This has very much been out experience, too. I feel you - I'm sorry. We also reduced retirement savings for a few years and made other choices to make it work. TBH, our kid is in a much better place now, and I'm glad we did it, but we are happy to see a possible end in sight.

I think there are options you can look at, depending on what your primary concerns are:.

- Can DH take the kid to school and you do pickup? We time shifted our work schedules to allow for this, and it wasn't great, but it worked.

- Can you add evening hours if you want to keep working FT? Either on you current job or another related position? Depending on what type of education work you do, there may be opportunities to grow your resume through evening teaching or consulting (if you want to - just know if may be exhausting to do it all like this).

- Is there an afterschool after are that could pick up and drop off? I've heard of karate clubs doing this sometimes. The SN school where my kid goes doesn't have aftercare either, so we vaguely looked into this option for a while.

- Can you trade off pickups with other parents? Ask the school if they could put you in touch with others to find out if they live nearby or are interested. Our school offers some clubs after school - not consistently enough for real aftercare, but you can kind of piece it together with some flexibility and other help.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:why not get a babysitter and put dc in some activities?

Because I don’t make much money to start with - not enough to pay for a nanny who drives. We live across town from the new school.

Also my kid will do some activities but she’s currently so wiped at the end of a school day she doesn’t have bandwidth to do them every day. It’s been a long journey to get past school refusal so I’m not going to risk burnout by over enrolling her in activities and introducing a new caregiver.

PP here who also has dealt with school refusal- yes you are doing the right thing. What a gift for your child. It may not be forever. You are a good mom

Try it this way, it sounds like you need to, try to just enjoy the lower pressure, and re evaluate in six months. This is just a “season of life.” It’s not a permanent change of course for your life. We’re allowed to try different strategies to achieve family balance. (Everything was a wreck before I went part time to just 16 hours a week… that was almoat 6 yeats ago… it helped so much… looking for something full time now that are in a better spot and DC is about to enter high school. If you don’t take the time, life could snowball in a really bad way and then you’d be in a worse position. I feel very sure that I had to do this and it was the right and necessary choice for us)

Honestly I think you did the right thing.

I went through this too. I ended up choosing the career stagnation option of not seeking advancement so I could have extreme flexibility and work from home. I truly think doing that for 2 years has paid off. Our kid is in a lot better place and while I'm not child psych expert, the stability of one adult and not having to rotate through sitters and after school, even though many do without issues, paid off. It's still tough nonetheless. Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:why not get a babysitter and put dc in some activities?

Because I don’t make much money to start with - not enough to pay for a nanny who drives. We live across town from the new school.

Also my kid will do some activities but she’s currently so wiped at the end of a school day she doesn’t have bandwidth to do them every day. It’s been a long journey to get past school refusal so I’m not going to risk burnout by over enrolling her in activities and introducing a new caregiver.

why not get a babysitter and put dc in some activities?