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One last post before I'm off to find my handsome husband...I hope your son is okay. We've done the scary head trauma thing several times with our youngest, the most frightening of which involved a terrifying helicopter ride to Johns Hopkins for an emergency cat scan. I'm sending good thoughts your way.
Thanks, I think he's fine, but he has autism, he was banging his head in school today during a tantrum and he lost vision in his right eye.
I believe it. I have to micromanage my dd to get her to clean up after herself. It's easier to just do it myself. I am in awe at how quickly she can mess up an entire room. I feel like I could clean all day everyday and my house would never be clean. I don't though, that would be torture.
This is crazy talk. WHEN you have cleaned up, THEN you can play xyz do whatever.
People who play clean up. The flip side of this, people who don't clean up, don't play. If I have to clean up your toys, they go into the Saturday box.
If you don't set limits with cleanign up, you do your kids no service, in my opinion.
This is crazy talk. WHEN you have cleaned up, THEN you can play xyz do whatever.
People who play clean up. The flip side of this, people who don't clean up, don't play. If I have to clean up your toys, they go into the Saturday box.
If you don't set limits with cleanign up, you do your kids no service, in my opinion.
easier said than done. Sure, they can pick up their toys, but that is a small fraction of the messes they actually make.
As to all the rest of the stuff that SAHM's do, did it occur to you that WM's do that too? We shop, cook and clean in addition to working so these are not tasks that are part of staying home (you just have more time to do them because you're home).
If a working parent is carrying 40 hours a week employment and taking care of all the household work, she's either a single parent or needs to be.
And yes, single working parents do, mostly, do double duty (assuming custody, of course). BTDT. Of course, as a single parent, I didn't have to choreograph that extra person's life, nor did I have to think about if anyone else cared whether I slacked on household issues. There were some advantages to being Sole Ruler of the Aconite Universe.
If you want to know how important a job is, take it away and see what happens.
If we take your dh away as bread winner, you have no house to live in or food to eat. If we take you away as a SAHM, we hire a combination nanny and housekeeper for $400/wk, less if you provide board, (with a tax write off for the child care portion) to replace you. Sorry, breadwinner wins by a mile and a half. SAHM and breadwinner are NOT equally important jobs. Not even close.
I'm wondering where you're going to get a nanny/housekeeper/special ed advocate/accountant/personal chef/ personal assistant/etc who works 24/7 for $400 a wwk. Boy, things really are depressed in Michigan, if that's possible.
If a working parent is carrying 40 hours a week employment and taking care of all the household work, she's either a single parent or needs to be.
And yes, single working parents do, mostly, do double duty (assuming custody, of course). BTDT. Of course, as a single parent, I didn't have to choreograph that extra person's life, nor did I have to think about if anyone else cared whether I slacked on household issues. There were some advantages to being Sole Ruler of the Aconite Universe.
Military spouses do it too. I have been a single stay at home parent for the last 6 weeks, and I have 4 more left to go.
I'm wondering where you're going to get a nanny/housekeeper/special ed advocate/accountant/personal chef/ personal assistant/etc who works 24/7 for $400 a wwk. Boy, things really are depressed in Michigan, if that's possible.
You forgot car mechanic, landscape professional, ER nurse, counselor and personal trainer.
What I am saying is it doesn't matter if you stay home or not. It's not a special brand of motherhood that yeilds better results and it's not equal to supporting a household. Yes, children need to be taken care of but it does not matter if some of that care is provided by someone else. There is no extra value in SAH that makes it equal to supporting a family. By far, supporting the family is more important because everything falls apart without support. Nothing falls apart without a SAHM. It is silly to try and say that being a SAHM is equal to supporting a family. It's just not. Most of what SAHM's do is done by WM's when they are off work. What SAHM's do is provide their own day care but at the cost of their paychecks. The paycheck they gave up is what they pay for child care. The child care they provide is worth about $2.50/hr/child.
As I said, if you want to see how important a job is, take that job away. Take away a breadwinner and you have no home to take care of or food to eat. Take away a SAHM and you have a household like a WM household. No great loss.
Maybe it doesn't matter if you stay home or not. My contribution to the household allows dh to work the weird hours typical of his profession. Left to him (because even if you could on some planet replace me for $400 a week, we don't have that in the budget), the kids would be unsupervised, their education would go for crap, groceries would be replaced by McDonald's, and the cats would be dead within a week. Not to mention the intangibles, some of which are less than strictly G rated, and which buying on the free market is generally frowned upon by the local gendarmes.
easier said than done. Sure, they can pick up their toys, but that is a small fraction of the messes they actually make.
Oh absolutely. And it DOES take at least three times as long to both get them to understand what and how to do than it does to just do it. But in my mind, it is worth the investment over time.
My kids are 10 and 8, so not THAT much older. I never, ever, ever clean up their stuff. I might come in and say, take a look around with your eyes and tell me if there is anything missing.
You know bringing it back to a conversation about stay at home motherhood. I think *this* is one of the benefits we realized with my period of staying at home with the kids. I HAD the time to do this. If I had to establish these habits now that I am working all day, from scratch, I don't think I would. But for US since the habit was developed (albeit somewhat painfully) when I WAS home, they are accustomed to doing it now.
But in the final analysis, your (not yours but "one's") kids are not going to grow to adulthood unable to clean up after themselves. Mom never taught me to do laundry or iron, but somehow I figured it out.
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We shop, cook and clean in addition to working so these are not tasks that are part of staying home (you just have more time to do them because you're home).