Reply to If your spouse works a lot, how do you manage expectations about your own availability?

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[quote=Anonymous]Well, I agree with the poster that says he lacks empathy — which would be a major challenge for me.

But it sounds like you have plenty of money so it is nuts that you are not hiring help. In my marriage, I am the primary earner and I travel a couple of times a month — but my husband also works a lot. One kid has profound SN. The other has inattentive ADHD and some anxiety.

Our kids are teens and we have simply had tons of help over the years. That doesn’t mean we aren’t super involved, but you cannot do it all — particularly when you are still doing diapers changes, baths, etc for a 16 year old that is a baby cognitively. Sometimes it helps to see exactly what “help” can look like.

Here is what that looks like. We generally have help 7 days a week. The demographic is usually a kid in college or a recent college grad. They are often looking towards grad school in a world where SN experience might look good for them (med school, PT, child life specialist, etc). I can generally be really flexible about scheduling. I just need help — although some amount of after school hours are the best. I usually have two people at a time since no one usually wants to actually work seven days a week, and I play to whatever their specific strengths are. If they like to cook, they can help with cooking. If not, they can do other stuff. Right now, I’ve got a recent college grad who is willing to split her days between mornings and afternoons. She comes at 6:15 and quietly gets our profound SN kid ready for school and into her van at 6:45. At that point my other kid and I are up and she packs her lunch and makes both of us breakfast while we get ready. She unloads the dishwasher that ran the night before. Between her, my husband and I somebody takes the other kid to school. For her second shift, she  picked my less-SN kid up from school. I took over with that kid to work on homework with her (the ADHD kid). I asked the sitter to make the physical flash cards for the 43 words my kid has to learn by next Tuesday while I was helping with other homework and drove her to an activity. Sitter was keeping an eye on other kid and doing kid laundry during the two hour activity (and I came back home to work more). She then picked up the less-Sn kid from the activity and left. Somewhere in there, she also helped with dinner. It is immensely helpful to have a third person in the home. This sitter doesn’t come every morning. My husband and I have been splitting mornings for years. We go week by week on which mornings she can come and which days after school she can work. When she is there, it just takes the pressure off.[/quote]

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