Have you found WOH harder since your children started school?

[bossykate]

i have for a variety of reasons:

• much harder to fit the school day/holidays when both parents work
• childcare is hard to find
• the needs of the school are at once more urgent and less negotiable
• i don't want paid help doing ds's homework with him
• appts to see the class teacher are at stupid non-negotiable times
• harder to be involved with the life of the school if you work
• children's needs become more complex as they get older - starting school is such an important life event for them

oh and probably a few other things i've forgotten to mention.

i'm just wondering

(1) how does everyone else feel?
(2) why does it appear to be the received wisdom that it is somehow easier to get a job/be employed after the children have gone to school?

Sorry - your nickname made me think you were in NI!

I was interested to read all of this. I am at the moment a SAHM with a 3 1/2 and 2 year old. Next Sept the 3 1/2 year old will start school full time. I would like to go back to work when the youngest is at school but will just have to jump at the right job, probably in a school. I just dont think how I could do any other job. We have no family close, DH works long hours, so wont be around to do school runs and I'm not happy with a child minder/nanny/friend/whoever picking DD up from school and I want them to come home straight from School. Reading this, I dont have much of a decision to make do I. I would just like a job that would fit in with holidays/sickness/hours - probably impossible.

couldnt think of a nick name that was printable & was drinking a bottle of irish water..........

schools should be open 4 days a week 8.45 - 5.15 we could work 9 - 5 spend 3 days with the little darlings everyone happy bunnies!

I'm teetering with trepidation atm.
DS starts on Thursday, and we will manage because DP is cutting his hours so that he can pick DS up 3 days a week, and I will do flexi (I work lots of evenings) and pick him up 2 days.
We are very lucky in having this degree of flexibility. Oh, and I am taking a sabbatical cunningly designed to co-incide with the summer hols this year, because we have no idea how we are going to cover hols, yet!
And I am terrified at the thought of emergency demands to make pheasants or working models of nodding donkey oil wells without the time to get to a craft shop or gather enough toilet rolls tubes.

Ballygowan - have you thought of taking on Ruth Kelly's job?

could be fun i suppose. i like a challenge!

Hi bk. I am a sole voice of dissention, I think, as for me it's been a lot easier since the boys started school. I guess it depends a lot on what sort of provision is available in your area and what your home/work circumstances are like. Their onsite after school club is good and is open later than their nursery was as well as being a LOT cheaper. It's also so popular that many children of non-working parents attend. I feel the boys are more able to let me know how things are going, form good relationships with other adults and genuinely enjoy being with their friends, so I worry a lot less about them feeling miserable and not being able to sort it out. I've found that being firm with work/college/placements about what child related activities I find non negotiable has worked but I think this reflects a public sector attitude to some extent and think it would be much harder to do this in some other lines of work. As for other points, I must confess I was always horrified when my mother intermittently attempted to be involved in the life of my school, so haven't really gone there with that, other than trying to keep on good terms with their teachers which hasn't been too hard as they've all been more or less approachable. Oh, and I would certainly willingly hand over the supervision of their homework to almost anyone who offered- one of the true horrors of parenthood, imo!

i want to be a nursery school / early primary school teacher but with young girls, mortgage, dog etc i cant afford to leave my job to go to college to do this. Sounds really dumb but do you have to do this to be a classroom assistant!?

Hi batters. How is the new school going? Hope dd is having a good time. I need to change email addresses- found a lovely one from you at the bottom of my inbox and have been missing lots I think. Will reply from new address.

I haven't found it harder either but I think that's because
a) when ds first started I worked part time in a poxy job so no stress and I could do school pick up. Plus I only had one child then
b) Working hours are more child friendly in the provinces than in London so even when I've worked full time it's been reasonably easy to leave at 5pm, in fact, at 5.01 all the offices I've worked in, outside London I stress!, become completely empty, Marie Celeste style. Most disconcerting but I've got used to it now and rather like it! So although ds goes to after school club every day it's only a couple of hours (dh and I both work but atm dh picks him up and dd from nursery)
c) I hate school drop and pick up, I don't know why, I detest it, always have done.
d) Ditto homework, I'm with Scummy on that. Ds and I argue if I help him so dh does it.
e) We will have most school holidays covered by family this year which is a lot easier that trying to arrange formal care.
f) I took a day off to meet the class teacher and will come home early if there's a parents' evening.
g) I don't want to be involved with the school, see my rantings elsewhere on mn! But I appreciate that most people probably do. Ds is at rubbish school atm though and I may feel v differently when he's somewhere I like.

i do find it easier once they reach school age. probably because DP and i both have very flexible jobs, far more than most people, and our school has a lovely before and after school club. I think for me it's an emotional thing, it's easier to think of them being at school, where they would be whether we both worked or not, than in childcare, which was purely because we were both working. So there's 30 hours a week when they wouldn't be at home with us anyway.

not sure if that makes sense.

also, it's very nice not paying for all that childcare! that has to be a plus.

Also bk, in the provinces the distances involved are much, much shorter. For example dh can leave work at 5.30pm and collect ds at 5.40, it wouldn't happen in London. So I do tihnk location has a bearing.

I gave up full-time work when my eldest started school, which coincided with ds1 being born. From a financial pov it was becoming less worthwhile - full-time nursery for baby and before and after school care for dd would have taken up a lot of my take-home pay. Also, logistically it would have been difficult - dh was working 25 miles away and doing shifts so he couldn't drop everything if I got caught in traffic. Childminders mostly only worked between 8-6 which meant it would be difficult to squeeze in a full day at work if I had to commute any distance (which was likely as my office was being relocated.)

Like Elliott, it was a bit of a culture shock for me going from a day nursery where obviously all the mothers worked outside the home, to a school where no-one seemed to. However, I find that now my dd is in the Juniors, I as a sahm seem to be a minority - many of the mothers actually work part-time, during school hours only in lots of cases or at weekends.

My dilemma is that I would like to return to work when my youngest is at school but do school hours only and the only jobs where this might be possible don't seem to pay very well or would bore me to death. I'm wondering if it would be worth the stress it would cause the family unless the extra income is substantial.

Someone I know recently went back to work part-time after a break, to what in theory should be child-friendly hours and after one term she seems worn out from being pulled in different directions.

I agree that it is likely to work out better if both parents can take a fair share of the school runs, etc. but this generally requires at least one parent to work locally and often it is just not feasible for the parent(s) who commute a long distance.

You know, it's hit home hard that although we have it easier than our Grandmothers in many ways, with all our new technology and gadgets, I'm not sure that we have easier lives, iykwim. Sometimes the idea of spending my days walking to and from school, baking and housework seems infinitely preferable to the frantic rushing about my life seems to consist of.

I've found term-time easier purely because I work part-time, and I'm not rushing to do a 1 pm pick-up from nursery anymore. Hoildays are a different matter though, and have been an ongoing headache. I am really going to do what I've been meaning to for ages, and start working a bit more in term-time and "banking" hours for the holidays. I realise I'm lukcy to have that option. The thing is, ds is now 11 and it's not really getting any easier- there are going to be a few awkward years ahead, I can see, where he gets too old to want to go to any kind of holiday club but is too young to be left all day. I also found it much harder when dd started school, because now I have to find some kind of activity club that suits them both.

It's not straighforward, I would say, and there are no easy answers.

Hmmm. I'm a bit more with Scummy I think. Or maybe I'm just hard hearted. My DS started school in September and I have found that the school does expect quite a lot of involvement (I was entertained when another class asked us to contribute cakes for their table for the Christmas Fair, having spent considerable time filling jam jars with sweets and bath pearls for DS's own class: I was less entertained to be asked for an angel outfit for the nativity play on 5 days notice). However when I was a child my parent's involvement with the school was minimal - they were supportive, went to open evenings, plays etc and generally knew the teachers, but I my mother certainly never once had or went to a coffee morning with other mothers (probably mostly because she had 4 children quite close together in age, and subsequently also had a job). My father never did drop off or pick up. I did homework from age 8 unsupervised, other than my parents asking if I had done it. I honestly cannot remember my parents listening to me read (and my mother was a teacher!). I just cannot believe in a generation we have got to the stage of a child only doing well in school when their mother - and father - are at the gates every morning - and afternoon - and baking and stitching and creating and supervising. I do have a feeling at DS's school that there are a lot of mothers who base their social life around it - and why not, particularly if you have younger children and the only time you get out and speak to adults is to go up to the school. But I categorically refuse to have this used as a stick to beat me with (particularly by myself) because I can't be involved on a micro level. As someone said earlier, I work out the non negotiable ones - parents' evenings, the nativity play and make sure that we are there for those: I'm afraid the rest has to be fitted in round the edges.

Oh Tamum - that's blown it for me! I was thinking when DD (only 1 atm) started school as well it would be much more straightforward. And Scummy fitted this scenario because both her boys started together. It will at least save me 10-15 minutes of an evening which is a start towards homework time... Not that DS has any yet.

Oh, what a bloody horrible thread. Here I am thinking that when DD (3 in March) and DS (now 7 months) go to school my childcare will become so much easier... but this is not at all what I am reading here... Oh no! Surely it's cheaper than full time nanny??? Has anyone gone from full time nanny to au pair and afterschool care when they started school? This is my plan. Am I kidding myself that this is a feasibleoption?

Hi uwila, that is my plan too - in my case fulltime nursery. And for school holidays, dh and I to take turns and maybe leave dd with SIL for 1 week and we reciprocate. Not comfortable with having an aupair drive so scheming to somehow live within walking distance from the school (wherever that may be). It is all like a house of cards ...

Anchovy, besides acting as chauffeurs, my parents were not involved in my school beyond looking at my report card. Not sure why I am expected to be so switched on either. But now that I do the pick up for nursery, I am loving talking to the carers about dd and knowing the names of her friends and ... gasp actually want to be part of it. But I totally agree that to each his own. The expectation of schools that parents get involved over and above their work commitments is irksome.

As I understand it, day nursery is all about catering for working mums. But schools assume you are an SAHM or at least a v. flexible worker.