Rather than write another really good (in my opinion) post and have some fuckwit lobotomize the entire thread in the third comment, let me discuss something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I have no idea how married couples who both have fulltime jobs and kids do it. Period. End of story.
I have spent the last couple months thinking about shit that I NEVER imagined thinking about, and were it not for my father, who knows this shit, I would be in so far over my head I would probably be ready to throw myself off a roof if I weren’t terrified of heights. There is just so much shit you have to know to make all these decisions about your house, and none of it is simple or easy. One of the big downfalls of the modern economy is that there are so many choices, simply picking out a mattress sends you down an endless black hole of choices. I mean, fuck me running. I just want a god damned bed. I don’t want to have to learn a physics.
So I imagine, in a simpler time, having one person going to work and earning money while the other spent time doing this kind of thing would have been nice. Until you factor in the kids, and then, fuck that.
Whatever. Flooring and whatnot probably starts this weekend, plumber midweek next week, then electrician.
redshirt
So what are you saying? Women should stay at home and not work?
Omnes Omnibus
Happened in the first one this time.
MobiusKlein
A stay at home parent spends a bunch of time helping at their kids’ schools, carpooling kids that don’t have a stay-at-home parent, and lots and lots of other things.
p.a.
I don’t think the stories of Iron Curtain refugees being overwhelmed in a western supermarket were apocryphal. We’re used to the system and it happens to us.
Waldo
Pretty sure you didn’t have so many choices back in the day. Even if you did, without the internet at your disposal, you had no way to endlessly research the possibilities. Take it from me, a guy who’ll spend an hour reading Amazon reviews before making a $7 purchase.
John S.
Frankly I don’t know how my wife and I do it either. We have a daughter and a son with autism, and we both work full time.
raven
Go Hokies! Go Cubbies, Go Bears. Our addition is DONE!!!
EriktheRed
I have an autistic son who is now a grown young man. He’s too old to go to school and needs to be constantly supervised. Fortunately, my state (IL) has a program that helps us pay for “caregivers” for him. His main “caregiver” is his mother and I’m the “employer”. Kinda BS, I know, but that’s the way they have to do it. This way my wife can still generate an income while being a stay-at-home mom for our son and dad doesn’t have to work constant 12-hour shifts to keep us housed and fed.
The bad news: having a jaggoff Republican governor (Rauner) who, on World Autism Day, comes on TV and publicly calls for cuts to the program.
Nice job, midterm voters.
gogol's wife
@John S.:
My hat is off to you. I have no idea how you do it.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Isn’t it time to start looking at re-roofing the sucker or some such?
greennotGreen
Having just built a new home, renovated and sold a second, and working on the renovation of a third, I have a few words of consolation for you, John. Because you, like me, are single, you don’t have to run every decision past another person for approval.
My sister’s fireplace surround was unfinished for ten years because she and her husband couldn’t agree on the tile. She and I finally finished it without his input.
raven
One of the great things (for me) about the addition project is that I made almost zero decisions. One time my bride went to an antique place and picked out this giant mirror for the bathroom. She called me and I said “whatever”. She got kind of bent out of shape to the sales people and they said “are you nuts, he wants you to pick everything. You go girl”. That was that.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, another great Cole post wasted. Sad.
Rich Webb
A lot of it is marketing and amplifying tiny differences to create market share. Mattresses … You were USA, I was USN but probably similar. A two inch mattress on a steel bunk pan with the next guy’s rack about two feet from yer nose. If it didn’t stink and you didn’t have to share it, life was good. An awful lot of things are like that. They’ll happily sell a $5000 mattress but sheesh, give me a break.
MomSense
As it happens I just returned from visiting friends in the hospital who welcomed their first child. She is going to return to work in 6 -8 weeks and he is going to stay home with their baby.
Child care for an infant is so outrageously expensive that it makes more sense for one of them to be home full time. The bonus is that he has the sweetest little human to hang out with.
Mary G
It was a good post, even with the kracker in it. Thanks for writing it. Hang in there; a day will come when you get back from traveling and realize how great it is to have a piece of land and a house that is yours and only yours.
I too am in awe of people with kids. Parents must be given super powers along with the baby. I have a friend that is a full-time social worker, but as a single woman fostered and then adopted three kids with daunting problems, yet she gets it all done somehow.
MomSense
@EriktheRed:
Damn. I’m really sorry. We have an asshole governor here who did the same thing.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Nah, that was one of the cost overruns. We thought we could get away with not putting a new roof on the whole place but, once we got there, it was obvious we should just do it. We are getting one more thing. There was no screen door on our new deck that is off the kitchen. It turns out the frame was made for a 3/4 door and it is really really hard to find a good door that width. After 9 months of talking to all kinds of carpenters we found a dude who used to work in the movie industry in LA. He checked it out and said it would be expensive. We singed up for a $700 door and he ended up getting really nice heart pine. When I saw the wood I said “I don’t want to paint that”. He happily agreed. The Waterlox Oil we are using make it an $800 door!
NotMax
@raven
All sentences never uttered by Mrs. Winchester.
Corner Stone
Hmmm. Harumph. And let me add AHEM.
John S.
@EriktheRed:
My autistic son is only 9, but we often wonder what will happen when he ages out of school.
We currently live in Florida, so we have jack squat in the way of programs.
raven
@NotMax: I have to leave before dawn for a day long event in Middle Georgia so the college game is all I’ll make. Small price to pay for working from home for 12 years!
NotMax
@raven
Sign seen in the front window of a furrier shop while I was in NY last month:
“Your husband called. He said buy whatever you want.”
raven
The Rocky Horror live thing is on tonight too.
raven
@NotMax: Ooo, I like. There was a bar in Sister Bay Wisconsin that had a “Free Beer When The Bears Win the Super Bowl” sign. That was 40 years ago and they only had to make good once.
MomSense
I’m obsessing about this house. I want to build one in the worst way.
GOHome
There’s a cool video tour with the architect explaining the design.
Roger Moore
@MobiusKlein:
In my family, the “lots and lots of other things” were probably the most important. A huge part of it was cooking and cleaning, but also gardening and preserving the produce from the garden. And there was a lot of childcare other than just carpooling- helping with homework, being around after school, etc. My mother also became a general busybody/volunteer/civic leader, joining the local planning commission, the library board, and finally being elected to the school board.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@MomSense:
Can’t remember where I saw it, probably on one of my lefty sites on FB, but someone pointed out that a lot of places won’t allow you to separate puppies from their mothers until they’re 6-8 weeks old, but want new mothers to return to work within 2-3 weeks.
WaterGirl
@raven: When I saw the wood I said “I don’t want to paint that”. He happily agreed.
Skepticat
@redshirt: “One person … while the other …” I didn’t notice any reference to gender, and the headline’s either/or.
MazeDancer
Either one cares or doesn’t care about every little decision in a renovation. If you like deciding which moulding, drawer pull, floor stain, paint color, etc, you couldn’t imagine relinquishing that decision. Even to a spouse. If you don’t care, you are happy if someone else does it.
You can hire help, John. A designer or decorator. There are probably designers in training at the college you can hire for cheap. They show you two or three choices for every decision. You pick one. Or, you say you don’t care and let them show you the entire project room, by, room for approval.
OzarkHillbilly
John, the past couple years I have been unable to work full time. So working part time and taking care of everything around the house and the “farm” has become my full time job. My wife likes to say, “All I do is go to the office.”
It works. Kinda sorta. I really miss my Carpenters Union insurance tho.
EriktheRed
@John S.: Don’t put off getting guardianship of him when he turns 18. I didn’t but I know someone else who did and things got a bit complicated as a result.
Ruviana
@p.a.: It’s not, I saw it. I was trapped in the hospital in 1989 right after the Berlin Wall came down and reporters were interviewing amazed East Berliners exclaiming at the variety in the grocery stores. I remember one guy saying something like “There’s 200 kinds of cereal, who needs 200 kinds of cereal?”
WaterGirl
@raven: Premature posting on the previous reply…
That’s funny. Just finished my screened in porch, and when I saw the wood door (douglas fir, a beautiful color) I said “Phillip, I want to marry that door. Can we just seal it instead of paint it?”
My two doors were supposed to be $350 each, tops, but they turned out to take a lot more time so the cost went up. I feel better hearing about the cost of your door. But we both have gorgeous doors, so there’s that!
Patricia Kayden
Had to go back to you John’s last post to see who lobotomized that comment thread and saw kwAwk’s nonsense claim that it was President Obama’s responsibility to stop Republican racists from engaging in birtherism.
Wowzers!! The trolls these days.
Emma
I am one of those women who never had any interest in children of my own. But I will say this: fuck Jamie Dimon. Any mother I know should be earning twice his salary
ETA: not to mention fathers. Jesus, raising small humans is hard!
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
That’s crazy. They are still so small and have intensive care needs at that age.
Bobby Thomson
@EriktheRed: Corbett tried to introduce means testing to wrap around services in PA until he found out s lot of affected families were Republican.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@MomSense:
O/T, I told about your sweater for baby Austin two or three threads down. So pretty.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
That seems like one of those glib and facile comparisons that falls apart when you look at it carefully. Yes, we don’t want to separate a puppy from its mother until 6-8 weeks, but that’s because we’re talking about a permanent separation. It’s not like the mother who goes back to work is permanently abandoning the baby.
raven
@WaterGirl: Yea, I mean with the 3/4 it really has to be good wood. There is a place in San Pedro called Coppa Woodworking that makes that dimension but I’d rather buy local.
Poopyman
@MomSense:
I know some contractors who can make that dream come true, believe me.
WaterGirl
@MomSense:
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: Do you have a photo of the sweeter? I would love to see it.
EriktheRed
@Bobby Thomson: Wow, imagine that…
Kinda like when my Republican mom used to bad-mouth welfare recipients until her son had twin babies while in college…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I don’t know if you saw my comment in the previous thread, I posted some links to some old* pics(including interiors) of the old Richfield building in downtown LA.
*They’d have to be old since they demolished the building in 1969.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@MomSense:
One of the many, many reasons I will be proud to have Hillary as our president. Not a mother myself, and never wanted to be, but I fully believe our societal resources should ensure that every child in this country has decent food, clothing, shelter, education, physical activity, medical care, creative channels, and support for any special requirements. That certainly includes maternal bonding, child care, and parental leave as appropriate. I love the way Hillary knows women’s/children’s/family issues so well. She truly gets — as she has said many times — that “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.” She gets that “It Takes a Village.” And she gets — as witness her full-throated endorsement last night of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood — that motherhood is not necessarily right for all women at all times under all circumstances. She gets that women have agency. And I love her for that.
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
??
I’m on a roll it seems. My friends’ baby’s middle name is Juniper and I happened to make a green sweater with a yarn colorway called Juniper.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t, thanks! Did you share these LA Vintage shots?
WaterGirl
@raven: I have no idea if bigger or smaller is better, but mine seem to be 1″ (just measured). I think the doors make the porch, so even though it was a ton of money, I have no regrets.
Starfish
@Roger Moore: It takes two months for a mother human to establish milk supply if she is breastfeeding, and we know that breastfeeding provides immunity related things that bottle feeding does not even if radical lactivists can be obnoxious.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Same site, page 67.
Drunkenhausfrau
As one such stay at home parent, myself, thank you. It is hard work. And I had a career, and then I was a full time stay at home parent, and many, many people judged me and made derogatory remarks. I was unprepared for the lack of respect. I was unprepared for becoming “invisible.” But, I had a blast with my kids, and I was volunteer everything, and I helped other moms and dads who needed help, etc. I have no regrets.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I do. I’ll send it to you.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@WaterGirl:
No, I wish I had thought to do that, but it was so beautifully folded that I didn’t even want to touch it. But Ryan and Emily promised that the first time they dress young Austin in it they will take a photo that I can send to Anne Laurie or Betty or someone so it can be front-paged. (Or maybe MomSense had the foresight to take a picture before she mailed it to me.)
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@MomSense:
Will you email it to me as well, please?
opiejeanne
@MomSense: I didn’t find the video but I cruised around the site a little and this is an interesting company. I’ve seen a couple of other companies this past year doing similar interesting designs.
Eric S.
My mother is always bugging me to redo the bathroom. Or the kitchen. Or paint. She wonders why I haven’t done anything with the condo after 8 years. There are many reasons but I think it boils down to two things. One, I don’t have a burning vision of how I want the place to look. Two, 90 seconds after starting to look at the umpteen million types of tile, or cabinets, or sinks my eyes glaze over and I want to run away screaming.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Maybe buy a lottery ticket? Or start marketing yourself as a mind-reader? Just two ideas off the cuff. :-)
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@MomSense:
You are psychic!!
John Revolta
I’m so old that I remember when liberals were writing articles called “In Defense of the Working Mother”.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: If it’s coming now, I will wait by the computer.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Roger Moore:
You’re right, but even so, insisting that mother return to work so soon strikes me as insane policy. Not every place has these policies, of course, but there are enough who won’t even pay the mother if she misses more than a few days (that’s if she’s lucky enough to keep her job in the first place) that the whole issue needs to be reviewed and addressed in legislation if necessary.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
So here’s how it goes – the mother feels bad if she goes to work, and feels bad if she stays home, and in both cases typically, she’s responsible for however it all shakes out while the father gets to sail through all of the dynamics because of the paradigm of white male privilege that supports him no matter what. If he’s a breadwinner it’s valued, and if he’s the stay at home father he’s a paragon of fatherhood, and women never get to feel they’re valued and doing the right thing unless they have a lot of support from other women. Women have a secret society, which is also laden with land mines laid in their path by the patriarchy which women need to constantly negotiate and sacrifice each other to the cause, which we then criticize for doing based on the impossible paradigm.
opiejeanne
@Ruviana: We had a Romanian family with six kids, all about 10 months apart, enrolling the oldest 2 in the elementary school where my kids went. I don’t know how long they’d been in the US but my daughter told me about the oldest boy’s astonished reaction to the classroom and books and being given paper and pencil.
He didn’t speak a word of English so the boys in the class made sure to teach him every dirty word they knew. It was 4th grade in the 80s so they didn’t know as many as they do now.
Hungry Joe
I’ve read about studies (note that I didn’t say, “I’ve read studies … “) that show that having more than three choices tends to paralyze people. Not long ago it happened to me yet again. All I wanted was a tube of toothpaste, but there were about five different brands, each offering various benefits and combinations of benefits (whitening! tartar control! enhanced x-ray vision!), and each of those in at least three sizes. I really didn’t care, and told myself, “JUST PICK ONE!” But I couldn’t — I kept examining them, comparing prices (how much per ounce does that work out to?) even though I knew the difference would come to just a few cents. Finally I told myself, for no particular reason, “Just to the left of the middle, second row from the top,” and grabbed one from that sector. My teeth seem fine with it.
I heard there’s a grocery store chain in France that offers just one type of everything. It aims for mid-level quality on all its products. You go in, you grab the things you need, you pay, you leave. There’s nothing to think about/agonize over. I wouldn’t want to live my whole life like that, but man, I would definitely patronize a store like that at least some of the time. Too many decisions to make about stuff that simply does not matter.
Mnemosyne
@Hungry Joe:
That’s great until someone actually does need something unusual. For some reason, most commercial toothpastes give me canker sores, so I buy Tom’s of Maine. A store that didn’t carry that would be kind of useless to me, even though 90 percent of the other shoppers could just throw the tube of Crest into their cart and not think about it.
(Luckily for me, most places carry Tom’s of Maine now, so I don’t have to make a special trip to find it.)
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
[email protected]opiejeanne:
Here’s the video. Even the laundry and stove heat/steam is reused. GOHome tour
Starfish
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Things are really hard for stay-at-home fathers. Stay-at-home moms can find other stay-at-home moms to hang with, but the stay-at-home dads really do not have many people to hang out with or networks to learn of all the kid stuff going on in the community. One dad was taking his kid to a gym class for toddlers when my son was less than two, and he bailed half way through. I didn’t know if his kid did not like it or if the class seemed like it was mostly a rich white mom thing for whatever reason that particular session.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: My experience of France indicates that the country has other types of stores as well.
opiejeanne
@Drunkenhausfrau: Me too. Stayed home almost all of the time my three kids were young, only worked part time for a short time a couple of times when money was tight. Finally started my own business so I could be home when the youngest was in HS. I adjusted my hours around her schedule, which took some doing because my clients were scattered all around the east bay of SF. She was the one I worried most about when she hit her teens, and she turned out to be fine but I still think it’s because I was there almost all of the time when she was out of school.
All three turned out great, but sometimes that happens because the kid is inherently decent.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Starfish:
That’s not a problem that women can solve in the current white male privileged paradigm.
Creature
I am a stay-at-home dad. Luckily, I’m in my early 60’s and retired. My wife is abou gal my age, and I take care of our two kids (2 & 6). The oldest is autistic, and I was able schlepp her to all the therapy sessions, assessments and early-admission pre-school, for the last 3 1/2 years. She’s now mainstreamed and very ‘normal’. At least Colorado has a pretty good environment for autism treatment (at least where I’m at), I feel sad for those who don’t have the advantages I have. It’s still not easy, but I figure, ‘what the hell, I can’t spend all my time on hobbies, anyways!’
WaterGirl
@MomSense: oh, so cute! I was thinking about my mittens today. very excited! (no rush, just excited)
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I just got the yarn so they are up next!
Hungry Joe
@Mnemosyne: Nothing helped with canker sores for me, until a doctor finally put me on a very low dose of Thalidomide (!). That eventually got too expensive, so we tried the much more reasonably priced Doxycycline, which works almost as well. 20mg X2 a day.
Jeffro
Mrs. Fro works, I work, and I think we get by with weekly scheduling meetings (romantic!) and probably 1-2 schedule-reminder texts/day. Our kids are teen and pre-teen, so we can text them if anything changes too. The kids have morning checklists and that works wonders keeping a.m. stress down. We also have our various household responsibilities down pat, and while that took some work, I think it was kinda smart – we’ve always talked with the kids about pitching in, shown them how to do different chores, switch off now and then, and so on. But yeah, back when the kids were both below 6-7 years old, it was a heckuva thing figuring out daycare, dealing with the virus-of-the-week, and wondering when we were going to get a night off.
Despite all that, we have not had to deal with some of the difficulties folks have described above, so we have always tried to be very grateful and pay it forward, in addition to being there for friends and relatives whose loads are not as light.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Wow, really? France has more than one type of store?
Olivia
When my kids were little, I worked for a year or two on and off and then quit to stay at home because it was just too hard to spend so much time away from them for so little money. When they were in junior high and high school, I worked full time and went to school and they learned independence and self sufficiency. Now I have 3 grandkids that I help with because I don’t want their mom to go through what I went through trying to work and do the best for the kids. So we all live together now, my daughter, her husband and 3 kids with my husband and I. We bought a big house that fits us all with room to spare. My husband and I are retired, my daughter and her husband work and my daughter is working on a degree. My husband works part time because it makes him happy and we all make sure the kids do what they need to do. I don’t know how other people do it because it is really hard.
Mnemosyne
@Hungry Joe:
I have rosacea (diagnosed at 20!) so I’m prone to a lot of weird skin inflammations. Organic products help, so that’s why I do the Tom’s of Maine thing. I once got a gum inflammation from a temporary crown, but once they changed the adhesive, it was fine. Very weird.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
I think this is part of the reason people develop brand loyalty. Yes, maybe one brand is genuinely better than another, or at least more suitable for you personally, but a lot of the time there’s no real difference. So instead of spending time agonizing about the choice or picking something at random and risking a problem with an unfamiliar brand, people pick one that works for them and stick to it.
opiejeanne
@MomSense: That’s interesting, nice clean design, but I was disappointed that the pantry looks like a small room full of equipment with no room for food storage, and the laundry concept is not very convenient.
It’s a nice start, i really like the look of the exterior, but I think the designs would need a lot of customizing to work for most people. If I can remember I saw the “green” house designs I really liked I’ll post them to you.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I’d check the ingredient list and see what’s different. I discovered that I get sores on the under side of my tongue from sugar free gum. I’m not 100% sure which ingredient it is, but once I figured out the cause it was easy to avoid.
Starfish
@Creature: Colorado has been great for helping people get services for their autistic kids.
Richard Mayhew
Both my wife and I work. October is always rough work wise between soccer and her work has a bunch of off hour obligations. This year has been easier as I cut my game count by 60% because the money is no longer critical to the family budget but a few things in my life have become hectic. We just make it work. My son goes to his best friend’s house 2x a week to be play while we slip his mom grocery money every week. 3x a week is daycare. Every day one of us drops my daughter off at the bus stop and 4x a week we get her ( the other she goes to the same neighbor). I go to work at dawn so I can pick her up.
It works, somehow. More sleep would be nice but that is November. And that is how it goes for all parents working or stay at home, we find a way to make it mostly work
redshirt
@Olivia: That sounds wonderful. Congrats!
Glidwrith
@Jeffro: Yep, that is pretty much how we cope. The kids can almost run the house if they must (yea for self-sufficiency!). When something off-schedule happens, we juggle between us to fill the hole. Case in point: eldest face-planted when scootering home from school. Dad was close enough to render aid and I took him to the orthodontist the next day to assess damage.
FlyingToaster
I’m a stay-at-home mom as well, and spend a slightly insane amount of time volunteering at school (they have one paid person doing a job, which I’m also doing for free, plus my other hat of running the bookfair). But a lot of what I’m doing is keeping my hand in the weird programming gig game.
The biggest problem we have is that HerrDoktor injured himself a year ago, and was not always physically able to do stuff, so a lot more shit fell on me this past year. He’s finally back to (almost) normal, so I can hand off jobs to him and not need to try and be in three places at once. He still can’t do yard work (ergggggh), so I’m still stuck with all of the cleaning and all of the yard work. But at least he’s back to cooking and can make breakfast and pack lunches and oversee homework and fold clothes occasionally.
Seth Owen
My son-in-law just started being a stay-at-home dad. My daughter is doing well enough in her career that it made sense to avoid the high cost of daycare and have him stay home with their son. Seems to be working out so far.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@raven:
Make sure he seals the bottom and other edges, not just the front and back.
Honus
@raven: fuck the Cubs and double fuck the perennially overrated Hokies. 2-25 against top five teams.
eclare
@Hungry Joe: There is a book called the Paradox of Choice, that analyzed how many different jams/jellies there were, for each flavor. IIRC, anything above eight was paralyzing, and the average number was 21. But we’re asked to choose for so much more now, most importantly, for most of us, how to invest for retirement. No more pensions, you have freedom! To go insane.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: I have some mild rosacea on my cheeks, especially when I exercise. I exercise because it is good for you, but then I look like crap. Have you found anything that helps? It’s hereditary, my mom has it big time. Plus fair skin, reddish hair.
SWMBO
Just got in from the hockey game so I’m late as usual.
First let me say FUCK THE BUSHES! I live in Florida and the funding was cut for families with disabled kids but Noelle Bush’s program was fully funded and she didn’t get jail time but outpatient treatment and rehab. It was a “private family matter and very painful” for them to deal with. She got first class treatment on the tax payer dime because her daddy was governor and the judge didn’t sentence her to jail but this very conveniently set up program fully funded by taxes. FUCK THE BUSH FAMILY! (And fuck LBJ just to make raven happy).
@John S.: You are right. You have jack squat in Florida.
I live in Broward County and there used to be programs that my son (now 35) was in that were very good. Small class room size (less than 10 kids with a teacher and 2 or more aides). Not anymore. W graduated with a substandard diploma in 1999. He could have stayed in school until he was 21 but we didn’t know that at the time. He didn’t want to go to school anymore and wasn’t working on classes that would get him a standard diploma. They have/had what they called the SED/NET schools for Severely Emotionally Disturbed kids. Small classes, intensive work to get children to socialize and to normalize their lives so they could function in the real world as much as possible. W is never going to be able to live independently but he can function socially well enough we can do things outside the home (like go to hockey games).
He went into VOC/REHAB for a few years until they switched teachers on him without warning and he flipped out and hit someone. He was at home with me for over six years until this last year he decided he wanted to get his GED and go to college and get out of my house. I tell everyone that he’s sick of my shit. Now he’s in a GED program that is five days a week and goes from 8:15 am to 1:30 pm weekdays. It’s the only respite care available now. (Before Jebbie cut programs for disabled families, you could get respite care in home. We make too much money for that so thpppbbttt!!)
There are some patchwork solutions but they are few and far between in Florida. If I hear of any I’ll let you know.
Also when he was 22, my BIL wanted to break the trust set up by my in-laws so he could get his hands on their estate ahead of schedule. He wanted us to sign away W’s rights to the money and we wouldn’t do that. We got a guardianship over him so that said BIL couldn’t get W to sign papers that would give him power of attorney. Get a guardianship before he turns 21. It’s easier than trying to do it and have them assess him as an adult trying to decide what he can do then. It is not easy but it is doable. Best of luck to all of you.
Steve!
@Jeffro: My kids are 2 and 5. Until the last couple of months we’ve lived on the opposite side of the country from all of our family, so my wife and I never had that mythical “night off” thing. We still haven’t but we’re hoping that once we get into more of a rhythm with our schedules we can dump the kids with an aunt and, like, go to a movie or something.
Lurker Extraordinaire
I’m a stay at home mom and grad student working on her thesis. I had practically zero time to work on it until my daughter started pre-K. My husband also works nights so I have to deal with doing chores and keeping little one quiet so dad can sleep. My husband also moved to another state for work halfway thru my master’s program, believe me I would not have been able to go to class if I didn’t have my parents, brother, and aunt for support and watching her while in class. That’s why when I hear Repukes “bootstrap” nonsense I know they are full of shit. No one makes it on their own. No one.
Suzanne
I work, Mr. Suzanne works. My mom moved in with us after her health troubles two years ago, and she helps in some ways, but makes more work in others. I love my career, but I am so fucking exhausted and my house is never clean and that causes me stress. It’s been a tough financial year, else I would call a maid service. How to do it? One day at a time.
I would like to quit, in some moments, because I’d love to have more control of my family life. But I now make enough that it is definitely a financial boon for me to work, and Spawn the Younger just started kindergarten, so no more paying for preschool. Plus, I don’t know if I’d be good at staying home. I do enjoy my career. I just wish I could do it three days a week.
eclare
@Suzanne: I hear you, I had a job that I liked, but with a horrible commute, and I would have been happy to do it 35 hours a week, or 4 days a week, and I would have been fine with the appropriate reduction in pay. But no, gotta be at that desk all day, all week. It’s so short sighted, I knew that company, I knew what to do without being told, all out the window because they couldn’t just say ok. I really hope companies wake up to this.
Bostonian
@Starfish: I don’t know if it’s particularly hard for stay-at-home fathers, but I think a stay-at-home father is better off if he’s introverted. It’s true that, in the majority of cases, you will get major side-eye if you show up at toddler-parent events. I don’t bother anymore. Toddler yoga? No way in heck. Moms will be pretty decent in the playgrounds, but you can pretty much forget about playdates, especially if you’re dealing with a more conservative group of people. Luckily, I’m not the only stay-at-home dad in my neighborhood; I’m pretty much guaranteed to see another one at the coffeeshop, and I’ve been able to make some good friends with kids the same ages.
As for being held up as a paragon of fatherhood, nah, that’s not really what happens. Maybe it happens at a distance? If it does, I’d trade it easily for a cessation of the stinkeye.
But back to what John said, we went into this having kids thing planning for one of us to drop out. The first five years were crazy, with us both working full-time jobs and fighting over pickups, dropoffs, and travel time. And the most important thing was that this was only at all possible because I turned down advancement opportunities and my wife was less aggressive than she could be about climbing as well. Sure, you can have two jobs, but two careers? Not so much, I think. Since I started staying at home, my wife’s career has taken off, bigly, and my lost income was made up in short time. Being off the “mommy track” is very important if you want advancement.
Just this week, in addition to the normal post-school conversation, supervision, and encouragement of homework and music practice, and shuttling to and from school and sports. Oh, and laundry, and making lunches, and cooking every night, and shopping… you know, the normal stuff that you seriously cannot do if you leave work at six. In addition to the normal, my little girl was home sick three days out of five and today I have to be at a meeting with the teachers at my son’s school. Seriously, if you have to deal with stuff like that, your career is off the rails.
TerryC
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I stayed home with my three kids from 1983 to 1991 and was not treated as a paragon of virtue.
Ab_Normal
My husband got promoted from “stay at home dad” to “kept man” once the spawn graduated from university. I’m spoiled rotten, which is probably for the best, since bits of me have been falling off from work-related repetitive stress for the last decade…
JustRuss
@Rich Webb: I’m going to disagree. Sure, when you’re young, you can sleep on anything, but as you get older a good mattress is worth the investment. Not 5 grand, 1-2 thousand isn’t unreasonable.
I assume your town has a furniture store downtown that’s been there forever. Buy from them, they’ll know what they’re talking about and won’t sell you crap.