School-Aged Children
KL777
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Moms who work outside the home, please come in...
KL777
member
Did you find there was any difference in being a mom of a school age child versus a mom of a 4 yr old or 3 year old preschooler? If so, what were some of the major differences? TIA.
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Re: Moms who work outside the home, please come in...
Well, there are a lot of developmental differences, but in terms of logistics/scheduling with being a WOHM, the biggest difference is having to get homework done and get DS to sports in the evening. He gets tired early, so homework has to be done before dinner. He plays sports at least two nights a week and that generally starts at 6:00, so we have to leave the house by 5:30. Some nights we don't get home until 8:30.
SO there is a bigger crunch in the late afternoon to get everything done. On the days he goes to after school care, they have homework time, but he would save his harder work for me to help with. Starting this year (2nd grade) he also had more projects and book reports that could not be done in after care, so we had to make sure we worked on those on non-sports nights.
So for us the evenings became harder/busier once we were past Kindergarten.
My girls are now 5 and 7 and going into 1st and kindy. Daycare is open from 6:45am until 6pm. School is (for us) from 9:30 until 4pm. More logistics with that before and after care (we use before care and have changed our work schedules so one of us can pick up at 4). The girls have more activites that - religious school starts in kindy, Girl Scouts, etc. Homework although we have only had on weekends so far, I know that will change this fall. Girls can be mean and we have dealt with some of that. The number of bday party invites has gone down some and I know will go down even more as they get older but we also now have a lot more activities at school - festivals, concerts, etc.
I love that my kids are way more independant, can do more on their own. I can ask them to go get PJ's on and I know they have the ability to do it themselves. As a family, we are just able to do so much more - no naps to work around, more ability to do things than as toddlers/preschoolers.
On the flip side, way more attitude and sass and picking up habits (good and bad) from peers at school.