Are working moms stretched too thin?
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| Tue, 06-13-2006 - 2:45pm |
Do you think a mom who works full-time and has kids is stretched too thin?
I was working full-time up till November of 2005. Then I decided that it was all too much. I was exhausted and found that when I did get to spend time with my little guy (he is now 2 1/2) I was very impatient with him because I was soo tired. Also the stress of work often overflowed into my personal life (both with ds and dh).
Now that I have been home for over 6 months, I am finally starting to be more patient and am enjoying my son instead of rushing him along. If he want to take 20 minutes to get into the car - ok, no problem.
So - do you think that trying to juggle work, kids, marriage and all the stresses that come with those things is too much? (I did)
Maybe when my son is older - then I will go back to work and it might be easier because he will be more self-sufficient? Who knows? All I know is that for now, I am enjoying being a SAHM and am glad for the time I get to devote to my son and the lower stress levels (that I believe were very unhealthy for me).
josee

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Not for me, no. I guess learning to follow school rules was one point, but they didn't attend the kind of preschool where being there on time was any sort of rule. Both preschools we used were pretty relaxed, and both of them started the day with free play anyway.
OTOH, my older dd did go to ECE (pre-K) at our neighborhood school, and that was more structured. We wouldn't have been chastised for being late, but there was more of an expectation that kids would be there on time.
It's funny to hear you refer to all the school things as stinking. I returned to work the last 10 weeks of the school year (full-time--I was part-time for a year before that), and all those things are the things I was heart-broken to miss. Ten hour days away from home left no time to do PTO activities or volunteer in the classrooms or pick my son up from school when he broke his wrist or take the other one in for stitches or see the talent show at school...
By the time we got home there was no time for the library, piano practice slid, weekly dates with children one-on-one slid, and housework definitely went out the window. I was getting no sleep. My own children missed out, as did the children I was teaching.
I found that by being a working mother everyone involved lost out on a lot that they deserved. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything. I'm beginning to realize that that is probably the problem for everyone, whether they work or not, or whether they have one child or ten, or whether they are married or single...I guess it comes down to priorities. I wish I could pay someone to do my lawn/snow and clean my house, but at $8/hr then taxes and childcare, we just hope for enough to eek by and pay all the medical bills--see above.
Jennie
i think it safe to say that some 2.5yos could respond well to this, but many (i'd even hazard most) perfectly normal children would not be developmentally ready for it at that age, and there are some major differences between the approach that was being talked about and the approach that you described. most notably, the op was talking about punishing the child after the fact for water already under the bridge (if it happened, she wouldn't take the child next time), while you described a premptive approach that warned the child about consequences for *future* behavior (once it happened, you told her what would happen if she did it *again*, and then you only punished when/if she did do it *again*--and after giving fair warning, not to mention a systematic barrage of reminders to boot).
your approach certainly is appropriate for *younger* children than the other, but 2.5 is still a bit young for it in many cases. and it is just as unrelated to the hypothetical that you were defending as was the leap from "kids shouldn't be constantly scheduled and rushed" to "in order to plan to or to get places on time, you have to expect and be willing to manhandle a hysterical child into a carseat."
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