Juggling Work and School

And then the other change which I guess really impacted me was the logistics of having a younger child still in nursery and then having to have two, two pickups to do rather than one. So, I found it quite stressful um getting after-school care sorted. So, for a while I was having to talk to my work about potentially working from home for a little while until it was resolved and it was quite stressful. In the end everything worked out, and he got a place at an after-school club which meant that I could keep my normal work hours. I chose to pick him up one day a week. My work was quite flexible about that. But it was a stressful few months whilst I sorted out after school care, and then, when it came to starting school and me having to do this new routine, it took me a few weeks to get used to going to pick one up from one location and then having to pick him up from another location.

The sort of logistics of our family life with him starting school has, has changed quite, quite considerably. Both my husband and I work full-time and then we've got a one-year-old, she does the nursery. So, every morning it's rush out the house, get them to where they need to go, and then we don't get home until late and then we don't get to spend much time with him anymore and that's… that does impact on how we're feeling you know: us parents feel guilty, he feels a bit disconnected from us, so we really have to spend any free time sort of reconnecting with him, making sure we're having extra time with him and one on one time with him as parents. Otherwise, we find that our sort of relationship with him uh slips a little bit. So, we really have to spend a lot of time working on that, which means that okay, my husband and I don't get much time for ourselves. So yeah, there's been a lot of - particularly for me - a lot of guilt, you know he says to me: "Mummy, I want you to take me to school. Mummy, I want you to pick me up from school like so-and-so's Mummy does," and I'm thinking, "Well buddy, I can't, because I need to go to work," and I don't come home till late and he doesn't understand that. And it makes me feel really bad. So, I'm in the process now of trying to go part-time, which is something I've never done.

We've also had um family losses as well, so I think in the last three years we've had like four uh losses and that's always on the sort of background of your, your thoughts and it might not add too well, we've also been doing an extension on our house, which might not add to the situation too well. It's basically been 'all go' in that sense and then my wife's been wondering about asking for part-time, which has got approved yesterday, so that might make things a lot easier. But it's a sort of learning curve or learning on the job scenario, you do have to approach it with an open mind. I think we're doing as best we can, I should think any parent thinks they're doing the best they can within the best interests of their child. It's been a tough one in the sense of what we've had to deal with on top of what's expected as a normal scenario with starting school. So, we may have had a bit more on our plates than most, but I've got nothing to really gage that against. Yeah, it's been interesting and then also taking that step back and going, "Right, is there anything I can do better?"