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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]you pay for childcare like everyone else before covid[/quote]

There are so many bitter people here. Before Covid I was able to telework two days a week. So could my husband. Now he has to return to the office full time and I probably will too (haven’t heard from my agency yet). So no it’s not like before covid. My commute is an hour  long and his is an hour and 20 minutes long one way. We live right next to the metro but they moved my husband’s office so now it’s just much further. That’s two hours a day commuting for me and almost 3 hrs for him. In that time we can make dinner, do the laundry etc. We are both in litigation so our jobs are actually stressful and don’t have much time during the day. But those two hours that I save mean everything. Also my eldest two are in elementary school and extended day is completely full. There is a waitlist to get in. I pick them up from the bus stop at 3 pm and bring them home. Since they are in 3rd and 4th grade they are self sufficient and even set the table for dinner and make the salad. Since we are a bilingual family, a tutor comes at 3:30 three days a week to tutor them in my native language. My youngest who is three is at daycare and my husband picks her up at 5:30 while I prep dinner. It’s tough having three kids but telework makes it much it much easier. Sure I can find childcare but it’s not easy. Who would want to work for two hours only? And it’s not cheap. And when would I find the time to cook? Republicans pretend to care about families but people don’t have kids or as many kids as they want because it’s so hard to balance working with having a family. Our school calls us and tells us to pick the kids up for every sniffle. What happens now? I would have to leave work (takes an hour) pick them up and drive them home. All that time wasted when I could have just driven 5 minutes and gone right back to work. Since my work has so many deadlines I will have to make up for the lost time in the evening. How do I balance that with spending time with my kids, making dinner, giving my 3 year old a bath? Cleaning up…. The entire thing is insane and people like PP who want us all to suffer are just disgusting. Society is going to have to resolve this issue. How do people have kids while two spouses are working full time? Republicans have the answer to that. They want women to stay at home. That’s what may end up happening because many of us may just have no choice. I’m sure PP will be celebrating [/quote]
OK, deep breath.
I was very much in your shoes. What worked for me was to pay the tutor to pick my daughter up from car line (or in your case perhaps the bus stop), bring her home, get her a small snack and start the tutoring lesson at 3:30 as planned then help her with homework till I got home at 5:30. Yes, I had to pay her for 2.5 hours 5 days a week instead of paying her for 1 hour 3 days a week but to know she was being reliably picked up and when I got home all the homework was done and tutoring was done was really helpful. 
For years I have meal prepped on weekends and planned lunches and meals around leftovers.
It felt weird to ask the tutor to do this, I was really hesitant to do it. I led in by acknowledging it was an odd request and I would pay her hourly rate. We had that arrangement for 2 years.[/quote]

Thanks so much PP for the advice. I’m just so stressed I can’t think straight.  I didn’t think about asking the tutor to babysit. That would honestly be the best solution. Paying her the hourly rate makes sense since that’s how much her time costs. It would only be an extra say 45 minutes so I think it’s doable. Need to muster the courage to ask though! I feel a bit embarrassed asking her :/[/quote]

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