The Parenting Thread • Page 139

Do you even get any sleep/free time?

 

Haha surprisingly yes now that everyone is walking! Mostly after they are all in bed though

 

Today is my last day of paternity leave and, not to complain because I got a ton of time off, but I very much don’t want to go back to work.

 

Always sucks going back. How much time did you take?

 

12 weeks total between the leave my company offers and some banked PTO.

 

Wow I wish I took that much time off. I just did 2 weeks when they were first born and then another 3 weeks when my wife went back to work. Definitely was bittersweet going back

 

I probably would’ve taken more time off but with my sales incentive payout the person covering my route would get all of it depending how long I took off. I had to plan it accordingly

 

I got 4 weeks paid then did 4 weeks with PTO, still felt like barely any time

 

I took 9 weeks for each kid, cause we are allowed to do that on Canada

 

I got like 4 days

 

i got 16 weeks and started dreading going back after the first month

 

My boss tried to get me on a zoom 10 minutes before Milo was born lol

 

I thought about doing four weeks right away and the other eight later to extend the time before we needed to figure out childcare, but I’m glad I didn’t. Weeks 6-8 were so stressful for a variety of reasons that I would have had a tough time working anyway.

 

I’m only taking 12 weeks, but that’s through FMLA so I’ll only get ~70% pay. Anything beyond that will be banked PTO which I don’t have much of.

My wife will get around four months full pay. I’m planning to take six weeks with her after the birth, go back to work for a few months, and then take my back half when she returns to work. Hoping by then we’ll have bought a house and will have enough room for our moms to live with us in shifts lol

 

I only get 10 days paid which is dumb

 

If I wanted access to paternity time then I would have had to exhaust all of my PTO. If I used all that then I would have been allowed paternity leave without pay

 

I had a shitty job at the time. Took a month off, all unpaid, had to use what little PTO I had then FMLA

 

When mine was born there was no parental leave where I worked, I used my two weeks of vacation time and that was it.

 

That’s what I have.

 

Same, when our two kids were born... but now it's 12 weeks.

 

Hoping to get others thoughts on this (especially if you have an older child). My girlfriend has a son that's 12, my son is 7. For the most part - everything's just fine, we do tons of stuff as the four of us, but I have my complaints. Again, everything is good - just looking for others thoughts.

He is very moody. Like if his mom says anything remotely close to no, he'll throw himself on the couch and not talk. My son notices stuff like this and acts weird himself. Not in a bad way, just in a uncomfortable way.

He is always on his phone. My son has been very limited on screen time his whole life (1-1.5 hours on the weekend, nothing on school nights). If her son comes over, he's got his head in the phone always. My kid of course wants to sit and watch whatever game he's playing.

We're going on a 7 hr road trip soon and this is a huge area of concern for me. She would be okay with her son with his head in his phone the whole time, I am very much not okay with that. We've gone to places close by (less than 30 min) and my son leans over the whole time to watch him. Even if I tell my kid "hey, that's enough", he'll slowly inch his way back.

How do I approach this? They kind of go hand in hand. Cause if his mom tells him not to be on his phone, he'll pout and make the road trip miserable for everyone.

 

That’s tough, 7 and 12 must be very different, especially with phones and screens. My girlfriend has kids and if hers are allowed to do something different (which happens mostly because they are older and are allowed more screen time or whatever) I just tell mine that it’s up to their mom but we don’t change how we do things. For something like a road trip I would allow her more screen time or whatever but we’d talk about how it’s just for the road trip.

 

Agreed, I'm going to try to be a little more flexible - maybe even tell them you have x hours in the car. But the bigger issue is seeing it out during our hike, eating, etc. It's supposed to be a fun trip for everyone, but his attachment to his phone is a huge issue for me.

Also want to add, girlfriend is very sensitive, so trying to approach this with as much kindness as I can, but also make it clear it's an issue.

 

Think of some alternatives for the car ride. A board game between the two of them. Uno/card game. Books or comics or magazines. Drawing.

something other than screentime to get their mind off driving for 7 hours.

 

I am as anti-screentime as you can get...i mean we let our 4 year old watch the TV, but no personal devices ever....BUT, on long car rides, he'll start to get restless after a couple hours and we do have a kindle that we let him watch movies on in the car. Obviously 4 is different than 7, but for a 7 hour carride, a couple of those hours getting taken up by a movie probably isn't the worst thing in the world.