What would YOU have to do to SAH?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2005
What would YOU have to do to SAH?
2476
Fri, 02-13-2009 - 5:09pm

If you're a WOH/WAH mom, what sort of "downsizing" would you need to do in order to afford to be a SAHM? (SAHM defined here as not earning any money)

For me, I would have to put all our non-essential possessions in storage and move in with my parents.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2000
Tue, 02-24-2009 - 9:18pm

To Dylan, going to museums, reenactments, etc. are vacations. That's what he loves and so do we. If we ever to go away for a vacation, it would be to visit the Civil War battlefields.

Chris

The truth may be out there but lies are in your head. Terry Pratchett

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2000
Tue, 02-24-2009 - 9:21pm

Exactly. Life is an education. School is just one means among many to achieve that.

Chris

The truth may be out there but lies are in your head. Terry Pratchett

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-03-2008
Tue, 02-24-2009 - 9:37pm
I wish we got that!
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-03-2008
Tue, 02-24-2009 - 9:41pm
Algebra never changes. :)
Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 12:01am

Yes, I think it's a slightly different philosophy, at least when it comes to homework. At our elementary school, homework isn't graded, and parents are expected (and encouraged) to help kids with their homework. Most of the projects are "family projects." We don't get requested in 3d grade not to help the kids with their homework unless they ask for it.

What I've done with my kids isn't that different from what you do, however, except that I do check homework every day (for elementary school), which I think you said you don't do.

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 12:09am
Yeah, that makes sense. We have a language issue too, but it's different from the one you face. We have a lot of ELL kids in our school. One of the problems is that the parents of these kids usually don't speak English, so they can't really help with homework, since schoolwork is all in English.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 1:18am
That was me when ds was in K-3. By the time he hit 4th grade, my Swedish was good enough to communicate with the teacher and at least understand most of his homework. I still couldn't help much with Swedish or math homework, though. Swedish was impossible for obvious reasons, but math was a surprise for me. Different countries have different conventions and approaches for solving things (for example, the way the solution is shown for long division is completely different). The kids in effect had to learn how to do math in Swedish and English.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-08-2006
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 5:16am

on the flip side, knowing that this woman's dd probably had great difficulty retaining the history information helps to understand exactly why she worked with her dd all week on it.

It sounds like she just assumed that others were having trouble with it too.

FWIW -- my dd and ds almost never had to study for a spelling test. Generally, they're natural born spellers. As for dsd, she's a whole other ball of wax. She has to review them (above and beyond the actual spelling workbook pages for homework) each day. If she had them wrong, she wrote them 5-10x each while saying the letters out loud. Even doing all that, she could get a 100% on the test and then mispell the word the following week when using it in a paragraph.

eileen

Avatar for rollmops2009
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2009
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 8:21am
Actually, I don't think so. She approached all home work with this kind of determination. The kid was perfectly fine, but even in first grade, only straight A+s would do for her mother. We had a couple of parents like this in the class. The mother was interested in upward social mobility and saw one step as getting her kid into a prestigious private HS (which she accomplished eventually).
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2003
Wed, 02-25-2009 - 9:37am
My DH tutors a kid whose parents find anything lower than an A+ unacceptable.
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