s/o- sick kids and childcare- what if your job is inflexible?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can telework but NOT when my kid is sick. I can telework 1 day a week, but I had to sign a contract saying I would always have someone there to care for my child while I was working, or my child would be in daycare. I cannot telework and care for a sick child at the same time, that is not teleworking, that is sick leave.

OP here. I already said I would not be teleworking AND watching my sick kid at the same time. What I'm talking about is a scenario like this: I telework in the morning, upstairs in the office. DH is downstairs with the child. In the afternoon, we switch, so that DH is ensconced in the office doing his work and I am downstairs with the kid(s). No one is teleworking and doing child care at the same time.

I am the previous poster. My work has a teleworking policy, but we are not allowed to do half days. We can only do a full day teleworking with NO doc appts or interruptions. WE also can't telework on MOndays or Fridays or days with meetings. So its fairly inflexible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are very privileged and the answer to your question is obvious. Take leave and don't complain.

OP don't listen to ppl like this. I also have a fairly inflexibly teleworking policy at my work and it's irritating. We are also not allowed to work from home when sick, so even if kids are not involved, if I have a headache one day and decide to stay home, but I do 4 hours of work, those 4 hours do not count. I have to take a FULL day of sick leave. Of course, this encourages people not to work at all. It's stupid.

[Anonymous]

I think your employer is being inflexible and it doesn't make much sense. You sound like a responsible employee who wants to work half the day and instead you ate forced to take a while day of sick leave.

[Anonymous]

Can you work half a day if you go into the office? When DS is sick, I often stay home with him in the morning, then drive into work where DH meets me and drives back home. It's not fun to drag DS around when he's ill (if he were super sick, we probably wouldn't do this). And DH is only 15 minutes from my office, so it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are very privileged and the answer to your question is obvious. Take leave and don't complain.

OP don't listen to ppl like this. I also have a fairly inflexibly teleworking policy at my work and it's irritating. We are also not allowed to work from home when sick, so even if kids are not involved, if I have a headache one day and decide to stay home, but I do 4 hours of work, those 4 hours do not count. I have to take a FULL day of sick leave. Of course, this encourages people not to work at all. It's stupid.

? No, it's not stupid. It's normal. If you can't go to work you take sick or personal leave. If you can, then go to work...as in, if your head doesn't hurt anymore, get dressed and go. And whining that you have to take leave when your kid is sick is ridiculous. Welcome to parenthood. What do people want here? I'm confused. Is it that you don't want to take leave when you're watching your kids? If you are watching your kids you aren't working. I get in maybe 30% of my average workday if I'm home with DS. I don't really care if that means I had to take a few extra hours of leave, even though I "worked". That's what I saved it for.

[Anonymous]

I'm also confused by this question.

What exactly are you looking for? I can give you recommendations for emergency nanny services if that is it. If you don't have family in the area, or a babysitter on call, then you take leave to stay home and watch your child. What else are you looking for exactly?

[Anonymous]

All you feds with sick leave are lucky - I get 3 weeks of paid leave for the year, period. If I take a day off because my kid is sick, that's one less vacation day for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is everyone getting to take sick leave for their kids? I have to take vacation time as sick leave is only if I am sick.

FEds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm also confused by this question.

What exactly are you looking for? I can give you recommendations for emergency nanny services if that is it. If you don't have family in the area, or a babysitter on call, then you take leave to stay home and watch your child. What else are you looking for exactly?

OP here. I can see that my posts must be very poorly written, because I seem to have confused most people. What I'm asking is for creative ways to get around having take sick leave, if at all possible. The thread I was referencing had people who would go into work super early and then come home mid-day to switch off with a spouse, or had people able to telework in the morning while the spouse stayed with the sick child, and then they would switch off in the PM.

We don't have family in the area. My parents live 9 hours away and have come up in a pinch, but they aren't able to just at the drop of a dime. My MIL lives in the middle of the country and works herself. As I mentioned in previous posts, due to one child being very sick last year and requiring several surgeries and lots of specialist visits, our sick/annual leave is low. My husband has more job flexibility in that he doesn't have the same kind of deadlines I do at work, but yet has very little leave due to the sick child (I said it was less than 10 hours). I have a little more leave saved up, but have much less job flexibility and unfortunately the sick child isn't done being sick. In the almost 3 years we've had children, we've taken exactly one week of vacation that was coupled with a federal holiday to reduce the amt of leave taken. While I have a little more leave than my husband does, I also had a medical issue where I took off 5 months of LWOP recently.

What I was trying to illustrate earlier was that my supervisor has been receptive to my teleworking in the AM while my husband is caring for our child, and then switching off duties/work in the PM, our HR doesn't allows us to do that if our telework days have already been taken. I'm not complaining about telework in anyway. I'm grateful we have it. I'm just asking if there are any other suggestions. Neither my job nor my husband's job allows us to start very early in the morning or work later in the evening to make up for hours. Someone in this thread helpfully said that they drive downtown and switch off that way. Although we have a much longer commute than she did, that was a good suggestion.

If I have to take sick leave, I will. I understand that's what it's there for. But pretty soon my husband and I will run out of leave and additional LWOP for me will not be approved.

I'm grateful for my job, don't get me wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also confused by this question.

What exactly are you looking for? I can give you recommendations for emergency nanny services if that is it. If you don't have family in the area, or a babysitter on call, then you take leave to stay home and watch your child. What else are you looking for exactly?

OP here. I can see that my posts must be very poorly written, because I seem to have confused most people. What I'm asking is for creative ways to get around having take sick leave, if at all possible. The thread I was referencing had people who would go into work super early and then come home mid-day to switch off with a spouse, or had people able to telework in the morning while the spouse stayed with the sick child, and then they would switch off in the PM.

We don't have family in the area. My parents live 9 hours away and have come up in a pinch, but they aren't able to just at the drop of a dime. My MIL lives in the middle of the country and works herself. As I mentioned in previous posts, due to one child being very sick last year and requiring several surgeries and lots of specialist visits, our sick/annual leave is low. My husband has more job flexibility in that he doesn't have the same kind of deadlines I do at work, but yet has very little leave due to the sick child (I said it was less than 10 hours). I have a little more leave saved up, but have much less job flexibility and unfortunately the sick child isn't done being sick. In the almost 3 years we've had children, we've taken exactly one week of vacation that was coupled with a federal holiday to reduce the amt of leave taken. While I have a little more leave than my husband does, I also had a medical issue where I took off 5 months of LWOP recently.

What I was trying to illustrate earlier was that my supervisor has been receptive to my teleworking in the AM while my husband is caring for our child, and then switching off duties/work in the PM, our HR doesn't allows us to do that if our telework days have already been taken. I'm not complaining about telework in anyway. I'm grateful we have it. I'm just asking if there are any other suggestions. Neither my job nor my husband's job allows us to start very early in the morning or work later in the evening to make up for hours. Someone in this thread helpfully said that they drive downtown and switch off that way. Although we have a much longer commute than she did, that was a good suggestion.

If I have to take sick leave, I will. I understand that's what it's there for. But pretty soon my husband and I will run out of leave and additional LWOP for me will not be approved.

I'm grateful for my job, don't get me wrong.

Have you considered one of you finding a job with more of a casually flexible schedule? Other than buying leave from another employee (if your company allows this), that seems to be your only other option outside of what you are doing so far.

[Anonymous]

I have a friend that had a similar situation to yours, with multiple illnesses and injuries and lots of future doctor's appointments anticipated. She tried to make it work by reducing schedule, etc, but in the end, she just found another job. She now works from home full-time with a bit of travel. That gives her enough time to work around the appointments and while she is away, appointments are rescheduled and the husband just has to pick up the slack. I don't know where you get such a job, but it worked for her and her life is much easier now.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP, I'm the poster who drives downtown and switches off with my husband. I just wanted to clarify that my commute in is an hour long. But b/c DH's office is relatively close to mine, we can get in more work in we swap DS downtown than if I had to wait for DH to drive home before I headed into the office. Hope that clarifies the arrangement.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Your job sounds more flexible than anyone else I know. 3 days teleworking per week!??!

[Anonymous]

Not the OP but it was 3 days/pay period. So probably 1.25 or 1.5 days per week.

[Anonymous]

We aren't allowed to telework, but I am on Maxiflex, meaning as long as I work my 80 hours/pay period I can do it whenever. This is helpful because I can make at least some of it up. I also alternate with my DH, and sometimes we even split the day so that one of us will go in the morning for like 4-5 hrs then come home around lunchtime and the other will go in for 4-5-6 hours.