if you work freelance from home how do you convince dh/dp you are working?

[hatwoman]

I'm feeling a bit niggled. I have a regular job 3 days a week. then for the coming autumn I am also doing some lecturing - this means Thursdays when the girls are at school I spend preparing, and Fridays I lecture. turns out dd has got an inset day one Thursday in Sep but apparently it's "not a problem" because I'm "not working". dh thinks I over prepare for stuff like this. he would spend maximum half a day preparing a lecture and would be very relaxed about it. whereas in - possibly typical female fashion - I am very diligent (or perhaps paranoid about not being up to scratch...). How do I convince him that from now on Thursdays are as much a working day for me as my 3 days in an office? my preparation is not a luxury - it's part of the job.

For one inset day I wouldn't bother - I would work a little harder on the 2 previous Thursdays and look forward to having more time with my ds.

Dh is always the one who takes time off sick if ds is too ill for kindy as he gets paid sick, and I would be letting the school/pupils down and no one could cover for me. However if I was home I wouldn't expect dh to take time off - I would prepare things once dh came home (letting him clean the kitchen of course).

I just don;t have that amount of flexibility. I need every Thursday. I could work a saturday instead but I feel a bit reluctant. it's more the casual way in which he says that I'm not working that bugs me. why doesn't he get it?

Sounds like a communication problem then. I try to repeat things so there is zero preparation but it obviously depends what stuff you're doing. Aren't the children of an gae they can watch TV or play in the garden for an hour or two whilst you prepare? It may depend on the children. My sister says she can never work in the house when the children are home and I can all the time.

But wouldn't it be that much more inconvenient if it was any of the other days? I think I would be breathing a sigh of relief that it was the one day I was staying home anyway. Surely you don't get paid for a whole day of preparation - so for once don't do one.

Would it have made all the difference in the world if he had said "thank goodness it's the one day you are not at work" rather than not working?

it's the first time I've lectured - and its a whole course. if I do it again next year then it'll be very different. I can work a bit while the kids are around - but I put myself in their shoes and feel guilty. I prefer to make a clear demarcation between work and not work

I would be narked by the casualness too - although I prob go to the opposite extreme, in as much as dh is lucky if I wash up the breakfast dishes on my working from home days.

If you make it clear that he'll have to look after the kids for a weekend day so you can do the work that you'll be missing, would that help him see??

no thursday is the worst day: mon-wed we have a nanny so inset days make no difference at all. friday dh doesn;t work. The logistics of this particular day are not really what I'm posting about - it's the glib way in which he says that i;m not working that has niggled me.

Oh in that case the are entirely justified in being miffed. Leave absolutely everything for him to do on Friday because you were busy with the kids on Thursday, and today he's not working.

If it's the first time then clearly you are working on Thursdays as well as the Fridays when you lecture but he may not have known that. It's different for me when I work from home. Every hour not working is £X financial loss. Everyone knows that. It's definable and billable and the fact I can do it with children in the house doesn't mean it's not work.

Some people hire an office and go to it to do the working from home or go to the British library or whatever to keep that separation. When they were younger and sometimes now too I work at home and the nanny is in the house as indeed is the case this morning.

Hatwoman, I see what you mean about the glib way your dh assumed you were around. At the moment it is a one off, but as you say, you certainly don't want this attitude to become a habit.

Can you tell your dh that you are 'on call' between say 9.00 am and 5.00 pm every Thursday. Tell a white lie along the lines of your employer has said it's very likely that you will be needed at short notice some Thursdays to go in to lecture to cover for colleagues who are away. And being on call on Thursdays is part of your contractual obligation.

So you can only cover home emergencies on Thursdays if you have some back up.

(You could then disappear some Thursdays to the libreary to work, letting your dh assume you have had to go in to lecture at short) notice)

library, hatwoman. it's the only way. they're all wirelessed up now, it's amazing. of course it may have to be a Saturday morning, though, which is a bummer.
as for dh not getting it, my dh is freelance too so i'm fortunate that we juggle childcare (sometimes dropping dd ). but my family and friends just don't get it at all and expect me to be available during the day. which is why you will so often find me on here desperate for a bit of company at 3am.