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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You took those days off work, and it affected your career.

Yes and you burned out from underperforming as both a fed and a parent. I have some kind of PTSD as even now that I have way more SL and child is much older, I feel stressed thinking about it. Same timeline as someone else, have never experienced work without telework that began around 2000.

[Anonymous]

I'm a single mom by choice. Those first few years I just used my PTO for those instances . My boss and coworkers knew my situation and helped out. I had always covered for them so it was payback time.

[Anonymous]

In the 90s my mother had access to Rainbow Care it was staffed by nurses to watch kids. Once it shut down I was left home alone. Lots of kids just going to be left home alone.

[Anonymous]

Before Covid, our office closed for snow days (so, paid day off) and we had to use leave if we couldn’t work due to being home with a sick kid.

[Anonymous]

please stop the whining. Go are making all feds look bad. You had two months to figure this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:please stop the whining. Go are making all feds look bad. You had two months to figure this out.

This isn't just a fed problem and actually feds returning will make everyone's situation worse but go on with your bad self 🫠

[Anonymous]

For snow days the government would close on the worst days. And then I was just off and didn't work. When my kids were sick I would take sick leave. If I was super busy I would split the day with my DH and we would each take half days off.

[Anonymous]

I took pto on days my kids were sick.

I had two friends who we rotated snow days. Every third snow day I took pto and watched all three families of kids. But on the other two snow days my kids went over to my friends’ houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If kids were sick, you took leave, burned through it fast, work piled up and didn't get done.

Yup, this is what we did. Fortunately snow days often meant work was closed too, so at least we had that going for us.

[Anonymous]

We are very close friends with a family whose kids are extremely responsible and older. They live only 5 minutes away. We paid their then-teenager (now away in college) to watch our child during days when they had no camp in summer or snow days.

[Anonymous]

My single-by-choice friend had a live-in nanny at first. After that, for school time off she'd try to arrange play dates, to cut on amount of time off. When kid was sick, she used her sick time.

We had a two-parent, two-child household. When kids were little, they attended a home-based day care, which was open on snow days. They did generally close for two weeks in the summer and a week around Christmas, but we planned our vacations around that schedule.

I also just got WAY MORE efficient with my work, so that when I had to take time off, I would generally still be able to get my work done. It is reasonable not to take a big step up in your career during the time you are raising young kids, so that you can juggle both.

When kids were in elementary, before they started going to school/coming home by themselves, one parent did drop-offs and the other did pickups, we used aftercare (also available on school days off), cobbled together full-day summer camps over the summer.

We avoided using temp agencies for nannies or babysitters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This. It sucks but being a working parent of young children in America can make you financially insolvent for the daycare years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:please stop the whining. Go are making all feds look bad. You had two months to figure this out.

OP here- just re found this thread.

How am I whining? I am trying to figure this out. I laid out what i currently do and asked for advice from those who experienced this before. I am happy to go back to the office, but also want to figure out a way to get my work done when my kid is sick and I have to take care of him since I can't do that work at home anymore.

[Anonymous]

And thanks to others for sharing. Some good ideas.

[Anonymous]

You took leave and it was stressful. You weren't able to commit to projects that didnt allow sudden leave. You weren't able to commit to travel. You never took vacations because leave was reserved for need. Also its really important to discuss with your spouse and have a system that works for both of you.

In my experience by age 4 it was significantly better. It was a blip in my career line when I stayed in a lower paid lower stress role in exchange for needing to be home when my kid was. I only have one kid partly also because of this.