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Working Moms
Katelobster
member
difficulty transitioning home at the end of the day - almost 2 y/o
Katelobster
member
in Working Moms
hi!
I'm mostly a lurker because I work PT and kind of feel like a WM imposter ... but coming out of the woodwork with a question regarding transitioning home after a day at childcare.
I work a full day 3 days/week. My DH works/travels extensively and is basically never home in the evenings, so I'm on my own. My almost 2-year-old daughter goes to grandma's house, which is great but with sucky evening traffic, we have a 35 min drive home. I usually manage to make this whine-free by singing "wheels on the bus" 1,700 times and keeping a stash of dollar store toys and books. We've been doing this since I went back to work at 3 months.
We only have an hour and 30 min between getting home until she goes to bed and I feel like as soon as she hits the house, she goes bonkers. Everything is a crisis that induces whining and tears and she can't/won't focus on anything for more than 3 minutes. She asks for a sandwich, and when I give it to her, she cries. I read her a book, and halfway through she pulls it out of my hands. She wants me to color with her, then cries that she wants raisins, then won't eat them, then wants to play with her toy food, then her puzzles, then wants ice cream and cries because I say no, etc. It's exhausting and usually after an hour of this I'm putting PBS on to get her to calm down/because I can't take it any more. I feel terrible because we get so little time together on these days and I find myself wishing it away.
These behaviors aren't out of left field for her and she does all of them in small doses on other days, but evenings after coming home from spending the day at grandma's are 1000x worse than a day we're home together.
Has anyone else dealt with this? Do you have any strategies for dealing with it that helped you?
I'm mostly a lurker because I work PT and kind of feel like a WM imposter ... but coming out of the woodwork with a question regarding transitioning home after a day at childcare.
I work a full day 3 days/week. My DH works/travels extensively and is basically never home in the evenings, so I'm on my own. My almost 2-year-old daughter goes to grandma's house, which is great but with sucky evening traffic, we have a 35 min drive home. I usually manage to make this whine-free by singing "wheels on the bus" 1,700 times and keeping a stash of dollar store toys and books. We've been doing this since I went back to work at 3 months.
We only have an hour and 30 min between getting home until she goes to bed and I feel like as soon as she hits the house, she goes bonkers. Everything is a crisis that induces whining and tears and she can't/won't focus on anything for more than 3 minutes. She asks for a sandwich, and when I give it to her, she cries. I read her a book, and halfway through she pulls it out of my hands. She wants me to color with her, then cries that she wants raisins, then won't eat them, then wants to play with her toy food, then her puzzles, then wants ice cream and cries because I say no, etc. It's exhausting and usually after an hour of this I'm putting PBS on to get her to calm down/because I can't take it any more. I feel terrible because we get so little time together on these days and I find myself wishing it away.
These behaviors aren't out of left field for her and she does all of them in small doses on other days, but evenings after coming home from spending the day at grandma's are 1000x worse than a day we're home together.
Has anyone else dealt with this? Do you have any strategies for dealing with it that helped you?
baby girl 5.12
This discussion has been closed.
Re: difficulty transitioning home at the end of the day - almost 2 y/o
I do like the idea of going outside, and now that it's finally not freezing out every day it might be a change of pace that she needs. I will try talking to her more about what we're going to do next, etc. She's very verbal and so far we talk in the car about if dada will be home, when we're almost home, what street we're on (she can name every street between the interstate exit and our house- hello useless information) but I definitely could be taking advantage of this to ease the transition more.
thanks again!