Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Work

Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.

Original poster

City lawyer with toddlers can't cope

821 replies

RosieIrene · 11/06/2007 23:30

I work FT at a city firm and have two dd 1 and 3. Have a full time daily nanny but still can't cope. Work all day, come home and put kids to bed and work all evening to make billable target or have to go to client functions. So stressed out that on weekend just want to sit in garden with kids and do nothing. Can't sleep, can't talk to anyone. How do people manage?

OP posts:
Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 13:58

I'm not pinning two groups against one another although I do use the SAHM / WOHM terms as shorthand. I don't think there are two groups really. I think we all have issues and choices.

What I do think is very silly is when any person denies there can be any disadvantage whatsoever to the choice they have made. I'm no longer filling my bank account every month. It's a disadvantage. OK. I chose it, I live with it. But I prefer that disadvantage to the disadvantage I perceive in leaving my child with the type of childcare available to me. So I'm happy with my choice and I defend it.

That is not a criticism of your choice, Eleusis. So why do you get so upset?

meandmyflyingmachine · 14/06/2007 13:58

There is definitely an implication there that others have made the opposite choice. Which is gobsmackingly offensive.

Do you really not see it?

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:01

I think the one group Anna has truly insulted is nannies.

"Xenia - if you look at all the evidence, it is critical for children to be spoken to by an intelligent human being who loves them for many hours a day, from birth, in order to develop their linguistic and cognitive abilities. Which is why a nanny is not good enough for me. "

Can they not be "intellegent human beings"?

Can't being with a parent part of the day and childcare part of the day stimulate a child? Surely it doesn't have to be the same intellegent human being 24/7?

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:02

intelligent (showing myself up there a bit).

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:02

meanmy - well of course others have made a different choice but not the opposite choice because their circumstances are by necessity totally different.

And I presume that they are happy with the childcare choice (when that is the issue) they have made - and I am actually always very interested to know about this, given that the childcare options available to me are so poor.

But when I see people getting so worked up, I really wonder whether they are so sure about the choices they've made. Can't you see that? Protesting too much...

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:03

COV - I've said it before - where I live, the nannies (so-called) are not anything like what's available in London. I don't have the choice of a sufficiently intelligent human being to leave my child with.

Eleusis · 14/06/2007 14:04

Because the disadvanges you so often cite about being a WOHM are nothing more than unfounded claims. Working does not sacrifice my childs development. My work will one day fund my children's private education (Senior school -- they will go to a state primary).

Whereas you statement about you sacrificing the bank balance is pretty indisputable.

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:05

But when you made that comment, you didn't say that (about the poor choice of childcare where you are). So I'm afraid it reads as a blanket critism of nannies in general.

Eleusis · 14/06/2007 14:05

And lookey here. It's one of my favourite SAHMs.

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:06

Hey Ele aren't you supposed to be working?

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:06

Then why, when you are so completely sure that you are doing the best for your child's development, can you not defend your choice more calmly?

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:07

COV - I can't win, when I mention I live in Paris people 'we know that, don't tell us again' and when I don't...

Eleusis · 14/06/2007 14:08

Anna, you can hire a nanny from anywhere in the EU. Lots would love to live in Paris. I can understand that the nursery market might be different,but it is very easy to import a nanny.

Eleusis · 14/06/2007 14:09

COV, Shhhhhh.... they think I am working.

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:10

Eleusis - unfortunately it's very hard to get a decent imported nanny here as they have no friends, are treated so badly etc. Several of my former colleagues (British, Canadian, American) imported nannies from the UK but they couldn't keep them they were so lonely. No groups of Aussies etc in the park here for them to hang out with...

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:11

You didn't ned to mention where you live simple that where you live has a poor choice when it comes to childcare and that is what you were basing the comment on.

ComeOVeneer · 14/06/2007 14:12

Well I am supposed to be getting the house ready for the weekend, but am hiding on here. .

Whoooosh · 14/06/2007 14:12

Anna-how do you know that your child's development is any better having stopped filling your bank account?

Do you have someone to cook and clean and pay bills and run errands and wash and iron-so you can be permanently involved with your child?

My nanny is paid to purely focus on my child when I am at work-she doesn't have any SAHM tasks to complete and therfore I could argue my dd gets far more attention than you give yours-unless of course you have a full compliment of staff..

You have the same choice in Nannies in Paris as you do in London-many are keen to travel.

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:13

COV - I've mentioned it a lot before, Eleusis has read it as have lots of others.

If you are going to work and leave your child, you have to be happy with the quality of childcare. That is one issue, of many, that working mothers have to contend with.

Judy1234 · 14/06/2007 14:17

It would be very dull if we were all the same. It's fun when people disagree. But I certainly haven't found my children less articulare or clever because when they were under 3 they were with a nanny from 8 - 6 than with a parent. At once point they did say "you was" like their nanny but as soon as they went to school they changed, just as they'll adopt whatever way of speaking teenagers speak when the time is right for that phase.

Poor old RosieIrene probably needs to think about being happy to say I've done a good job, enough or whatever. El.'s point below is a bit how I am - you don't say you can do things you can't, if you can help it. A child will say to me I have to have you buy XYZ school socks by Friday and I'll say I'm travelling to XYZ on Wednesday for work and out all day Thursday so it will have to wait until next week. That's just a constant process in life whether you are elderly parents, dogs, horses or children. In fact give a job to a busy person and she'll get it done. We are much more efficient and better at things anyway. The more time you have the more you expand what you have to do to fill it - Parkinson's Law. I just had to email someone saying I've only 2 more hours here today and whatever it is they wanted doing I can't do until tomorrow. The important issue in that process is your internal feelings and ensuring you don't feel bad or guilty about it. Think - wow I am so popular good at being a mother and a worker that all these things are heaped on me. But it's not wrong or bad if I can't do them all.

A long time ago my father send me Bruno Bettelheim's book A Good Enough Parent I think it was called. It was very good. Seeking perfectionism can lead to unhappiness. Being content with the compromises you do on an hourly basis can make you happier. Sadly I think some people's personalities are set a birth so you may not be able to make a conscious choice to move from perfectionist to "satisficer".

Judy1234 · 14/06/2007 14:17

..working fathers too Anna or most of them or those who aren't rendered sexist by women who enable and cause that sexism....etc I have to go.

Anna8888 · 14/06/2007 14:18

Whoosh - I have a bit of help with cleaning etc but my child is with me doing stuff around the house.

What I am absolutely sure of is that the quality and quantity of conversation (in English and French) is far superior to anything she would get from any kind of childcare available to me. I'm there to answer all her questions, discuss the world around us in detail, and she gets out and about an awful lot, far more than I would be prepared to pay a nanny to do. So yes, I am totally confident that she has more fun and is more developed than if she had been with someone else.

mozhe · 14/06/2007 14:21

Rubbish Anna.....my sister lives in Paris, she has a super FRENCH nanny, same one for 5 years...normalish children too
Anyways Anna....shouldn't you be stimulating your DD's 'cognitive abilities'...hope she's not faltering iin her language development !

bundle · 14/06/2007 14:21

mozhe

what makes you think anyone wants "normalish children"?

Quattrocento · 14/06/2007 14:24

Agree with you Xenia - but how true it is about work expanding to fill the time available! My mother, who is in perfect health, was a whizzy working mother. Now she's retired she really does make an expedition to buy a postage stamp.