Spending time with your own children

[Lizay27]

Today I told my three year old that I'd be returning to work shortly and my heart broke when he said "I guess I won't see mummy any more" 💔

It made me feel like I invest more or my life into my students than my home. But there's just always a never ending list of to dos as a teacher, especially with covid! It just made me feel quite upset really.

How do other teachers manage their time with their own children as teachers?

One of my main targets is to give my own kids my total mind after work. Usually I'm so bombarded that when they talk to me my mind's so full that am not really "listening". It's like my mind is in an unstoppable overdrive mode that will not switch off and this kills me!

first of all, please remember that kids minds work in odd ways and he probably doesn't mean much by it. When my son was that age, he used to go back to nursery and he would come home, put on a really sad face and tell me hadn't played with anyone I asked the nursery staff who were most confused because he played with loads of kids

It is hard in term time as everything is a million miles an hour!

I always make sure I leave school by 4.30pm/5pm so that I am home for dinner. I always do shower, stories and bed. I do any school reading/spelling too. I make sure I leave on time to watch his swimming lesson each week unless I have parents eve. It does mean I work later in the evening but it's worth it to me to have that time with my son.

I also make sure we do something at the weekend - doesn't have to be fancy but we may go swimming or walk to the next village and go to the park and our favourite cafe. Again, it may mean I do work later in the evening but at least I have time with DS.

I do the food shop straight after school on Fridays to avoid having to do it at weekend.

Thank you for your words of support! I usually am home by 4 and then back on the laptop at 730 when kids are in bed but this year is going to be tougher I think as I will have to spend quite a bit of time working with my daughter who starts GCSE whilst also helping my other child who has learning difficulties so therefore trying to have time for my work, support them and play with them / spend time with them is really a challenge !

It’s hard, isn’t it? I would remind you loads of kids have no support whatsoever for GCSE and do brilliantly. I repeated ‘this is your future, I already have my GCSEs’ continually from the start of year 10. I bought revision guides from the start of year 10 and I outsourced maths to a tutor when it was clear passing was going to be borderline. You may find the right, specialist tutor for your child with learning difficulties will get further than you ever could whilst taking some of the pressure off your time. It doesn’t have to be you that does everything.

I also think that accepting that sometimes, other people’s children were going to come first but that I was always going to get the best part of 13 weeks a year with my child really helped with the term time guilt. And of course, most children have parents who work and who sometimes make that work a priority because that’s the way it has to be. Teachers are not unique in that respect even if the term time pressure is misunderstood by Joe public.