Back up child care/ return to the office--> What was it like before?

Anonymous
For those of you who had young kids pre-Covid and are the primary or single parent-If you couldnt telework and there was a snow day (or week) or your kid was out of day far for 4 days with a virus- what did you do? What happened with your work?

I keep seeing posts in the jobs and childcare threads about how people shouldn't complain about RTO and that we should just pay for childcare and have a backup plan- but what are those backup plans? Who wants to come to my house and watch my kid at 8 am when there are 6 inches of snow on the ground? Who can I pay to watch my kid on a hours notice when he is sick? My parents are and hour away, but they can't drive in the snow and I dont want to risk them getting sick since they are in there late 70s.

On sick days and snow days now, I typically work 5-7 am, maybe have a neighbor who is a teacher or a high schooler who is off school watch him for a couple of hours, push all my meetings that need to happen to nap time, and finish up once he is in bed, only taking 2-4 hours of leave and making sure things move along at work.

If there is no telework- I will need to take off all 3/4 days. That means nothing is happening to move that work forward. My team is all parents of young kids, mainly moms who are primary parents. I work as a fed and this is my first office job with set hours and I don't understand how it all worked before. If I have to use my leave for my kid being sick or snow days fine- but then how does my work get done too? What type of back up care should I start trying to get ready?

Anonymous
edit in the first paragraph: If you couldnt telework and there was a snow day (or week) or your kid was out for 4 days with a virus- what did you do?
Anonymous
We had an aftercare program that was open during the day when school was closed. They also had before care that you could pay for in advance or do as drop in. Summer camps with before and after care. Burned through massive amounts of leave when they were sick . It took literally years to build back. No family members in the area. At some point we could start teleworking on an ad hoc basis. I can’t remember when or how old my kids were but I think maybe late elementary. It was tough and expensive.
Anonymous
Bright Horizons and White House Nannies both offer last minute care. The quality is mixed. Care.com also has last minute sitters. I’m pretty sure one woman was on a substance when she arrived.

I empathize. My own children screamed while I dropped them off in unfamiliar environments or with unfamiliar people. It can be heart-breaking.

At the same time, millions of people have only known this way of life. They’ve never had job flexibility. Where was the empathy and resolve to do something for them then?
Anonymous
For snow days - if you are no longer “telework ready” and have no telework agreement, then those will be days off. I guess that disgusting *sshole Vought and his lackey Amanda Scales could try to force us to use leave those days. In that case I will literally just bring home a book related to my field and read.

For sick days you just suck it up while kids are little and burn all your sick leave. We also used backup nanny services every so often - very expensive but they were willing to send someone to care for a mildly ill child.
Anonymous
I am a single parent whose child was small before Covid. I also had no telework. I paid for full time care. I prioritized centers that had backup staff. We took almost no “fun” vacations because I had to cover all sick days. I signed up for camps the moment they opened. If your children are small, you probably had paid maternity leave which I did not. When children are small all of your leave will be based around their schedules. I prioritized living in Arlington and not Fairfax because at the time aftercare was guaranteed if you signed up in time. I paid for beforecare, even though I only needed about fifteen minutes of it a day.

I get that it’s a little harder now because some programs did not reopen after Covid, but you have to plan and pay.
Anonymous
I can’t work from home. When Covid hit DD was 7. I took leave for some of it, spouse took leave, we paid a HS age sitter, a friend who was a sahm with a same age kid helped out too ( we paid her)
I personally am ok with people working from home if they can get their job done. Less traffic for me.
But working from home shouldn’t mean you don’t have to figure out childcare, you are not being a good parent or employee trying to do both at the same time.
Anonymous
Day to day care: I chose a daycare with extended hours since I was out of the house from 8-6:30.

Days where i got a call to pick them up early for illness or injury: since i take an express bus and metro to work, its unavailable during the day and I wouldn’t make it to daycare within the required hour window. I used to take the metro to my usual stop and catch an uber to my house to drive to daycare. Took forever.

Snow days/sick days: burned through all my leave. Projects completely stopped while I was out. Tasks had to be given to coworkers, breeding resentment. We didn’t take vacations for several years in order to preserve leave. I was job hunting when COVID hit because the lack of flexibility was causing so much stress. Barely saw my kids because it was just about bedtime when I got home each night.
Anonymous
Pre covid, if you could work from home, many jobs would allow you to do that occasionally, but if you didn't have one of those jobs, and you don't live near family who will watch sick kids, you used your sick time/paid time off, if you had it. A lot of parents I know have a deal set up where they take turns taking snow days off or they have an arrangement with a neighborhood teen or teacher to come watch the kids if schools are closed. I have a friend who lives walking distance from me and I always offer to take her kids on snow days because my work follows the school system (although now that they're older she doesn't usually need me).

It didn't use to be as common to try to work while your kids were home, pre-covid--I think people tended to be actually off more and just let people know to call them if it was a real emergency.
Anonymous
Spouse and I are in healthcare and never had work from home. We are not in dmv, but the first thing we do when we move is cultivate a network of sitters (if you have neighbors with hs students, they are usually happy to babysit on snow days, teacher work days, etc.) A lot of places also do snow day camps and school day out camps. My oldest is now 13 and some of the camps she’s been attending let her “intern” (attend for free) which she loves. My other kids are 5 and 10 and board game camp, rock climbing camp, and art camp are our mainstays for those random days off. (Youngest has a physical disability so we don’t do sport places but I imagine there are plenty of those)

Men (in 2 parent households) can also step up more.
Anonymous
If kids were sick, you took leave, burned through it fast, work piled up and didn't get done.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:If kids were sick, you took leave, burned through it fast, work piled up and didn't get done.


This, or you sent kids to school sick and rolled the dice on being called to come get them. Which is what many people still do, out of necessity, because they don't have enough leave to cover sick days for a couple kids and do shift work where calling in is burdensome for employers and will lead to them not being scheduled for shifts in the future and loss of income even if they technically have sick leave they are supposed to be able to use for this purpose.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:For those of you who had young kids pre-Covid and are the primary or single parent-If you couldnt telework and there was a snow day (or week) or your kid was out of day far for 4 days with a virus- what did you do? What happened with your work?

I keep seeing posts in the jobs and childcare threads about how people shouldn't complain about RTO and that we should just pay for childcare and have a backup plan- but what are those backup plans? Who wants to come to my house and watch my kid at 8 am when there are 6 inches of snow on the ground? Who can I pay to watch my kid on a hours notice when he is sick? My parents are and hour away, but they can't drive in the snow and I dont want to risk them getting sick since they are in there late 70s.

On sick days and snow days now, I typically work 5-7 am, maybe have a neighbor who is a teacher or a high schooler who is off school watch him for a couple of hours, push all my meetings that need to happen to nap time, and finish up once he is in bed, only taking 2-4 hours of leave and making sure things move along at work.

If there is no telework- I will need to take off all 3/4 days. That means nothing is happening to move that work forward. My team is all parents of young kids, mainly moms who are primary parents. I work as a fed and this is my first office job with set hours and I don't understand how it all worked before. If I have to use my leave for my kid being sick or snow days fine- but then how does my work get done too? What type of back up care should I start trying to get ready?



It's great that you have these neighbors! Treat them well, pay them well, and now you have at least one type of "back up." The high schooler can also be helpful on those teacher work days or other holidays that schools are closed but you still have to work and don't want to use your paid leave.
Anonymous
For the most part the sick days tend to be concentrated in the first few years after they start school, nursery or daycare. By the time they are 8 or 9 there are a lot less, if any. So at least the problem is temporary.
Parents of young kids end up taking a lot of time off when they are sick. It is the nature of the beast. If you don’t let them telework they will take sick leave- and failing that, annual leave.
Anonymous
I'm going to be honest because I've talked to my mom about this and her response was schools didn't close for every single thing. They just didn't. And daycares didn't close and it was highly understood that kids are in school when they're in school and when they're in care and you're paying for it that the care needs to be open.
I told her what we're looking at for daycare prices including home daycares and she tells me that my younger brother when he was a baby she used an in-home daycare and it was $75 a week and she could drop him off in jammies and he was bathed every day by the owner who was a retired grandma and she only took infants and she would have like two at a time and she would rock them to sleep and take them outside and basically like took care of them like a grandma would.
This was of course almost 30 years ago but with each decade it's gotten harder and harder to not only provide care but to find care and to pay for it. On Reddit in the daycare stack there's people who are talking about how they have to pick up their kid because their kid had three bowel movements. An infant. And they need a doctor's note to return. The state regulation states that if a child has three loose or diarrhea movements then they need to be called and they've got staff calling because an infant who has breastfed is at three bowel movements.
And covid completely reset illness policies and closures. It's made some of the policies honestly obscene and difficult to navigate and when you make them difficult to navigate people just stop following them and then they end up being less effective.

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