Literally forever there have been jobs where putting in a lot of late hours is a requirement for advancement. Your husband may hate staying late, but the alternative could be no promotions. Everybody is assuming he prefers staying late to being with his wife and kids, but that is baseless. So maybe this is not the situation in this case, but I for one always came home right on time (as was my preference) and paid a big career price for it.

Anonymous wrote:Dh is good in all other ways but I can’t get him home earlier and this is ruining our marriage. He often gets home at 7-8pm (more like 8 most nights) and kids are in bed. It’s a hard time of night and frankly im not dealing with the kids well.

He’s not a super high earner (140k) and I make more but manage to get home by 5pm.

I feel like this is adhd as well as avoiding the hard parts of being a parent. Despite dropping the kids at school at 7:30 he comes home and messes around and gets to work late.

Any tips on how to get him home sooner? I’m not a nag and am frankly a great wife. This is burning me out. I need my coparent.

Regurgitated Troll post.

Your DH is shirking his responsibilities as a parent. Total loser move. You will get burned out and he will only get worse as your kids age.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are the kids? With your scenario, at 5+ just tell them to get ready for bed and go to bed. No extras.

i

Op here- they’re 1,4 and 6. Going to bed isn’t the problem actually. It’s making dinner, getting kids to eat, getting them bathed and entertaining them until bed. I enjoy reading to kids and putting them to bed. Some nights it’s chaos

I really don’t want a spa day on the weekend or time to myself on the weekend. I need to have my nights run smoother. I can’t handle them at night. They’re great during the day but 4-8pm is hell.

I'd hire help. Someone can entertain the 4 & 6 year old while you put the baby down. A neighborhood teenager is perfect for this because you're in the house if there is a problem.

Also, simplify dinners as much as possible. If your DH won't help with the kids in the evening, perhaps he is willing to prep dinner or throw it in the slow cooker in the morning.

+1 very good advice here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are the kids? With your scenario, at 5+ just tell them to get ready for bed and go to bed. No extras.

i

Op here- they’re 1,4 and 6. Going to bed isn’t the problem actually. It’s making dinner, getting kids to eat, getting them bathed and entertaining them until bed. I enjoy reading to kids and putting them to bed. Some nights it’s chaos

I really don’t want a spa day on the weekend or time to myself on the weekend. I need to have my nights run smoother. I can’t handle them at night. They’re great during the day but 4-8pm is hell.

I would let him know that it is too much for you. Suggest options that work for your family:

Swap schedules (I assume he does mornings).
He needs to be home earlier.
If you can afford it, hire help of an in-home nanny or 2-3 hours every evening.

Good luck! These are hard years in a marriage.
Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:I would tell him that there has been a change at your job (new boss, new project, etc.) and you are no longer able to leave early enough to do pick up. He is now in charge of at least a part of the evening routine. And since you make more money, your job should be prioritized.

+1

And do drop off and have him do pickup.

Anonymous wrote:I would tell him that there has been a change at your job (new boss, new project, etc.) and you are no longer able to leave early enough to do pick up. He is now in charge of at least a part of the evening routine. And since you make more money, your job should be prioritized.

Please don’t lie, OP. I think you two do need to have the conversation, but Nothing you’ve said in your posts, indicate that you need to start lying to your husband.

Since you make more he should quit his job and stay home. Then in a few years when the kids are older sue for divorce and make you pay alimony.

Have you tried something drastic like talking to your husband?

My situation was different because it was about middle of the night wakeups for a special needs child (we still have to get up with her as a teen). The lack of sleep was actually making me lose both my health and mental well being. So, I told him that loved him and didn’t want a divorce but that I was renting a studio to sleep in every other night. I would leave after the girls were in bed and would be back before our neurotypical child got up (our special needs kid would have no awareness of the situation). I just desperately needed sleep.

I started looking at places. When he saw me figuring out what rent, internet, etc would cost, he magically managed to get up every other night. It has been that way for more than 5 years now I think. And we are still happily married. And it wasn’t really because of the money, he just realized how serious I was at that point and finally “heard” me.

In your situation, I would make him do pickups three days a week and would not worry a bit about 6:30 pick up. I would find a book club or something and not even be there at 6:45 one night a week. I would let him handle it entirely.

I would tell him that there has been a change at your job (new boss, new project, etc.) and you are no longer able to leave early enough to do pick up. He is now in charge of at least a part of the evening routine. And since you make more money, your job should be prioritized.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are the kids? With your scenario, at 5+ just tell them to get ready for bed and go to bed. No extras.

i

Op here- they’re 1,4 and 6. Going to bed isn’t the problem actually. It’s making dinner, getting kids to eat, getting them bathed and entertaining them until bed. I enjoy reading to kids and putting them to bed. Some nights it’s chaos

I really don’t want a spa day on the weekend or time to myself on the weekend. I need to have my nights run smoother. I can’t handle them at night. They’re great during the day but 4-8pm is hell.

I'd hire help. Someone can entertain the 4 & 6 year old while you put the baby down. A neighborhood teenager is perfect for this because you're in the house if there is a problem.

Also, simplify dinners as much as possible. If your DH won't help with the kids in the evening, perhaps he is willing to prep dinner or throw it in the slow cooker in the morning.

Neighborhood teenagers don't do this. If you're looking for part time evening help, you're going to be paying upwards of $20/hour just to get someone who is going to keep your kids alive.

+1

The ridiculous hire-a-teenager thing around here is nonsense. It isn't 1978.

Someone would do it for $20/hr, but then you have the additional mental load/worry about managing a household employee, and what if she calls out or is sick or if her school schedule changes and now she can’t do it and I have to find someone else. Wonder if she could hire a full time nanny with somewhat non-standard hours like 12-8? It’s annoying that it has to come to that because her husband won’t help out though.

I was the PP who suggested a neighborhood kid. *shrug* maybe I've just gotten lucky, and I do pay $20/hr, but I've had multiple neighbor kids, high-school seniors, who have been reliable and helpful. It might not be every evening, but a couple days a week babysitting is an attractive gig for some kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My H was like this. Would goof off all morning then work late to make up.

Honestly the only thing that helped was nagging him nonstop for about a year. I was like a pitbull on it. I would track all of our leisure time and show it to him weekly.

Eventually I did escalate it to us doing a 50/50 custody split while together. I said I was getting ready to move out and we needed to start getting ready for what a custody split would be like. He was forced to figure out childcare on the days I was off. And, shocker, he managed to figure out how to get reasonable work hours.

Don’t be a cool girl who doesn’t try to change him. People can change, they just need constant consequences.

Wow. What is your marriage like now?

Good and bad. After years of constantly holding boundaries and letting him feel consequences, he does finally get it and is a pretty good H.

But there’s also a lot of resentment on my end that it even had to get to that point. Most of the time I’m fine but I do randomly get angry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are the kids? With your scenario, at 5+ just tell them to get ready for bed and go to bed. No extras.

i

Op here- they’re 1,4 and 6. Going to bed isn’t the problem actually. It’s making dinner, getting kids to eat, getting them bathed and entertaining them until bed. I enjoy reading to kids and putting them to bed. Some nights it’s chaos

I really don’t want a spa day on the weekend or time to myself on the weekend. I need to have my nights run smoother. I can’t handle them at night. They’re great during the day but 4-8pm is hell.

Tell him either he participates equally in afterschool pick up, bed, bath and dinner or you will hire an afterschool helper M-F from 5-8 pm.

Also, see if you can do some meal prep on the weekend together.

this is the way. the other alternative is to switch drop off/pickup and have him do pickup so he’s forced to come home at a normal time in the PM.

also I wouldn’t hesitate to go to therapy over this.

Op here. I actually like the idea of switching drop off and pickup. Or at least he gets 2 after care days a week. I had been worried that my kids would be at aftercare until 6:30 though, which made me sad. I often pick them up at 4:30 and we do fun stuff.

Anonymous wrote:My DH got home at 7:30pm a lot when my kids were little. It wasn't because he was wasting time or being selfish or deceitful, it was because he worked until 6 and sometimes his boss wanted something or wanted to talk until 6:30 and traffic put him between 40-65 minutes for the commute.

We need more details about how commute and demands.

I mean, if his hours are flexible and the office clears at 4:59pm and he lives 3 miles from work, yeah, this is not a good situation.

But if his work culture is that people stick around until 6:30 or 7 sometimes and he works in Arlington and you live in Gainesville, that's more than within reason.

Salary probably doesn't impact those factors. So if it's the former you need to have a hard talk...like once he drops the kids off he should be heading into work, not back home (I do this). Or if it's the later, he might want to look for a new job with better hours or closer to home or remote.

Op here. He has a 10-15 min commute. It’s not his boss or coworkers staying late. He likes his job and finds it interesting. I think he just loses track of time. I sort of get it. I know at my job I’m most productive starting at 2pm and it’s painful to drag myself away to go get all the kids.

He’s a fed so his job is more flexible than most. A lot of his coworkers work 7-3:30.

I tried the nanny route all summer long and it was hard. Nanny was 25 but just wasn’t helpful. She seemed responsible but didn’t know how to cook absolutely anything, didn’t know how to work a dishwasher and had trouble maintaining discipline (and my kids are pretty well behaved). Managing her was a big headache and I’m not eager to try again. I don’t really want someone to just watch the kids while I cook, I’d like someone to help cook, talk to me about their day and wrangle kids with me.

My job doesn’t have part time options but I think that would solve a lot of problems.