Reply to How does your AP help out after dinner (if not on the clock)?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are you making her sit with you while your children eat slowly? That would bug. 30 minutes is a really long time to eat a typical, non multi-course meal at home.[/quote]

While 30 minutes is long for eating, I don't think it's long for a family dinner if you want a bit of interaction while eating. Even without children my husband and I could easily sit over a bowl of pasta and a salad for half an hour, just chatting over the day. With school-aged children who all want to talk about their day? 30 minutes can be nothing. Dinner in my HF could easily take an hour.

OP, if you want your AP to eat with you and to help clean up, schedule her. For your own sake. If she is not scheduled please do not expect her to join you for dinner (especially if she had a 10 hour day) or to do more than help set/clean the table or put her own things into the dishwasher before she runs out to meet her friends. If your AP is off at 3.30pm please do not expect her to stick around until after dinner. Or at least please do not be disappointed if she doesn't.
"Once upon a time" when I was an AP, I officially worked 7.30am to 5.30pm on a regular day (toddler). I ate with my HF maybe once or twice a week (usually cooked dinner on the clock once a week) but was usually out the door when I was off (classes two evenings a week) and usually had plans for Friday evening and on the weekends. If I cooked, I didn't clean (family rule - who cooks doesn't have to help with the cleaning). If I didn't cook I did help to clear the table and then usually unloaded the dishwasher the next morning (as one of my regular household chores). However, we had three (pre)teens who were made to help every night so there were plenty of hands to do the work.
We do now schedule our APs for dinner in their first month or so (depending on how long we can be flexible with their working hours) to set the tone (and to make time to get to know them better) and after that they are always invited to join us for dinner but we don't expect them to. If they are not scheduled we don't expect more from them than we do from our kids - put your things in the dishwasher. If everybody does that all that remains is wiping the table and washing pots and pans which is DHs job (because I cook, so I don't do the cleaning - family rule).[/quote]

OP here. This make sense. However our kids are still very young and DH and I need to put them to bed, vacuum around, put dishwasher on, clean what doesn't go in dishwasher, so it get busy after diner. But I don't expect AP to eat with us every day, it is really up to her. But I would expect she will do more than putting her plate away if she does have diner with us. No? I was originally planning to have her empty the dishwasher as her chore but I feel like helping out after dinner will be the best use of her time, so I am intending to tell her that helping out after diner is family chores where everyone participates (of course only for the nights she decide to eat diner with us).[/quote]

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