I have a 4 yr old son with XH. DH and I are having a baby in 6 weeks.
I have a slight concern as to what will happen after my maternity leave. My son goes to daycare in our town (his dad lives 10 miles away and comes through our town to go to work so dropping/picking him up at daycare is never an issue). When my maternity leave is over, my son and the new baby will go to daycare at the same place.
My concern is how my son will act when we pick LO up from daycare on his dad's week. I know he is going to want to come home with us (we are both done early and pick him up by 4 whereas his dad doesn't pick him up until 5:30. I dont want him to feel left out and like we don't want him to come home with us for that 1-1.5 hours but in reality, its up to his dad. Sometimes my XH has no issues with us getting the 4-year-old from daycare on his weeks and othertimes he does.
Does anyone have any advice on this? Should I wait and see how it goes once LO and my son are in daycare together? Should I approach the XH about this now? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Re: What do you do about daycare?
Oh ok, I could see how that would get really tricky. I think I would bring it up now.
It really just depends on XH mood. Sometimes he more compliable then others. While on maternity leave, I will be keeping the 4-year-old home two days a week from daycare to spend time with his new sibling and to help saving money. XH agreed to this because it would save him money as well.
I'm not trying to take any time away from XH. If I picked 4-year-old up from daycare at the same time I picked up the new LO, it would be daycare's time I'm taking away, not his as he can't pick 4-year-old up from daycare or our house until 5:30.
This all just weighs heavily on me as I never want 4-year-old to feel like we are chosing the new LO over him especially since new baby will be obviously living with us full time vs. 4-year-old who is at our house 50-60% of the time as XH needs us to watch him sometimes so he can do other things...
How does he feel about daycare? If he is generally happy there, and is picked up by dad around the same time as other kids, he might not mind. I agree that YOU feel guilty, but DS may be fine.
Maybe talk to your ex, and tell him that you're going to assume that DS is ok leaving later, but if he gets sad or has a problem, you will be happy to take him home and allow ex to pick up DS from your home. Consistency might be a key - - if it a permanent change, then maybe your ex will have less of a problem with it then if you used to pick up ds on special occasions when you had fun things planned on "his" time.
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Would your house be closer or farther for BD to drive for pickups? If it's closer, then I'm sure he defintely would be fine with it considering it's the same pickup time anyway. If it's farther for him, then I would offer to maybe meet up back up at the daycare at the normal pickup time if you do end up picking both kids up at once. That way nothing really changes for him so it shouldn't be an issue. Blended families are hard, eventually you will get to the point where LO is going off places with his Dad and will have to explain to your other child why he can't go, or why LO gets more presents during holidays than little borther since he has double the family. It's not an easy situation that's for sure and nothing will ever be exactly fair no matter how hard you try to make it happen. My best advice would be just to be as flexbile as possible with BD and leave the lines of communication open when things like this come up b/c you guys still have a while to go and much bigger issues to get through with LO only being 4. Put yourself in his shoes and always make sure that you would be willing to do the same thing you're asking him to do. If only our BM would take that advice, our lives would be so much easier.
Kids do not understand the semantics of court orders and they are egocentric therefore if they are not chosen to come it's their fault or it's because something is wrong with them.
There are no words you could use to explain to a kid when they're tired, missed their parents all day and want to go home why you are there but can't take them with you.
When my kids were in daycare, with ONE exception (we took DD to a play in NYC and my parents picked up DS, who was too young), I never took one home and left the other. I would not even consider something like that. And it was a big day care center (different rooms = easier to hide)! If I took home one early, I would take the other along with me to the....doctor's appt, dance lesson, etc.
My parents may have taken the oldest once or twice over 2 years we had two in daycare (to an event not appropriate for a baby), but I would not consider that normal in an intact family.
But unless your CO says custody changes at 3pm, for example, I would do what you want as long as it does not put out his BD.