Working Hours

Regular readers will have noticed that Lia starts school this year - I might have mentioned it once or twice!

I currently work full time with one day a week working from home but I want that to change because I'm determined that I want to be picking Lia up when school is out, not having a child minder pick her up. I would hate to be picking her up at 5pm, throwing dinner together, bathing her and putting her to bed without time to take a breath - I know it's the reality for some people but I don't want to be that kind of mother.

So my plan is to request a drop down to part time so I work the equivalent of four days a week but spread the hours over five days - four days is 30 hours so over five days that 6 hours a day plus a 30 min lunch break meaning I can do 8am - 2.30pm five days a week.

Legally work has to be flexible for parents so I'm hoping they'll go for the idea. At a push I could maybe do 8.30am - 3pm but that would make it tight for me to get to the school in time (it's about a 20 min drive if there's no traffic).

I'd then have Lia home straight from school, time to do homework with her, cook dinner, play etc before bedtime. Perfect.

The downside of this is that DH would have to do the morning drop off at 8.30am and, given he has a 1hr train journey to work he'd not arrive at the office until 10am. His work would be okay with that as some of the guys there already start at that time but it would mean him not getting home till much later in the evenings which isn't great for him.

However, he's been talking recently about looking for work closer to home so maybe this will be the push he needs to do just that. He could even afford to drop his salary slightly as we'd be saving a huge amount not paying his train fare every month. He's also in the lucky position of being able to be choosy about jobs as he's quite settled where he is so can afford (all going well in this economic climate) to hold out for the perfect job.

Another option might be a morning childminder that will have Lia for an hour, give her breakfast and drop her off to school which wouldn't be perfect but would still be better than having DH lose his evenings.

As for the drop in my salary, it won't be close to the amount we pay for the nursery so we won't be any worse off financially, even if we pay a morning childminder.

Once we get confirmation of which school Lia will be attending (and therefore what the hours will be) I'll make my application to work and see what they say.