So who is back to office tomorrow morning?

[Anonymous]

The above post demonstrates why RTO disproportionately affects women with children. Why are we not calling out Musk’s RTO directive for what it is—misogyny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HHS. Always been in person, so same as it always was.

I'm HHS and have never been full time in the office, so this will be very different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Been going in for 25 years. Yes I have kids. Yes I have a dog. Yes my kids have been in many activiites. Yes we made them in time. Yes I have been promoted many many times.

Please share your routine. I've teleworked in some way since the late 90s and can't see how we will manage the activities. Perhaps you have a short commute or family help. I have a long commute and no family in the state. Would love to hear your positive helpful suggestions.

DP. I had my first kid in 2003 and we didn’t have telework until 2015. No family either to help. 50 min commute for me, so I started at 6am and had afternoon/evening kid duty, and my husband had mornings. Until he took a job in DC with a newly 2 hour commute. Had to get creative there.

So it helps if you and your spouse can juggle hours like that. But still we had to do before-and after-care at the school. Which was also open for school holidays, early dismissals, many snow days.

Camps in the summer. My daughter practically lived at her gymnastics gym the entire summer with camps and their before and after care.

My kids also stayed home alone on a number of summer days at a younger age than a lot of DCUM parents would allow. Fortunately they were responsible and I could do that.

I also hired a high school neighbor to pick my daughter up from school to get her to her gymnastics practices that I couldn’t get back in time for.

Used a lot of leave. Vacations were minimal because of that.

Both kids in sports and I lived out of my car. While they were at practices in evenings I ran a lot of errands. I’d often bring a cooler and grocery shop.

I often felt like a shark - if I stopped swimming I’d drown!

What career path has promotion potential for someone who ends their workday at 3 PM? That’s pretty unusual to advance and that scenario.

And Young kids staying home alone at like age 7 or so it isn’t about the kids being responsible, it’s about the kids responding appropriately to an emergency, so you just got lucky

While in your in the thick of raising kids is ok to pull back a little and not gun for promotions every year. You can ramp up later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The above post demonstrates why RTO disproportionately affects women with children. Why are we not calling out Musk’s RTO directive for what it is—misogyny.

That’s the whole point, they don’t care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Been going in for 25 years. Yes I have kids. Yes I have a dog. Yes my kids have been in many activiites. Yes we made them in time. Yes I have been promoted many many times.

Please share your routine. I've teleworked in some way since the late 90s and can't see how we will manage the activities. Perhaps you have a short commute or family help. I have a long commute and no family in the state. Would love to hear your positive helpful suggestions.

What did you do before the pandemic? Just go back to that.

Can't because I worked from home long before the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Been going in for 25 years. Yes I have kids. Yes I have a dog. Yes my kids have been in many activiites. Yes we made them in time. Yes I have been promoted many many times.

Please share your routine. I've teleworked in some way since the late 90s and can't see how we will manage the activities. Perhaps you have a short commute or family help. I have a long commute and no family in the state. Would love to hear your positive helpful suggestions.

The toughest thing for you is the commute. Dh and I moved to the Midwest in large part for the short commute and lower col. He actually just started wfh this past year, but prior to that we were both in person 5 days a week except for a few weeks in March - April 2020. My job just told us we can wfh 2 days per month. I cant imagine how hard it is to go “backward” like in your scenario.

Our kids are 5-13. Things that have helped us are staggered work schedules (this is number 1), lots of planning (meal planning, chore charts etc), weekly cleaner, we have cultivated a deep bench of childcare help, we use snow day camps and school day out camps, school bus, one activity / season max (not including after school clubs since the school is a few minutes away and we can get there by 4:30 for clubs). For music lessons we find teachers who come to the house. We also have a garage door app so we could let service workers in remotely.

I take every minute of my intermittent caregiver leave (we essentially get 80 hours of paid fmla at my employer- otherwise it’s just straight pto) for child with sn. Every IEP meeting, every dr appt, every phone call to one of his providers, etc. I time his weekly appointments (ot and st) to maximize my time at home, since I can also take time to/from appointments under my leave. Even things like getting gas - I will stop for gas while I’m taking him to an appointment - then it will be covered by my leave- and that’s 5 minutes off my commute the next day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Been going in for 25 years. Yes I have kids. Yes I have a dog. Yes my kids have been in many activiites. Yes we made them in time. Yes I have been promoted many many times.

Please share your routine. I've teleworked in some way since the late 90s and can't see how we will manage the activities. Perhaps you have a short commute or family help. I have a long commute and no family in the state. Would love to hear your positive helpful suggestions.

DP. I had my first kid in 2003 and we didn’t have telework until 2015. No family either to help. 50 min commute for me, so I started at 6am and had afternoon/evening kid duty, and my husband had mornings. Until he took a job in DC with a newly 2 hour commute. Had to get creative there.

So it helps if you and your spouse can juggle hours like that. But still we had to do before-and after-care at the school. Which was also open for school holidays, early dismissals, many snow days.

Camps in the summer. My daughter practically lived at her gymnastics gym the entire summer with camps and their before and after care.

My kids also stayed home alone on a number of summer days at a younger age than a lot of DCUM parents would allow. Fortunately they were responsible and I could do that.

I also hired a high school neighbor to pick my daughter up from school to get her to her gymnastics practices that I couldn’t get back in time for.

Used a lot of leave. Vacations were minimal because of that.

Both kids in sports and I lived out of my car. While they were at practices in evenings I ran a lot of errands. I’d often bring a cooler and grocery shop.

I often felt like a shark - if I stopped swimming I’d drown!

Thank you. I've been looking for a high school student for pick up because the before and after care at school is already full. Seems like all the high school kids have full schedules, but I will keep looking.

It seems like getting through the rest of this school year will be the toughest to manage. It's not too late for summer planning so that will be easier with camps and staying with our if town grandparents.

[Anonymous]

Kids now in HS, but we carpooled with neighbors, taking turns to go in later between 4 working adults. Even now, two kids come over to our house early am when parents leave and DS drives them to school.
Afternoons look for a college student. HS students have tougher schedules to pick up kids.