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1. Dear Care and Feeding,
I work from home. My kids are 8 and 12. When they were little, we hired a sitter to watch them on the random days off from school, but they don’t really need a sitter now.
For holidays when they are off and I’m working, my husband and I agreed to a set of rules for them: If the kids help with two small chores, read for 30 minutes, and play outside all before noon, then they can have screen time. The kids reluctantly agreed to this policy.
But they still demand my time. They will complete the list above, then ask to FaceTime with a grandparent (a clever loophole). They come into my office whining that they are bored. They are old enough to help themselves to snacks, but if I don’t supervise, they will eat everything before lunch. I make and serve lunch. Even after lunch, they play on their tablets and mindlessly snack. If they ate everything earlier, they come to my office whining for more snacks.
I feel like my husband is taking advantage of my work-from-home job. I feel like my work and time come second to his. I would like to have a full day off the weekend after one of the school holidays. A day when no one asks me for food or entertainment or a ride somewhere. A day when I’m not picking up after everyone. I don’t need a spa day; I need a day to myself. My husband says that’s not fair because his job doesn’t have working from home as an option, and I can’t just “quit parenting for a day.”
—Holidays Are Not Days Off
Dear Holidays,
You can absolutely take a day off parenting. Your spouse should 100 percent support this idea, but it’s not like you need his permission. Pick some weekend day after a school holiday, or take a day off work during the week if you can. Plan a nice day for yourself. Let your husband know he’s on deck for any child-related needs—or hire a sitter, I guess, if he’s going to whine about it—and go be free. (There’s no reason your husband can’t also do this, from time to time. We all need breaks.)
If you and your husband don’t have or don’t want to take any PTO during school closures/holidays, you might need firmer rules/boundaries to discourage the kids from interrupting you quite so much. (I recognize that, depending on the kids, those rules can be tough to enforce.) I also work from home, and when my kids were younger than yours, I just let them watch Frozen a lot. Not the best example, maybe! But just because your children don’t need someone to change their diapers or watch to make sure they’re not eating something toxic doesn’t mean you can’t still engage some help now and then—maybe think about whether it would ever make sense for you to call in one of your old sitters, especially on those long painful days when schools are closed and you still need to get a full day’s work in somehow. They could even take your kids out of your house (!), to the park or the library or wherever, while you work in blessed peace and quiet.
It sounds like your husband is kind of taking it for granted that you’re at home, albeit working. He might not understand how hard it is to get anything done with the kids bothering you every five minutes, but he should be able to take your word for it. Whatever his issue is, the two of you are supposed to be on the same team, so it would be ideal if he could skip past the annoying part where he accuses you of trying to “quit parenting” and helps you figure out how you can actually take a little break. Which you could do, by the way, even if you weren’t the parent at home! An occasional break or nice day to yourself is not something you have to earn with X number of hours with the kids. You do not have to justify your need for rest, or time to yourself—you already have a right to these things.
**********
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
When should I let my daughter learn lessons on her own? My daughter “Chloe” is 12 years old. She recently went with her two closest friends to the zoo. She really wanted to wear a summer dress and white sandals and tried to leave the house without wearing sunscreen.
I talked to Chloe and made her go wearing sunscreen, and also shoes that would be better for walking on the dirt paths at the zoo (I couldn’t change her mind about the dress, so I picked my battles). But I’m not sure I like doing that.
She’s 12 now, and none of the consequences would have been disastrous. The next time something like this comes up, should I just let her make her mistakes and experience the consequences?
—When to Intervene
Dear When to Intervene,
You’re right that probably nothing too disastrous would have befallen Chloe if she’d gone ahead with her original plan. (I also would have insisted on sunscreen, though.)
Still, even if you let all those things be Chloe’s call next time, there’s no reason you can’t point out the merits of good walking shoes and sun protection. She’s still a kid, and you’re still supposed to be helping her learn.
But parenthood is one long lesson about how little control we actually have, and having an older kid or teen in particular really drives that home. Letting Chloe make and learn from her own mistakes is not a bad thing to be pondering as the parent of a soon-to-be-teenager. It means you recognize that your child is growing up, and that soon all these small daily decisions—and much bigger ones, too—will be hers to make.
That you’re already thinking about if and when you will need to step back and let Chloe do her own thing seems appropriate. And if you can avoid getting angry or taking it personally when she makes choices you disagree with, that will put you way ahead of lots of parents out there. For now, you can decide on a case-by-case basis how to respond when you think she’s making a mistake. You don’t have to just bite your tongue, especially if the stakes seem higher—hopefully, you will feel that you can be honest with your daughter about what you think, even when she’s grown and all the choices are in her hands.
1. Dear Care and Feeding,
I work from home. My kids are 8 and 12. When they were little, we hired a sitter to watch them on the random days off from school, but they don’t really need a sitter now.
For holidays when they are off and I’m working, my husband and I agreed to a set of rules for them: If the kids help with two small chores, read for 30 minutes, and play outside all before noon, then they can have screen time. The kids reluctantly agreed to this policy.
But they still demand my time. They will complete the list above, then ask to FaceTime with a grandparent (a clever loophole). They come into my office whining that they are bored. They are old enough to help themselves to snacks, but if I don’t supervise, they will eat everything before lunch. I make and serve lunch. Even after lunch, they play on their tablets and mindlessly snack. If they ate everything earlier, they come to my office whining for more snacks.
I feel like my husband is taking advantage of my work-from-home job. I feel like my work and time come second to his. I would like to have a full day off the weekend after one of the school holidays. A day when no one asks me for food or entertainment or a ride somewhere. A day when I’m not picking up after everyone. I don’t need a spa day; I need a day to myself. My husband says that’s not fair because his job doesn’t have working from home as an option, and I can’t just “quit parenting for a day.”
—Holidays Are Not Days Off
Dear Holidays,
You can absolutely take a day off parenting. Your spouse should 100 percent support this idea, but it’s not like you need his permission. Pick some weekend day after a school holiday, or take a day off work during the week if you can. Plan a nice day for yourself. Let your husband know he’s on deck for any child-related needs—or hire a sitter, I guess, if he’s going to whine about it—and go be free. (There’s no reason your husband can’t also do this, from time to time. We all need breaks.)
If you and your husband don’t have or don’t want to take any PTO during school closures/holidays, you might need firmer rules/boundaries to discourage the kids from interrupting you quite so much. (I recognize that, depending on the kids, those rules can be tough to enforce.) I also work from home, and when my kids were younger than yours, I just let them watch Frozen a lot. Not the best example, maybe! But just because your children don’t need someone to change their diapers or watch to make sure they’re not eating something toxic doesn’t mean you can’t still engage some help now and then—maybe think about whether it would ever make sense for you to call in one of your old sitters, especially on those long painful days when schools are closed and you still need to get a full day’s work in somehow. They could even take your kids out of your house (!), to the park or the library or wherever, while you work in blessed peace and quiet.
It sounds like your husband is kind of taking it for granted that you’re at home, albeit working. He might not understand how hard it is to get anything done with the kids bothering you every five minutes, but he should be able to take your word for it. Whatever his issue is, the two of you are supposed to be on the same team, so it would be ideal if he could skip past the annoying part where he accuses you of trying to “quit parenting” and helps you figure out how you can actually take a little break. Which you could do, by the way, even if you weren’t the parent at home! An occasional break or nice day to yourself is not something you have to earn with X number of hours with the kids. You do not have to justify your need for rest, or time to yourself—you already have a right to these things.
2. Dear Care and Feeding,
When should I let my daughter learn lessons on her own? My daughter “Chloe” is 12 years old. She recently went with her two closest friends to the zoo. She really wanted to wear a summer dress and white sandals and tried to leave the house without wearing sunscreen.
I talked to Chloe and made her go wearing sunscreen, and also shoes that would be better for walking on the dirt paths at the zoo (I couldn’t change her mind about the dress, so I picked my battles). But I’m not sure I like doing that.
She’s 12 now, and none of the consequences would have been disastrous. The next time something like this comes up, should I just let her make her mistakes and experience the consequences?
—When to Intervene
Dear When to Intervene,
You’re right that probably nothing too disastrous would have befallen Chloe if she’d gone ahead with her original plan. (I also would have insisted on sunscreen, though.)
Still, even if you let all those things be Chloe’s call next time, there’s no reason you can’t point out the merits of good walking shoes and sun protection. She’s still a kid, and you’re still supposed to be helping her learn.
But parenthood is one long lesson about how little control we actually have, and having an older kid or teen in particular really drives that home. Letting Chloe make and learn from her own mistakes is not a bad thing to be pondering as the parent of a soon-to-be-teenager. It means you recognize that your child is growing up, and that soon all these small daily decisions—and much bigger ones, too—will be hers to make.
That you’re already thinking about if and when you will need to step back and let Chloe do her own thing seems appropriate. And if you can avoid getting angry or taking it personally when she makes choices you disagree with, that will put you way ahead of lots of parents out there. For now, you can decide on a case-by-case basis how to respond when you think she’s making a mistake. You don’t have to just bite your tongue, especially if the stakes seem higher—hopefully, you will feel that you can be honest with your daughter about what you think, even when she’s grown and all the choices are in her hands.
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I mean, framing calling Grandma as a "screentime loophole"? That's weird and controlling.
But sitting there supervising them so they don't eat all their snack foods? Do they even get a morning snack at school? Maybe this is time for logical consequences - if you eat all the snack food today, there's none tomorrow or until we go to the store again.
Maybe the solution here is that they do need a babysitter, or to be in a school break camp. Or at least the younger one does, and the older one needs to visit a friend for the day (either on an alternating deal or for a payment).
I'm inclined to say that LW needs to let it all go, and if they spend the entire day having screentime and roasting marshmallows over the stove, well, that's about what my sister and I did on those random days off as kids, and that was before my dad died, when we had a dedicated parent at home, not working. (Well, we also read a lot.)
2. If you're asking this question, LW, the answer is "Yes, let your child make mistakes". I can't help but think that this is not a question often asked by people with more than three children - at a certain point, you just can't do it anymore.
no subject
I was reading that as interrupting the LW to ask about using FaceTime/asking her to set up the call — so, the loophole is about the interruption, not so much about the screen.
I do think that the list of things they have to do before they’re allowed to use screens is probably a bit controlling (it’s a day off school, it’s not going to kill them), and that LW would probably be better served, and less frequently interrupted, if she relaxed a bit about that.
The letter, however, was about her husband not being willing to let her have some uninterrupted free time, and I think *that* is a much clearer question – yes, she should be able to take a damn day off every once in a while, after spending a school holiday getting pestered while trying to work!
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That’s a physical injury, it can take days to a week to recuperate, and studies have shown that childhood sunburns can contribute to adult skin issues, up to and including skin cancer, so that’s not one that I would be willing to be at all flexible about.
(I also think it’s cruel, if you knew that you were sending a child out without sunscreen, to let them get hurt. Let’s just say that the phrase “to teach her a lesson” sits very badly with me, in this situation.)
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Of course the long-term consequences are potentially serious, but they aren't ones that the kid can easily learn a lesson from.
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Given that skin cancer runs in my family, I was always religious about making sure that my daughter had sunscreen!
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This letter writer is wrong that her kids don't need supervision any more. They are not old enough to figure out how to structure their time when she is working from home. She 100 percent still needs a babysitter.
PLUS she needs some days off and her husband needs a swift kick in the pants.
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my employer has a policy that a babysitter is required in order to have a permanent work-from-home plan if you have kids under 12. it's no big deal if you're just doing it once in a great while when the child is sick, but for something that sounds as permanent as this, even if the kids have school she'd need a babysitter for before/after school and on holidays. i'm amazed her employer has not yet cracked down on her