Mr Inferior has conceded that my wish not to work full-time is perhaps saving what sanity remains in our geriatric parental brains.

Just wait until you have more than one child at school too - 1 is a piece of cake compared to that new experience
Drop kids off for precisely 8.30am - 8.40am, waste five minutes with teacher who wants to talk about something, queue in the office to get a form from the receptionist - already almost 9.00am as I walk out the school gates. Pick up DD2 at 1pm - late out so hang around for a while. Rush back up there 2 hours later to pick up DD1 - only to return alf an hour later when we realise she has forgotten her swim bag and needs her goggles for swim lesson half an hours drive away in opposite direction to the school...

We were so mind boggled by it all that (and for other reasons) gave up on the idea of tradition work altogether and both became self employed and work from home Bit extreme but then so is the nightmare of juggling different pick up times with school runs

And it doesn't stop at primary either. Dd2's secondary school had three evening meetings for parents in the first two weeks of Y7. And then they have additional meetings about foreign trips (usually involving queueing to hand in your child's passport/ehic card), parents evenings, Y9 option evenings (goody, can't wait).

Secondary schools do at least acknowledge that parents work by having most of their meetings in the evenings rather than during the working day. But then you get these fabbo little letters that say "We are taking your child on a geography trip to a sewage farm in the west midlands/history trip to a muddy dungeon in carlisle /french trip to Bayeux. Please ensure your daughter is at school by 7.10 am. We expect to be returning at 7.30pm, but this time may vary by an hour each way, due to the traffic situation."

These letters almost always coincide with dh's trips abroad, so that I have to get all three children into the car by 6am (always ensuring dd2 has the specified kit with her and is actually dressed in whatever the letter requires her to be dressed in -- it varies) and then repeat the process in the evening with two overtired primary age children, drive round the block for 20 mins to find a parking space on account of the fact that all the other Y9 parents are doing the same thing, and then sit in the car for 90 minutes because the coaches are late back because the traffic was a bit heavy on the M6.

[edvard munch emoticon]