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.

Did someone mutter volunteering for PTA etc??!!!
We made the mistake of helping out with the PTA for a year. Nightmare. Only about 3 families bothered to do anything while all the others kept their heads down or criticised the efforts we did manage to do - undersupported with not much time of our own trying to do the best we could with zero enthusiam from elsewhere. Also, amazing how many parents, through guilt possibly, would be really critical or sarcastic of anything we did try to organise in the way of fundraisers. Vocally moaning about raffle tickets or book sale when all they have to do is to buy a 10p book not spend half a day printing and making posters, talking to the school, writing and printing letters home, collecting books, setting up and running the damn thing. Aaaaagh - never ever ever again will I volunteer on the PTA
Totally understand now why others kept their heads down. Such a shame but the truth is that unless the majority will chip in and back you up, while parents are so stressed out and time limited, volunteering is not that straightforward.

Just lurking with interest really and I'm in the same position as the OP (DS starts school in a year). I work from home sometimes and we're considering a combination of more home working for me, DP going part-time, one of the grannies staying over 1-night per week.

My other strategy is to get pregnant and coincide maternity leave with DS starting school. Not exactly a sustainable plan but we may just go for it.

Yes, yes, yes.
Oh how I long for the simplicity of the preschool days...
Hardest year of my life was when ds1 started at school nursery. Its not just the hours and the holidays, its the expectations that there is someone around at all times of day to attend PTA meetings, come to school reading meetings, bake cakes, help with reading, etc etc. Your nose is rubbed in the guilt in a way it just isn't when you are dropping preschoolers off at a nursery where everyone else works too.
But after a year or so I have realised that I have to let a lot of it go. And also that there is no way that either dh or I are going to be returning to fulltime work anytime soon. Hell, I even started employing a nanny...

It's when you've got one at nursery 8 til 6 (oh bliss it was...) and one at school 9 to 3. So on two days a week you leave at the crack of dawn to do the nursery drop off then battle the traffic to do the school drop off, then do the same bu in reverse. On the other days you work when older one is at school and littley is at playgroup being picked up by childminder (which you feel very guilty about becuase the older one never had a chilminder). You sit in a very boring meeting at work and suddenly have this overwhelming panic cos you've got the day of the week wrong and the littley isn';t being picked up by the childminder at all today.....

At least when they all at school they;re in the same place and if you fuck up and are late they're all waiting around together lol.

But the whole thing is a nightmare. I car share with two other families to do the morning drop off, so only do this twice a week now, and child share with another mum after school, plus dh can work flexibly. All of which works fine until the family your kids are supposed to be going to school with, or being picked up with have sick children themselves.....

lol at norma's excel sheet. that will be us, dp is obsessed with excel.

i'm finding it strangely reassuring reading this thread. i'm off on mat leave atm and ds1 has just started nursery school 2 mornings. have been waking up in a sweat at thought of how it will be when he's there full time and we are both working. i think i always assumed that all the other parents were either sahm/ds or had marvellous carrie bradshaw-style work-for-half-an-hour-a-week-and-get-paid-oodles joblets. now i see that (almost) everyone else is fretting too and it is not just me being daft. i hope

where's anna8888 when we need her? i bet she has the solution...

I have honestly never been so grateful for being made to feel incredibly naive.

How many days off work would you need to take to cover all the other stuff that gets thrown at you in term time? ie the inset days and concerts , nativity etc to

a) attend them all
b) attend enough that your kid doesn't resent you working?

I think there's usually 2 or 3 inset days. Other things, it depends on the school. One thing that got me irrationally irate in the first term was learning about all the various christmas activities dripfeed...so I cleared my diary and put in the special christmas lunch, only to discover a week or two later that there was a special assembly that week too...oh yes and then the carols on the last day of term followed by taking the children straight home at about 11am...
If I'd received advance notice about everything, I could have sorted out what the priorities were and arranged things accordingly!

But of course it also depends on your job. It is relatively easy for me in that I am in charge of my own diary, I work quite near school so can nip out for a couple of hours without having to book time off etc.
You also have to be quite firm with your oh too, make sure you share it.

This is a really interesting (albeit slightly disheartening) thread. My DS is 18m and I have been thinking of going freelance in the next few years but part of me has thought that I should have done that when he was little, rather than waiting until he was about to start school when he won't 'need' me as much. I hadn't considered so many of these things so this has really made my mind up that it's the right thing to aim for.

It's not just booking the time off, tbh, clare. It's the fact that however much time you spend entering dates into your organised mum calendar and colour-coding them with highlighter pens, you can guarantee that nearly every week there will be bloody something that cocks it all up, with consequences ranging from the mildly inconvenient (having to double back to the school to drop off forgotten music kit or pickup after a school club) to the catastrophic (child 3 wakes up at 3.3am vomiting on a morning where you have to make a client presentation at 10am, your dh has a 9am meeting in Bristol and you had already squared the circle by arranging to nip up to the school at 1.30pm to pick up child 1 and take her to a music exam at some inconvenient location (a church hall in a godforsaken distant suburb, generally) which would enable you to return to the school in time to pickup child 2 at 3.30pm.

All it takes is one vomiting child, one unexpected change of meetings, or one car breakdown somewhere in your chain of childcare arrangements for the whole thing to go very badly wrong.

It is a nightmare. I work flexibly from home, so it just about flies most of the time. If you have both have full-time, high-powered jobs that require serious commitment, then you need cast-iron, gold-plated childcare. Schools are not it.

Oh yes the 6 inset days... or if you're our school one of the inset days is broken into three and school finishes two hours early for 3 days....

There's parent's evenings (evenings is a misnomer - they're often afternoons), Harvest festival, 2 class assemblies each term per child, the carol concert, at least one chistmas play, the easter service, the end of year play, the meetings about school trips/moving to the next year/meet the teacher/come and see what little Johnny's been doing all year-afternoon, oh and once they're a bit older there's the secondary school visits/open days/taster days/information days etc etc.

Mummyclare - sorry to make you feel naive, but glad if it helps prepare!

I think as someone said, try very hard NOT to have to take whole days off for things which might only be an hour long! If you can, just take the odd hour and come in late/ make it up later/ work from home etc. You will really need your holiday days for all the other stuff.

One thing that I used to find hard at first was that because I didn't have time /wasn't there to spend chatting to the other mums at the school gate, I didn't get to know them and coulodn't ask them to help out in a crisis. So that's why I tried really hard to go to some of the parent social events. Sometimes you have to fight your corner though - in my DS1's reception class the class rep only organised coffee mornings (which I couldn't go to, along with the other 50% of mums who worked) so I organised a pizza night one evening which all the others (and some of the SAHMs) came to.

And odn't forget when you're working at home right in the middle of that really complicated report you need to get your head around THAT will the time when dc's attempt to murder each other. Once you'ver sorted that with bribery/tv/games console/fruitshoots and geggs sausage rolls your boss will phone and the arguing will immediately start again

you're all scaring me

DD starts school in Jan(i posted at the beginingof the thread) These bloomin graduated starts are very irritating. I can't begin to plan until November as that's when we have a parents evening to discuss the entry etc.

I want to be a SAHM, if only we could afford it

As an example, the last couple of weeks of the summer term consisted of

2 x sports days
2 x end of term concerts
2 x day trips
2 x meet the new teacher

etc etc.

Oh, and you learn to improvise/lie very fluently:

"Sorry I'm just in the middle of a meeting" =

I'm sitting in a drafty church hall with a group of other mums and grumpy toddlers waiting for my 6yo ballet class to finish/ chasing around a school playground trying to round up my children and a couple of someone else's because the person who was meant to be picking up said children and taking them swimming has phoned up to say she's got flu/ sitting in the dr's waiting room with a feverish 4yo plastered across my lap

"I've done all the preliminary work, it's just waiting for the finishing touches" =

I haven't even opened the envelope yet, I've been too damn busy making a pirate ship birthday cake and going round Woolworths buying party bag fillers.

etc etc.

but then again, lying is a useful transferable life skill.

On the upside, it is possible to train even very young children to shut up in mid-sentence when they see you with a phone in one hand and making threatening finger-across-the-throat gestures with the other hand.

The "I'm in a meeting" phone call is so much less plausible when your client can hear urgent wails of 'I need a wee. I need a WEE. I NEED A WEE!!!' in the background.

I haven't got time to read all of the thread but the general theme echoes all of the things that I felt (suffered?) over the past number of years. This year, with ds' aged 7 and 10, I finally threw in the towel and gave up work - Xenia would not be pleased! Giving up did coincide with my job moving into London which involved a commute rather than 10 mins in the car in the morning so it was semi-forced on me but I think I was reaching the end of my tether anyway with the incredible juggling act involved. Luckily, we can afford for me not to work and although I miss my old job and colleagues hugely and adult interaction in general, I felt it was telling that for the first time ever I felt sad when the summer holidays were over this year, rather than exhaling in relief at not having to drag reluctant children out of bed for sports camp, calling in favours from parents/in-laws/casual acquaintances, hiding afore-mentioned children in the boardroom at work for an afternoon etc.

I cannot believe that in the year 2008 this is what working parents have to put up with! I have started to panic already and my DCs will only start school in 2012.

I tell people a lot, in my most efficient way, that 'I'll be at my desk today till - let me check - yes, around 3.15'...

I don't actually mind making cakes (probably because I don't either have a Proper Job), though. I like cake.

And with that, my phone just rang and it's the school saying ds isn't well. So I've just collected him, called dh to let him know, called nanny to let her know just to collect dd this afternoon and prepared my boss for the fact that I might need to work frrom home again tomorrow if he's still ill.

DD2 once managed to get school to phone me in a meeting because she was COLD.

How much of the problem is teachers lack of insight? Surely many of them are working parents too?

Totally agree about children being quiet and lying Frogs, mine know if the phone rings and I say "It's my boss" they MUST be quiet on pain of death. And this is when there is someone else here looking after them but I think that children in the background will make it sound like I don't have childcare arranged (when I do).

juliax3 this is the stuff the politicians don't tell you when they encourage mothers to "go back to work"