Young kids, two jobs — how much “me” time per week?

[Anonymous]

We have elementary aged kids, special needs in the mix. Two FT jobs. No family in town.

How much “me time” is the norm in this situation?

DH expects that 2-3 days out of the week he would not come home or be around at all. As in, goes to work and doesn’t come back until 10-11 PM. He goes out with friends, does his hobby, etc. but does not see the kids.

His job has extremely flexible hours, like mine. I personally do like 1-2 nights a week to go out but I don’t expect to not be on call between after school and bedtime.

[Anonymous]

It’s very family dependent. My DH almost never is away from home/the family. I try to sneak out 1-2x a week for yoga classes. We get a babysitter to go out on a date once ever7 2-4 weeks.

Families operate on a 24/7 schedule with no holidays. I believe we operate accordingly.

[Anonymous]

When my kids were that age DH and I got a day like that about every two months.

[Anonymous]

Work and commute is "me time"

I like to stop in a parking lot on the way home.

[Anonymous]

Never. I tried to go to the library and read for an hour on Sunday afternoon because a desperately needed a break, but got called home about 25 minutes after I left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have elementary aged kids, special needs in the mix. Two FT jobs. No family in town.

How much “me time” is the norm in this situation?

DH expects that 2-3 days out of the week he would not come home or be around at all. As in, goes to work and doesn’t come back until 10-11 PM. He goes out with friends, does his hobby, etc. but does not see the kids.

His job has extremely flexible hours, like mine. I personally do like 1-2 nights a week to go out but I don’t expect to not be on call between after school and bedtime.

He’s a selfish pig

[Anonymous]

That’s not normal in my mind. My DH has a very stressful job and works a lot. When he is not working he is home and with the kids. We have 3 of them. The only reason why he doesn’t see the kids at night is because of work. On a rare occasion he will do a guys thing but that is planned out well in advance.

We have 3 kids - 3, 7 and 9

[Anonymous]

What you are describing is not how it happens in my house.
Typically one parent got the kids from aftercare and the other parent headed home to get dinner going. This flexed daily based on both parents work schedule.
We also needed to get 1 kid to OT in the later afternoon one day a week so we flexed to that - typically one parent get to OT and the other would get dinner going and pick up from OT.
One child is dyslexic and needs more support with homework - one with ADHD and needs a lot of executive functioning support especially in the evenings.
If we had a must do work event in the evening - we had it on the calendar and we would shoot for no more than 1 a week between the 2 of us - but sometimes it was outside of our control.
Gym was early morning - my DH would be there when the doors opened to get a workout in before the kids were up.
I had forced "me" time once a week on the weekend as I signed up for either a Yoga class or something else. In addition we had "we" time when the kids were in Religious Education on Sunday and we would go for a walk and get coffee.

[Anonymous]

I would be so disappointed if my husband did that. However, he would never want to. I have to push him to have a night like that because he wants to be with us. I try to leave for about 90 minutes every weekend to have a hike and listen to my audiobook. Otherwise that’s it (aside from running errands etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Work and commute is "me time"

I like to stop in a parking lot on the way home.

Seriously (although never considered the parking lot idea).

I realized mowing the lawn was my “me time” so I ended up paying someone to do it.

[Anonymous]

My alcoholic dad had about that schedule. But that wouldn't be normal today.

[Anonymous]

I think each person getting a couple hours on alternating days on the weekend is a reasonable approach, or maybe one night out once every 3-4 weeks or so but 2-3 nights a week is not reasonable.

[Anonymous]

So do you get me time on those alternate days?

[Anonymous]

You both want two child free nights per week. So alternate them and your kids get their whole family three nights. What’s the issue?

[Anonymous]

It doesn’t really matter what is “normal,” what matters is that both partners are getting as close to what they need/want as you can reasonably manage. That means you have to communicate about it, and it’s not a good idea to base the conversation on what’s “normal.”