I work 5 days a week often 7am-6pm. Its hard work right? Im exhausted come the weekend. Is this just me or is the same for everyone. On paper my days seem easy but i find it mentally and physically draining! Just needed to vent!
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I work 5 days a week often 7am-6pm. Its hard work right? Im exhausted come the weekend. Is this just me or is the same for everyone. On paper my days seem easy but i find it mentally and physically draining! Just needed to vent!
It is hard mumofone and I get mad when people think we just sit at home not doing a lot! I work 7.30 - 6.30 5 days a week (and I'm 68). I've been doing this job since 1987 and it was so much easier then - no Ofsted, no paperwork apart from your attendance record and contracts etc. Even though I have my daughter as my assistant every day I still do paperwork in my own time and spent hours last week on my week off doing all the GDPR! I still love it though and as I have to work after losing my husband 2 and a half years ago I wouldn't want to do anything else. There are lots of plus sides and watching the children grow and develop is the best.
Aw chris, I'm so sorry to hear about your husband.Quote:
Originally Posted by chris goodyear
That's amazing - hats off to you, I have dreams of giving up before then but highly unlikely!
You’re right , it’s hard,!
7-6 , 5 days a week plus time for setting up , clearing down , sourcing and making resources , training , paperwork , parent visits......the list goes on. I reckon I work close to double the hours that most full timers work but I wouldn’t change it ( especially in the summer💚)
I think all jobs must have their difficult aspects. To me, they always seem connected to the way other people have so little understanding of what you do.
I used to work in bookselling and got sick of customers saying how nice it must be to spend all day surrounded by books and be able to read all day. On the railway it was morons throwing a wobbly because their train was two minutes late. We were constantly accused of standing around doing nothing (sorry, do you want me to leave my post so no-one’s here to help when the next idiot gets stuck in the ticket gates?)
I find it frustrating that we have to balance what Ofsted demand against parents need: very often two different things, and especially difficult when you know neither matches the child’s best interests.
I get fed up with hearing/reading how we are living the life of Riley on our "extortionate" fees.
I get tired of parents asking for advice which they then ignore...... then they come back months later to say you were right in the first place (yes, the bullying is still going on at school; school are using all the usual tactics to avoid the issue; and the parents only now understand they should have kept evidence and followed the procedures I suggested last September.:panic:)
As others have said, the long hours with no break are very wearing, especially when you know there’s a lot of unpaid admin to face too. It involves constant concentration on what can often be very dull tasks, which is known to be stressful.
The fact nobody notices is hard. I could scream when some mums come to pick up (often late) and want to sit down and moan about their hard 8 hour day in the office, and now they have to face a whole 2 hours of motherhood before they can pack Dear Darling Buttercup off to bed. Never mind my 10-12 hour day with no breaks; hours to come of paperwork; and possibly some fool phoning me in the middle of the night to say their angel has been sick but she thinks he’s alright to come tomorrow. :eek:
haha bunyip you always make me laugh! You're right though, every job has its downsides.
My current bug bear is when one child has a day off and mum cheerfully says to me "so how are you gonna spend your day off?" - I'm still looking after other children just because yours isn't coming! Or "did you have a nice half term/summer holiday?" as if I had it off because they didn't send their children.
I had one say last week 'oh its lovely that you are able to be at home as your DS does his GCSEs' ... yes, but I can't go and pick him up from an exam as I have small children that will be being picked up/dropped off/asleep etc! ( I do wiggle things around if I can, but DS is coming second to mindees some days! )Quote:
Originally Posted by mumofone
I remember being surprised at how physically exhausting the job was when I first started. I already had my own toddler, but pushing a double buggy instead of a single, putting up and down the highchair/travel cot and double buggy each day, carrying two toddlers upstairs instead of just one, lifting two toddlers up onto the changing mat/high chair several times a day, carrying two toddlers straight from the front door to the bathroom because they were covered in mud...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mumofone
I used to have a mum like that. She was a teacher so the children didn't come in the school holidays. No matter how many times I told her I was still working, she'd always ask if I was going anywhere nice at half term, how I was going to spend the long summer holidays when I wasn't working etc. In the end I gave up saying anything!
Haha glad its not just me! Drives me crazy!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouse
You've just summed up my days perfectly!Quote:
Originally Posted by Maza