What would make me happier…
Peg so kindly asked to know more about “things that my current life prohibits but that are so important to my idea of being a good parent and a happy human” and I’ve been tossing around a blog post on that very subject, so let me take this occasion of a sick child at home and thus me at home too to expound upon that very topic.
First:
In the morning my boys and I leave our house at about 7:45am and get home at just before 6pm. My boys go to bed at about 8pm and if I am being good and attentive to my sleep needs, I go to bed at about 10pm so that I can get up at 6am. I wake my boys at a little after 7am and I dress them while they are still sleeping/sleepy because the otherwise-battle is not worth it to me and because we really need to leave the house on time so that I’m not late to work. Mostly my six year old eats breakfast at school because that means I can wake him up about ten minutes later. Our morning are generally rushed and everyone is grumpy because everyone wanted to sleep longer.
My six year old spends a half hour in his before-school program, then a half hour on the bus, then six hours in school, another half hour on the bus, and then two hours at his after-school program. My three year old spends nine and a half hours in daycare. By the time we get home we are all tired and we only have a short time before bedtime for the boys, during which time I need to make a dinner that they will eat and that will meet some minimum level of nutritional validity. Frankly, despite the fact that I have missed them all day, the last thing I want to do is play with them. I just want to be quiet and lazy and spend my evening reading or watching a movie.
Second:
I really like my six year old’s school but I think the school could be so much better if the parents could get their shit together and do a better job of supporting it. Unfortunately, it seems like the parents who have the time to volunteer are the parents who have the least to offer in terms of actual skills. I’m not saying that I’m some super dynamo, but I at least know how to organize a project and keep track of the details, and I have a decent sense of aesthetics. But my inflexible work schedule really limits how much time I can spend at the school and much of the work to be done at the school requires a physical presence, at least some of the time.
I also dearly wish I could teach a class at the school. Parents are allowed to teach “electives” covering topics in which they are knowledgeable and there is absolutely no technology-related education at the school. I would love to teach tech skills to these kids — from basic computer literacy for the kindergarteners, to web “politics” and basic web development skills for the 8th graders. But again, there’s no way I could just randomly leave my job for a couple hours every day to indulge in such a project.
Third:
Already my six year old is complaining about how boring school is. Despite his school being very emotionally supportive and exposing him to lots of new ideas, he’s not being challenged to learn. His reading and math abilities are virtually unchanged from what they were in September and although his teacher keeps assuring me that things will pick up soon, I feel like things aren’t really going to “pick up” until the rest of the class is caught up to him, at which point he’ll leap forward and then stand still for another few months while they get caught up again.
I know that at some point he’ll have the basic skills to seek out new knowledge on his own but I hate that he’s not being encouraged to do that right now and I hate that he’s already learning that school (and therefor learning) is boring. I worry that will be a hard lesson to unlearn.
And so what this all adds up to is me wishing that I didn’t have this 9-5 job that’s actually an 8-6 job that takes up the majority of my time and leaves me feeling extremely stingy about my freetime and resentful toward anything or anyone that dares to intrude.
If I could make my own schedule I could spend time with my boys at my leisure. Like today, for example, when we are all home and I’m working on a website for a friend, and they feel free to come and interrupt me to ask me for things or to ask me to play with them. And I do, and I feel fine with it because I like the breaks and I’m not tired and I’m not trying to fit too much into a tiny little chunk of time.
If I could make my own schedule my boys and I could sleep in every morning and follow a more natural schedule. My six year old could easily sleep 12 hours a night but he doesn’t get anywhere near that and he sometimes falls asleep during our drive home in the evening as a result. I really hate to see my kids not getting something so basic as the amount of sleep they need, and it’s all because they have to get up too early in the morning.
If I could make my own schedule I could homeschool my boys and ensure they are being challenged appropriately. At least for me, homeschooling isn’t an always-on activity, much of how I envision homeschooling involves independent work and even lots of play, and so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that I could spend time doing my own work around them.
If I could make my own schedule I could participate in the things I want to participate in. Of course, if I was homeschooling my boys, volunteering at their school wouldn’t be an issue, but maybe I’d want to teach tech classes to other homeschooled kids, or maybe I’d want to teach tech classes at some public school, or maybe I’d just want to do any manner of day-time volunteering activities. Whatever I wanted to do, I’d have the flexibility to do it…and I’d have the flexibility to include my boys.
Overall my life feels like a pretty good place, but it seems like all the things that make me feel some amount of unhappiness stem from one single source, namely my inflexible schedule. It seems like a shame to not take steps to change that if there are possible steps to be taken. And indeed, there is one huge possible step, super huge, that would allow me to leap off the cliff and see if my parachute of self-employment will open, but I’ll have to write about that later because that’s a whole other really long post.