Reply to Anyone have two working parents and no childcare (other than school during normal hours)?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We have two working parents and no childcare outside of school hours.  My kids are a little older than yours, but still in elementary school.  
We make it work- but I am in a very different income bracket than you appear to be.  
We had a series of part time people who we paid pretty well- but the quality was extremely uneven.  The best one left fairly quickly.  The weaker ones have quit or been fired.  I felt like I was spending an inordinate amount of time hiring and managing part time help- so DH and I rearranged our work schedules to cover the child care-- I start working at 6am, and am home at 4 to get kids off the bus and take them to after school activities.  DH does morning.
Even our better nannies were bad at household tasks, so I don't miss not having that assistance- but we do outsource a lot of stuff- groceries are delivered, house cleaners come once a week, yard work is outsourced, etc.   
We use camps for teacher workdays summer etc- which the kids love.
Are you thinking that you would be working while your kids were home in the afternoon?  If so- I wouldn't do that to them- i have to do it occasionally and it is just frustrating.  The only way to really keep kids from bothering me is to set them up with screens.   My kids play independently- but the level of interruption that you can tolerate when you are say making dinner, or doing laundry as compared to writing a brief?  no comparison.   
If I had the financial situation that you have- I would probably try and hire a full time household manager, who had a small part of her duties as child care/ driving kids.   
[/quote]

I had the 6 am start when I worked at the government and I loved that it made my commute faster (as did leaving earlier in the afternoon) but I hated never seeing my kids in the mornings.  However, that was when they were younger and their bedtimes were earlier, and now that I do mornings I feel like I may have romanticized them a bit!  I am very worried about flaky part-time help, and the idea of having to find people over and over again is daunting.

I would not work in the afternoons if the girls were home, which would mean I'd have to start earlier those days.  Other days they'd stay at school for dance or whatever and wouldn't get home until before dinner.  I know I cannot accomplish anything work-related when they're there (sick days are an exception), so I would not plan to do so.  They are good at helping with dinner and other stuff around the house.  They also love playing outside (they would ride their bikes all day if we let them), but of course you can't plan for the weather.  I know if I gave them screens they'd leave me alone completely but that would be a last resort and only if needed.  I will say that now that they're older, having less of a nanny and more of a house manager makes sense.  Our nanny has somewhat transitioned into that role now that they're in school but it would make more sense to look in that direction.  It may mean we wouldn't keep our maid, since presumably the house manager could do cleaning while the kids are at school.  Our nanny does some stuff now, but mostly neatening as opposed to cleaning (for example, she's never scrubbed one of our toilets).[/quote]

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