Does your other half take the kids at the weekend

[OhPuddleducks]

This is a lovely new board!

Does your other-working-half relieve you of the kids a bit at he weekend? My DP is lovely and helpful but in a "let's do it all together" kind of way, rather than whisking the kids out the house and leaving me in peace for a bit. I can never work out if I'm expecting too much from him.

My partner (I can't bring myself to use the dp abbreviation) sounds like yours. He doesn't really understand why I don't want to do everything together as family all weekend. I need to have a little break away from the kids for my sanity. I try to tell him its like his colleagues coming home and spending all weekend with him.

He rarely takes them both out together for long, as they need quite a bit of 1:1. We tend to go our separate ways on a saturday, though - me with DS1 and him with DS2, because that provides the best break for us all, possible, not having the boys constantly bickering.

Yes, he takes them both out swimming and to visit friends on Saturday for about 3-4 hours, then to the park on Sunday for a couple of hours, and sometimes round to BIL/SIL in the afternoon. We tend to alternate lie ins (getting up around 9 instead of 6.30).

We also do stuff together but that is usually Saturday afternoon/evening and Sunday evening.

I think DH realises that I need time to myself for my sanity's sake!

What we did sounds a bit regimented, but I think it works well. We divided each weekend day into 3 chunks- morning, afternoon and evening. We were each entitled to 2 chunks per weekend completely child free- so go out Saturday evening, lie in on Sunday, for example. The remaining two chunks were family time. It took a bit of negotiation, but it was great- we both knew we would get free time.

I get Saturday mornings to myself to catch up on house work. It tends to pile up during the week. Depends very much on work load though, my wife's a high school science teacher so has to do a lot of work at home. If she can't take them out she usually arranges for the in laws to though. Phew!

You need to tell him - I'm going out to the Morris dancing fair, you're on with the kids/ I need to catch up on GBBO, can you take the kids out?

We both work, our default is spending the weekends as a family but if one of us needs a break, we just ask.

Bertrand's idea is a good one.

my DH is a sahp and I work outside the home full time. I usually take our DD out both weekend days although we try and have a family day together if possible. il This means I never get time off which is a big source of resentment. I appreciate my DH needs some child free time (but he gets almost three shouts a day of it while.she's at pre school).

The hours not three shouts