grrrrr how do we get past this?

[strawberryblondebint]

Dh and I rarely argue. We are on the same page for most things. I am currently training to be a teacher and I'm on my first placement. In case it's relevant I am working in conjunction with this so earning a full time wage and being allowed time off per se to undertake placements. Dh has been self employed for a year. He buys and sells things and this involves him going to various auctions to obtain stock. He earns a few thousand more than me but not much although business is doing well.
We have a 4 year old who goes to a childminder and school nursery. Over the last few weeks various bugs have been going around the nursery. This has meant in the last 6 weeks or so our dd has had 4 bugs. Two were in the holidays so work wasn't affected. The last one she needed 2 days off childminder as she was sick from the Friday to the Sunday night. The Monday was a holiday so no probs but the Tuesday I had a meeting with my supporter teacher. Dh reluctantly missed an auction and covered that. Although there was an argument where he wanted me to miss my meeting.
Roll onto Monday night. Dd was sick once. Neither of us thought it was another bug. She seemed well and we put it down to too much sun. I have a fantastic childminder who I was honest with and she took her on the Tuesday and also sent her to nursery (I know I know but we really didn't think it was another bug) last night she was sick again. Loads and again this morning. Dh stayed home and I went to placement. He didn't have any auctions just stuff he can do from home. Dd is much better but obviously can't attend nursery due to the 48hr rule. We now know it clearly is a bug and she will have to stay home.
Dh is raging. He doesn't see why she can't go to nursery. He doesn't see why she can't go to the childminder. He also thinks that I am a selfish cow and should be taking a day off. This is despite me checking today that he would be OK for tomorrow as it is my first day teaching whole class. My placement is only 4 weeks. I simply can't be off. I thought he was delighted I was going to be a teacher and I thought he was supportive. I understand missing auctions is a problem but at the same time I have explained again and again that teachers don't get time off. It's simple.
It's the age old argument. Whose job is more important at this moment in time? I could end up having to repeat days. Letting a class down and generally making a bad impression. He has nothing on tomorrow that would be awful to miss. Yet we are going round in circles. Apparently I can't communicate. I over react. He thinks I'm changing the rules to punish him and absolving all responsibility from my sick child. He tells me he is one hundred percent behind me doing this yet is huffing and sulking. I spoke to my childminder and she will take her and now he's saying that he needs to think about that as it feels like we are fobbing off a sick child on her. I can't fucking win.
And this will come up again in the future. The whole point I thought about him being self employed was to be able to handle these emergencies. Yet looks like I will be punished in the future. As if I don't feel fucking shite about leaving a sick child. We have no family near.
I just can't see a resolution and am wondering why I am knocking my pan in to try and be a teacher if he is going to make me feel like shit every time my child is ill. Help

The guilt at being off is partially self-imposed

Self-imposed by professionals who understand their job.

Teachers get long holidays. They get to feel confident about taking all of that time off and make full use of the flexibility that offers.

But on school days they need to be at school. That'sounds the trade off. That's what is expected by your bosses, by your students, by their parents.

You have far fewer working days than other professions, but you show up for them.

Going to an auction so obviously comes far below a teacher training placement, that it'should hard to understand how anyone could argue otherwise.

IME single parent teachers put a lot of work into making sure they have good emergency childcare options.

I've never met a teacher or a teacher's boss who would it it acceptable to miss school so that someone could go on a glorified shopping expedition.

I do think that the OP's partner should take the day off but. 'Glorified shopping expedition' is below the belt- it's his job! It pays his bills!

He's self employed. That gives him extremely valuable flexibility.

I wish people would stop banging on about self employment=flexibility.
It may well be true in this case, I don't know,but just because you are self employed doesn't mean you can just chop and change and do what you want. A sudden change of plan such as a child being sick can have a negative impact on a self employed person just a someone who is employed.
Self employed people can still have deadlines, people that they need to be reliable to, meetings with several other agencies, work that has to be carried out, orders that have to be fulfilled otherwise there are financial penalties etc etc. I'm not saying that all self employed people have a rigid schedule but not all can just drop everything, just like it is hard for the OP to drop everything.

So please stop with self employed flexibility bullshit.

Teaching is seen as family friendly because of the holidays but in many ways it's not.

Op, also make sure your dh is on board to look after dc when you are at parents' evenings, open evenings, after-school meetings, revision weekends, school trips, training courses, coursework moderation, sometimes returning home at 8 or 9 at night.

The single parent teachers I know who manage to make it work have supportive and flexible ex-partners (not me) or grandparents for childcare. It's hard.

So please stop with self employed flexibility bullshit.

I own my own business after years as a sole traders.

I know exactly how flexible I can be in comparison with someone who has pretty much ZERO flexibility when it comes to the hours you must be at work..

The answer is - a lot.

We are talking about someone who wants to go to an AUCTION.

Where he might buy things at an as yet unknown price that he might sell on at an as yet unknown profit.

This is not anecessary important client meeting, or a scheduled presentation or day giving training. It's not a job he will get paid for only if he shows up.

It's the very definition of the type of day you pretty much have to be flexible on if you are self employed and have children.

There will be times when it will be very tricky having a wife in such an inflexible job while he tries to launch his business.

But an auction is not one of them.

It is very worrying that he is stopping about missing an auction when his (so-called) partner has a placement day she basically can't miss.

DH does what your DH does, and I am the greater earning partner by a ratio of roughly 1:4. I can't quite map my experience onto yours because I also work in the evenings, so was always at home to deal with sick days. But what prompted me to post is the issue of the instability of his earnings. I realise you say business is good for him, and he may well deal in something more lucrative than my DH. But I know how absolutely entrenched the fear is in my DH that every deal will be his last. This isn't a complete response to your situation, but it is an angle you need to consider. When the dust has settled a bit, you can probably discuss it more rationally, but you do need to consider hard issues and soft issues. There are considerable cash flow problems in running the type of business that your DH runs - my DH constantly runs out of money, which means that he can't buy stock, which puts him out of business overnight. That sits very badly indeed beside all this mythical flexibility that other posters have banged on about. My DH does what he does because he just isn't employable at anything else, and believe me he's tried. So threaten this, and you threaten his entire ability to earn. Trading is affected by seasonality. If he misses the times in the year when people buy what he sells, he can go for months on end without selling anything. None of this is answering your problem, but if I were in your shoes, knowing what i know now, I'd try to make sure that I really do listen to his point of view (always assuming, of course, that he is able to express it articulately, because if he just huffs and puffs and sulks, you are not going to be able to reach a resolution no matter how much you might want to!).
Good luck, OP. It's a tricky situation.

His flexibility ultimately exists in the fact that even if his business goes under, his family won't because his wife has a job.

Putting her job at risk when she is only at the training stage is absolutely insane.

doinitfine you and an other talked as if all self employed people have flexibility. I said this case may or may not. I was commenting on the fact self employed people can have just as many commitments as employed.

DH has had two businesses. His first one gave him a lot of flexibility where if the children became sick he would finish work to be with them while I went to work and then go to the unit to fulfill his order even if it meant working through the night. He can't drop everything in his current work.
My point is the same don't assume self employed people can drop everything.

I agree that on the info given the OP's DH is an arse over this.

DoinItFine Yup, sorry, I wasn't terribly clear, I was more whiffling on about generally coming to some kind of accommodation around these issues in the longer term rather than today's events, because the OP talked about both today's clash and how they're going to resolve it in future. While she's training, it's really tricky. I do want to be sympathetic to her DH because I think it's so "easy" to say that OBVIOUSLY DH should be the one to take time off (and somehow it's all coming across to me like he has a pin money job, and then that starts to make me feel as though we're doing to him what we've tried to stop men doing to us for years). Sorry, I'm in a really inarticulate mood this morning!! I'm expressing myself really badly! But essentially I'm throwing out random thoughts associated with OP's post, rather than banging my gavel, IYSWIM.

I guess I think that while children are small a self-employed parent married to a teacher pulling in barely more than a teacher's starting salary pretty much has to be working for pin money.

I don't see any reason to protect men from the reality of being the one with the less important or lower paying job.

There are lots of advantages to having a teacher as a spouse, but one of the biggest disadvantages is that you can't rely on them to be able to take time off during term time.

So you either earn enough to pay a nanny, you figure something out with friends and family, or you do it yourself.

I don't see any reason to protect men from the reality of being the one with the less important or lower paying job. OK, I see how you can interpret my post that way, but my point is that I don't see any reason to belittle either partner because they have the less important or lower paying job. I would be saying exactly the same thing to a man married to a woman who trades goods bought at auction. If both parties feel the need to be able to contribute financially, then there will be problems if one person tramples the other based on their limited earning capacity. I think the other thing I'm trying to say is, even if the DH does need to accept an unpalatable situation for the time being, then at least the OP can go into discussions with him with a bit of understanding as to how he feels about it, because just going in with pure financial logic is probably not going to help, IYSWIM.

Sorry, it may have sounded like I was disagreeing with you more vociferously than I intended.

You raise a good point, I just think the reality of the importance of one job over another has to be recognised, however unpalatable.

I think if your insecure earnings are less crucial to the family's solvency, then that gives a lot of types of flexibility that can be very useful when starting a business - you can take a lot more risks being the main one.

Your flexibility comes from your partner's higher/more steady earnings, so you need to build that into how you structure your business and organise your time.

He needs to understand that his wife will NEVER be able to take time off school so that he can make an auction.

Then he needs to use his business brain to figure out how to work around that. There are ways if he is interested in finding them.

No, I got what you meant! And I really noted your point about the advantages of being married to a teacher, but having to take the downside on board that she must work during term-time. Hopefully, if the OP can get him in a creative frame of mind, he'll be able to figure out a way of having the best of all possible worlds, as you say.

Ironically, I'm now off to go to an auction with my DH!

In OP's scenario her future job is clearly the priority as she will soon earn more than her DH.

He needs to take the hit, and he needs to balance that hit (missing the odd auction therefore reducing that month's earning potential slightly) against the long term good of the family.

Price up school holiday care OP and show him how much money the family will save over the next 10 years because you will be home in the holidays.

It will put the odd sick day into perspective.

Thanks again for all the comments. To clarify I am earning basic wage £18k whilst I am studying. I am earning even when I am on placement as my employer is sponsoring me. (My normal job is with the local council) DH is by no means only earning pin money. He is probably earning about 20k maybe a bit more maybe a bit less.
However when I qualify and start working (I am guaranteed at least 3 years work as I am in a certain area that desperately needs teachers) my salary will of course increase very quickly. Plus my daughter starts school and I can will obviously save loads of money on holiday childcare. We will probably only have to pay after school club fees.
I know that this means a year of knocking my pan in. Writing essays teaching placements and studying. I cannot do this if he won't pick up the slack.
If he is as supportive as he claims to be then he should do this no problem. You are right. We need to have "the talk". And we will. So thanks for giving me the rational reasons so that I can properly argue my case. Otherwise our marriage is pretty good. This is non negotiable. Either he wants me to be a teacher and he takes the hit on sickness days or I return to my boring crappy clerical type job and earn circa feck all and we don't improve our lifestyle. He will then be skint with a miserable wife.
Wish me luck

OP what a horrible situation, I just hope little one doesn't pick up on the situation and feel that there is no one to care for her when she's poorly , no matter what a mother does she always carries a burden of guilt, I feel for you being in this situation.

I think 100% he should be taking on the sick days while you qualify and get to where you want to be.

What will you do in the future when little one may get ill again?

"Self-imposed by professionals who understand their job.

Teachers get long holidays. They get to feel confident about taking all of that time off and make full use of the flexibility that offers.

But on school days they need to be at school. That'sounds the trade off. That's what is expected by your bosses, by your students, by their parents."

Stuff parents expectations. If need to get an emergency doctors appointment and the only one is midday the following day...I'm going to take it.
If I have a family emergency...I'm not coming in to school.
As a teacher I will not become a martyr to my profession and sacrifice my family in order to serve others.
Emergencies and illness generally don't hang around for my holidays to start.
What you are looking for is a robot, deary.
OP - you need to fin a balance. How much has he already lost missing the previous auction? Can you cope without his salary for a bit?