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School Holidays-how do you manage?
Hi there
Just wondered how everyone copes with school hols and trying to be at work.
I find it hard enough juggling between running the business, being a mum and looking after the home, school hols then become even harder getting someone to look after the children without me feeling guilty that i cant be at home with them more.
It must be difficult for the ones who run a husband/wife business together as well.
Any tips anyone to get everything done in the weeks that already seem to fly by!!
Rebecca
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7 Replies
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Hi Rebecca,
Me being the ‘Modern’ man type :lol1: I know where you are coming from, I work from home mainly, we have a 2.5 year old, my wife is a teacher part-time and I have the boy the rest of the time, 3 days a week, all day Mon, Tue morning, all day Wed, & Thursday pm. I take him with me wherever I go, be it fitting, meeting, carving, stone yards and fitting in 120 Lifeboat ‘Shouts’ a year etc.. This has broadened his horizons and better than being stuck in a nursery all his first years but I appreciate how hard it is but living in laid back Dorset has It’s advantages 😀 😀
Ian
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I can sympathise Rebecca – it is very difficult.
Alison and I started our business nearly nine years ago – when our children were three and five. For the first few years Alison continued looking after the kids while I did most of the work. later we took on an employee which allowed Alison to continue spending a lot of time at home. Our first employee left after about 18 months and for a while after that we had a part time worker helping out . With both of our children at school Alison spent much more time at work – leaving early in time to get the kids from school. Holidays were always a problem but my mother very kindly gave up a lot of her time to watch them and allow Alison to keep working during the school holidays.
Nowadays both my Kids are old enough to look after themselves during school holidays – we’re only a phonecall away.
We were lucky that my mother was so obliging and ready to help out. If ot hadn’t been for her we would have had to employ someone else to cover for Alison when she was unavailable for work.
Our government are always making noises about helping working parents with childcare and so on, but I have never heard any initiatives coming forth to help out husband and wife teams running their own business. Maybe there aren’t enough of us to justify vote catching – so they just aren’t interested in our plight 🙄
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Got no kids but i understand where yr coming from, must be really hard at times!
Got a good idea though, why not take yr youngest to work, let him/her have a go at designing and charge yr Local City/County Council about £100k for the design!!! 😀
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My son is now almost 12 and when I can’t off load him on my mum he comes to work with me. I have to keep an eye on the little scroat as he gets up to so much mischief. On the one occasion he decided to paint one of the wooden stools and after admiring his handy work promptly sat on it for a rest! 😮 😮 😮 (hot) (hot) (:) (:) Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!
I suppose you have to laugh really! :lol1: 🙄
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oops know the feeling mike… 😛 great fun eh!! 😀
had lucy in the workshop for a bit one day…..she saw me trimming a bit vinyl…it was on an alu-color sign………so she thought hey i could do that!! 😉
anyway back to rebecca’s post, i’m lucky as my workshop is only yards away from house, so looking after the wee ones is not a problem, but only for a short time….then i have to stop work do the usual woman’s chores, then go back and catch up later on with work at night!! which i find fits in nicely!! 😉
Nik
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the problem we have with school hoildays (we have no children) but have sisters that have so we get the children for school hoildays 🙂 it’s amazinghow quick they learn all the weeding stuff etc 😀
We do love to have them even feel we teach them something they must like it they keep coming back oldest is 22 youngest 11
Lynn
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Its certainly challenging when you have children and a home life and a full time business to run 😮
We have a one year old and three year old, my mum looks after Ethan the youngest every morning and Stephani goes to playgroup. We felt its more beneficial for Steve to be at the business more than me at the moment as he does do the majority of fabrication and installation. I drop the kids off in the morning, get to work, cram as much in as possible before I leave to pick kids up at 1pm, spend the rest of the day being mummy and usually when they are napping in the afternoon I will get a bit more design/quote work etc done. I do a lot of work in the evenings at home once they are in bed … hence why I am always glued to this laptop in the evenings …… although I do tend to get distracted by a certain signboards place 😉
Its hard work and at the end of every month I wonder where the eck the time has gone 😮 Im more than happy putting my work off till the evenings as it means I get to spend time with the kids during the day …. they aren’t young forever and there is too much to miss out on.
We are lucky to have my mum on hand and at the moment I don’t have to worry about school hols as the playgroup is open all year round except for bank hols when we are closed anyway.
I could babble on for ages here, but I won’t bore you any longer .. well thats if you have even got this far 😛
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