negtive aspects to work from home?

amother

Tue, Feb 22 2011, 5:58 am

I am a teacher. When my first child was born I was teaching for the public schools. I decided to quit teaching and stay at home. I still needed to make money so I opened up a nursery school for 3 year olds from my home. It was a wonderful 16 years. I worked every afternoon I had an aide and was licensed through the state. I was home if the school needed me or if one of my children were sick. I was home to drive carpool and be involved with my kids. I fwlt I had the best of both worlds. I always had a full class and people loved my nursery school. To this day people talk about how nice it was.All good things have to come to an end as this did. When my yougest was two years old tuitions and billd just got to high and I had to go back out to teach. I know it was hard on my older kids who had to get the little ones ready,make sure they had their snacks,homework and their backpacks. My husband had to ajust and come home from shul anddrive a carpool before work. I was always very tired but this was the right time for me to go back. Besides for ruining my retirement pension because you have to have a certain amoutn of years in to retire..I woud never give back what I had by being home for my kids. It was sixteen wonderful years of raising my kids and being invoved with them all the time.

ABC

Tue, Feb 22 2011, 12:54 pm

pumpkinsbubby wrote:

I was a wahm when my kids were little. Now they're all grown and married b"H. If I had to do it over again, I would say it's alot easier to go to the office than to try and work when the children are around. I got up very early, got dressed, fed the baby, saw the children off to school, put the baby in for a nap, and started my job - typesetting. Some days it was easy, other days the baby was kvetchy and needed extra attention. Then there were winter snow days where school was cancelled, and days where one or more of the children were home sick. People would drop off work for me to do, and I told them when it would be ready. Problem was that everyone needed his/her job "yesterday," not today or tomorrow. So I was under alot of pressure to have all the jobs ready when the clients came to pick them up, usually at the end of the workday - precisely when the children were coming home from school waiting for dinner. My original plan was to always "be there" for the children, but much later I realized that I wasn't really there for them, because of all the pressure of getting my jobs done in time. Hope this helps.

If you had a job outside the home, what would have happened in this situation? I just dont really understand how working moms do it, when their kids get sick or need them.

amother

Tue, Feb 22 2011, 6:14 pm

When my kids were little and I was working full time out of the house if they got sick and I had nobody to leave them with Icalled in sick. If I ran out of sick days so be it...my kids always came first.During chol omoid pesach or succos..I worked half days...oh well. that was it...I had to be with my kids.I never had enough sick days so I got paid less for thoses weeks...but when I was there I was good very good so they liked me and understood.