If you and DH work late, how do you manage extracurricular activities?

[Anonymous]

We have an afternoon PT babysitter who brings our child home, helps him study, plays game, fixes dinner, etc. She often drops off at an activity like Scouts or drama, and I pick him up. We stay away from sports as it's not my son's interest and are too time consuming. I work 3 days a week, meaning he's got a parent with him most of his time at home 4 days a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you workaholic parents are pathetic. Spending 1-2hrs max a day with your kids. Why bother having kids if you want to work 10-12hrs a day and are only home to put your kids to bed. What kind of life is that for them or you?

It is completely unbelievable how judgmental some parents are of other parents (assuming you are a parent). What works for your household may not work for another. Some women would be completely unhappy and would, in turn, make their kids unhappy if they were SAHMs or WAHMs. Quantity does not always correlate with QUALITY when it comes to spending time with family. Some families create memorable weekends in spite of their hectic weeks. There is no one size fits all parenting, people!

So you think not seeing their Dad all week and most of Saturday works for them? Mom works daily until 6pm.

[Anonymous]

OP: the thing that struck me was you writing, "I WANT MY KIDS TO BE MORE INVOLVED IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES"

You and DH seem very intense, job focused people. Adding more activities will complicate your lifestyle.

But are your children asking for these activities? Have you asked them what they want to do? Is this about you or about them?

My DS was in aftercare. That was an extracurricular, but necessary activity. In his aftercare, they did Mad Science, weekly art projects, practices and performed in the Shakespeare competition annually, had a yearly dodge ball tournement, etc. I did not have to sign him up for other things. If aftercare is boring, then ask them to change it up ana make it more interesting. He did do 4 estra things: monthly scouting meeting, weekly soccer practice, soccer game and religion school. He has been confirmed,so no more religious school, but he is still doing the other three. It's enough for him and he's now in HS. He could have joined travel soccer 4 times - he said no. Knew his limits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reevaluate your life. I wouldn't want to live like that. I would quit.

this, or you need to both change your schedules so that you're home when school gets out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: the thing that struck me was you writing, "I WANT MY KIDS TO BE MORE INVOLVED IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES"

You and DH seem very intense, job focused people. Adding more activities will complicate your lifestyle.

But are your children asking for these activities? Have you asked them what they want to do? Is this about you or about them?

My DS was in aftercare. That was an extracurricular, but necessary activity. In his aftercare, they did Mad Science, weekly art projects, practices and performed in the Shakespeare competition annually, had a yearly dodge ball tournement, etc. I did not have to sign him up for other things. If aftercare is boring, then ask them to change it up ana make it more interesting. He did do 4 estra things: monthly scouting meeting, weekly soccer practice, soccer game and religion school. He has been confirmed,so no more religious school, but he is still doing the other three. It's enough for him and he's now in HS. He could have joined travel soccer 4 times - he said no. Knew his limits.

We are all producing hyper kids, who will go nuts with boredom in a bad way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you workaholic parents are pathetic. Spending 1-2hrs max a day with your kids. Why bother having kids if you want to work 10-12hrs a day and are only home to put your kids to bed. What kind of life is that for them or you?

Excuse you? F you! I work insane hours and hired a nanny. My life does not revolve around my kids. They get to do everything that other kids get to do. I tried being a stay at home mom and it lasted for 10 months. Not my thing. My kids are wonderful and think it's cool to have a powerful and accomplished mom.

[Anonymous]

Crazy. My kids are elementary age and have no real idea what their parents do for a living, and would not be impressed by any adult's job unless the person was a professional baseball player. I will defend pp's choices but certainly not on the grounds that the kids think it's cool to have an important mom. Generally kids don't think any of us are cool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crazy. My kids are elementary age and have no real idea what their parents do for a living, and would not be impressed by any adult's job unless the person was a professional baseball player. I will defend pp's choices but certainly not on the grounds that the kids think it's cool to have an important mom. Generally kids don't think any of us are cool.

+1. No kid thinks there parent is cool.

[Anonymous]

DH goes in early and takes off 2 days a week early to coach each kid in a sport, practice starts around 6. He works late the other nights. We have an au pair to help with after-school driving and homework and nights when we both need to stay late. My job is flexible and I take off one afternoon a week at 3:30 to take DD to a therapy session. I also take off for school stuff where DH cannot. Weekends are full of sports games.

OP how do you handle sick and vacation days, and summer? It doesn't seem manageable without some help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crazy. My kids are elementary age and have no real idea what their parents do for a living, and would not be impressed by any adult's job unless the person was a professional baseball player. I will defend pp's choices but certainly not on the grounds that the kids think it's cool to have an important mom. Generally kids don't think any of us are cool.

agreed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you workaholic parents are pathetic. Spending 1-2hrs max a day with your kids. Why bother having kids if you want to work 10-12hrs a day and are only home to put your kids to bed. What kind of life is that for them or you?

Excuse you? F you! I work insane hours and hired a nanny. My life does not revolve around my kids. They get to do everything that other kids get to do. I tried being a stay at home mom and it lasted for 10 months. Not my thing. My kids are wonderful and think it's cool to have a powerful and accomplished mom.

This is insane. PP, it's the LEAN-IN people like you who are ruining it for all the rest of us who would like access to "powerful and accomplished" positions but settle for less just to see our kids at home. Powerful and Accomplished may have seemed god in the 1970s, when women had no power. In this day and age, the ethical thing to do is to insist on work-life balance. If you are in a positon of power, then YOU should make it happen.

This is not a woman's issue. American workers at all levels have a right to raise their families. Since when education and a good job should be reserved for the single or family-ignoring professionals? Why should "POWER", as YOU call it, rest only with those who make the choice to completely delegate the parenting to others?

You and OP's DH are the very reason why there is a gender pay gap. PP, work is not about power. It's about providing for life. If you did decide to delegate your life to others, why would that make you more of a leader than other, equally accomplished moms and dads? I can read in your answer the frustration you feel when you're judged by this decision. All I'm saying is -- it does NOT have to be this way. If people in leadership position -- men and women -- learned how to set these basic boundaries, it would make for a better world all around. Think about the Nash principle before you elbow out family folks out of a job!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you currently pick your kids up at 6pm from after care and then take them to a community center for scheduled activities. You all get home around 7:30pm?? for dinner, you do all the cooking/cleaning/bathing/putting to bed in 1.5hrs and DH comes home at 9pm when they are all asleep.

Sorry but you need to re-evaluate what is important in life. Those kids not only need some downtime but time with their parents. Life is short.

DH and I used to work those schedule when DDs were little and our day care provider director made us stop. Seriously. We were dropping the kids off when the center opened at 7:30 and picking them up at 6. She met with us and told us, basically, we needed to reevaluate our schedules and if we couldn't shift our total hours than we had to shift our schedules. So I started going to work at 7 so I could be leave by 3, and DH started going in later so they got dropped off later. Now that they're in MS, I'm back by 4 to take them to stuff.

With your schedules its either Nanny or no activities unless you guys can switch. Car pools maybe?

Wow, was I the only person who was struck by this post? Your schedule, PP, is exactly that of every single family in my DD's daycare, except they probably pick up at 5:30 most of the time, instead of 6. In fact, that's MY schedule for her most days of the week. I was under the impression that's what daycares expected when they offered hours like this. I agree it's not ideal for the kids, but I'd be angry and humiliated if my daycare provider basically told me I had to cut back my work hours (to fewer than 40 a week, given my commute?) so I could fit her expectation of what our family's schedule should look like.

[Anonymous]

PP here. To the point of providing an example to your children... I am a 3rd generation professional woman. My mother worked those same kind of jobs you are referring to. I was raised by grandparents (we were lucky!), after a long string of careless sitters. My grandmother, an architect, retired early from a job she loved just so she could care for us and empower my mother, her single child, to succeed in her professional career.

To OP's point, my grandmother took me skating and swimming and hosted the piano and French lessons. She was the point person at school. And when my parents were assigned to the Foreign Service, we followed for some years, but eventually were sent home, in the care of my grandmother, who managed most of our high school admission prep (different country, different rules for public school). I cannot think of someone more accomplished and forward leaning than my mother.

But I was the child who did not speak until after the age of 4 -- i vividly remember feeling lonely all my younger years. That was the main reason my grandmother decided to retire. I never really called my home "home". It was my grandparent's place that became home for me.

My mom was lucky to have such support in her own mother -- but these days, people move away from home, and grandparents are in short supply. (I get nothing...) Instead, we use sitters and nannies -- usually, less educated than the parents, and with less emotional involvement. Having some external support is helpful, but when it becomes such an important part of parenting, you're replacing yourself, your values and your education with "hired help" -- on a continuous basis.

When I speak to potential employers of my need to be home for homework and dinner, this is why I do it. I'll go on that conference call with the folks in Singapore after bedtime, but I have to have an understanding that my workplace will respect the family I am trying to raise. It's my boundary. And I do find they do respect that, both for me and for DH -- until and unless some colleague decides to up the antes and show "real dedication" by starting to schedule debate meetings at 5:30 and impromptu late-night work sessions. We work in IT, so those sessions could last well into the night.

Sometimes, management falls for these acts of heroism. My own feeling is that well-managed work does not require that. Indeed, the work done after hours is the work most liable to give headaches later on.

But it has become an effective way to manipulate the workplace, drive costs down and -- really -- gain a sense of power over employees. It's unethical.

[Anonymous]

PP 13:36 = PP 13:08

In-between PP -- the open hours for the daycare are not for a child to spend both ends of the day, every day. They are there for choices.

We do pay for SACC both morning and evening, but we're shiifting schedules so that kids don't spend more than 8 hours at school. The rest is insurance for the crazy week at work, the snow delays, etc.

We've done the long hours, and we collected tired children who were unable to communicate or do homework or anything else once they got home. There's always 1 or 2 kids doing both ends, and who get picked up the last. But not more than that, in any daycare that I've seen.

Some kids may be able to take this better than others. I have one who can, one who can;t. But neither really completes their homework in the higher grades, and reading is limited to bedtime. So... we do it when we must, but the flexible work hours and shifted schedules are how we manage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here. To the point of providing an example to your children... I am a 3rd generation professional woman. My mother worked those same kind of jobs you are referring to. I was raised by grandparents (we were lucky!), after a long string of careless sitters. My grandmother, an architect, retired early from a job she loved just so she could care for us and empower my mother, her single child, to succeed in her professional career.

To OP's point, my grandmother took me skating and swimming and hosted the piano and French lessons. She was the point person at school. And when my parents were assigned to the Foreign Service, we followed for some years, but eventually were sent home, in the care of my grandmother, who managed most of our high school admission prep (different country, different rules for public school). I cannot think of someone more accomplished and forward leaning than my mother.

But I was the child who did not speak until after the age of 4 -- i vividly remember feeling lonely all my younger years. That was the main reason my grandmother decided to retire. I never really called my home "home". It was my grandparent's place that became home for me.

My mom was lucky to have such support in her own mother -- but these days, people move away from home, and grandparents are in short supply. (I get nothing...) Instead, we use sitters and nannies -- usually, less educated than the parents, and with less emotional involvement. Having some external support is helpful, but when it becomes such an important part of parenting, you're replacing yourself, your values and your education with "hired help" -- on a continuous basis.

When I speak to potential employers of my need to be home for homework and dinner, this is why I do it. I'll go on that conference call with the folks in Singapore after bedtime, but I have to have an understanding that my workplace will respect the family I am trying to raise. It's my boundary. And I do find they do respect that, both for me and for DH -- until and unless some colleague decides to up the antes and show "real dedication" by starting to schedule debate meetings at 5:30 and impromptu late-night work sessions. We work in IT, so those sessions could last well into the night.

Sometimes, management falls for these acts of heroism. My own feeling is that well-managed work does not require that. Indeed, the work done after hours is the work most liable to give headaches later on.

But it has become an effective way to manipulate the workplace, drive costs down and -- really -- gain a sense of power over employees. It's unethical.

This is a very interesting post in many respects!