How to offer wife help with kids
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Anonymous
| Here is our situation: 5 month old, almost 4 year old with ASD 1, and 8 year old with mild ADHD. Wife stays at home mostly but works 10 hours a week from home. This summer we seem to really be struggling. She takes kids to pool twice a week, middle son has therapy 4 times a week, older son has playdates and soccer and I can see how worn wife is. She isn't interested in child care help because our middle son really can't handle sitters. It would be more work than it's worth. She isn't interested in cleaning people as our house is fairly clean and she doesn't really mind the busy work plus she feels like leaving the house so ppl can clean is harder than cleaning. We do source out all yard work so I can be completely "on" on weekends. Wife goes to our JCC 3-4 times a week for working out and massages but that isn't enough anymore. She really isn't eating meals and she has constant paper work...middle sons IEP and therapy stuff, she's our older sons soccer team "coordinator" so she's always emailing and figuring out the field times and dates etc, our 5 month old is still at a stage where she has a million appointments and all that. It just seems like "too much" yet she isn't allowing anyone to take it off her plate. More like she can't think of ways to lessen the load. She's no martyr and accepts help but its just too many of the jobs seem to only be able to be done by her. We both agreed next year my oldest will go to more camps. He did a few this year but not many and none whole day. Next year we will change that. What else can we do here? I know a lot of this will lessen when school returns but I am afraid what another 5 weeks of this will do to her. I would normally take PTO here and there and work 1 or 2 half days a week but I blew all my time off with the baby. Our parents are both flights away. What am I not thinking of here??? |
Anonymous
| I would hire someone to help with the other two kids. |
Anonymous
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Well, it might help if you shift the way you think, feel and talk about parenting duties.
You aren't "helping her" with your kids, so much as you are taking responsibility for your kids. It's not some big favor you are doing, you don't get a medal, you're not a hero. Look into hiring some help for the next few weeks. |
Anonymous
| I would hire a sitter either for the baby or to shuttle the 8 year old around. |
Anonymous
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Is it too late to find camps for your oldest for this summer?
Could you hire an educational advocate to help with the paperwork piece? |
Anonymous
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Who's cooking and cleaning up from dinner?
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Anonymous
| Can you take on some of the paperwork or takeover the soccer coordination job? The idea that something can only be done by one person seems like anxiety or perfectionism or something. |
Anonymous
You are being an *ss hole for no good reason. This person sees his partner struggling with her set of responsibilities (as they are assigned now) and wants to help make her life easier. The specific wording isn't important. OP, depending where you live, you might be able to add some camps still. SS YMCA is one that might have space for August. Ideally it would be a camp where you can do drop off and pick up. |
Anonymous
| Op here. I regret using the word helping. I mean how can I contribute more evenly despite being at work. We do have an educational advocate for our middle son which kinda brought on more paperwork to be honest. I will look into camps for oldest. I will only look into ones I can take to and fro. |
Anonymous
| A couple things - as someone else said, could you have a sitter that takes 1 or 2 of the kids at a time? Not your middle since I understand that's too difficult, but it would allow her to focus a little more focus on one kid and some breathing room if the oldest is getting shuttled by others. The idea of also looking into camps that have openings for the oldest for a few of the next weeks is a good one. I'm sure some have cancellations at this point. I saw you said parents are a flight away, but if they ARE in fact helpful when they are here say, she has a mom who she loves to be around and would be really helpful if she lived closer could you fly her in for two weeks? (obviously this is very family specific because some grandparents wouldn't actually be that helpful...). This is tough op hopefully others will have some creative ideas. |
Anonymous
| Why did you have a third kid when you are barely surviving? |
Anonymous
Agreed - I'm sorry OP for this first poster, it was very clear you take your responsibilities as a father very seriously and expect an even load, this poster was just being mean. |
Anonymous
Ugh. OP please ignore these trolls or they will take over the thread. |
Anonymous
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You need to take on a set of responsibilities such that you own them and she doesn’t have to think about them.
Eg: soccer coordination job. Do all meal prep so all she has to do is do the actual cooking. Make all kids’ lunches. Do all grocery shopping. Take oldest kid to do X activity 2 days a week. |
Anonymous
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You can still register for full day camps with Overtime Athletics, Fairfax County Parks and Rec and the YMCA. So register the oldest in some camps. YMCA camps in Reston have received a good review from my friends this year and have free pre and after care. The camps are not all that expensive either. I don't know where you live so it is hard to make recommendations but I do know that there are still open camps.
Have you tried one of the food services, like Home Chef or Sun Basket? That would reduce the amount of time spent thinking about meals and meal prep. Most of the meals take 30 minutes to cook. Can you make larger meals on the weekend that you know the kids will like so they can simply be reheated during the week to reduce meal prep and stress? I would strongly suggest that she find someone to pass off the soccer stuff to. |