If your husband works the swing shift...

[Guest bookwormmama]

What does your school day look like at home when the main provider is gone from the early afternoon to late at night {swing shift}? Do you stay up later, sleep in later, do you do school work in the morning or in the afternoon after mom/dad has gone to work? How does it look like in your family if there are many children? How do you juggle this?

 

Just curious to see other families' days and schedules...

 

Thanks!

[mrsrevmeg]

We do stick to a main time frame most of the time, but we do change things up bit sometimes to accommodate dear old dad. My husband sometimes works day shift, sometimes works night shift and is off other days. When he is working night shift, we sometimes get a later start than normal so that we can spend time with him in the morning before he goes to bed. On the week where he is off during the week and works the weekend we have been known to do field trips during the week and make up school on Saturday. But for the most part we try to stick to a regular schedule.

[mommaduck]

Yes, yes, and yes.

 

Yes, we get up later...yes, we start school after dh goes to work...yes, we go to bed later. We are all on 2nd shift ;) Except me, I have to keep after two shifts (looking for a morning job).

Edited May 25, 2009 by mommaduck

[Mallory]

My husband works nights (his shift dosen't swing though, he always starts at 7:00). He is gone from about 5:30 in the evening until 6-9 in the morning.We go back and forth between times/semesters when we all sleep in late or we get up early. Most of the kids would rather stay up late, but I am a morning person, and quite frankly, I am just done parenting (for sure done parenting well) by about 9:00!I am so much less patient in the evenings that schooling then doesn't work for me. My 13yo sis does some of her reading and writing then, and occasionally if all of the little ones are asleep we can get in some good discussions in the evenings. Mostly we do school from about 9-12, with often another hour or so in the afternoon or at bedtime for reading.I try to have school and chores done by the time dh is awake in the afternoon.We also eat our big meal about 4:30 before he goes to work. So we usually eat breakfast around 8:30, a light lunch (often leftovers) around 11:30, dinner around 4:30, then a snack/small meal about 7:00.I love that he works this shift- I love that he is here all day and I can leave the big kids while he is sleeping to run errands, bedtimes go so much easier when he is gone, and there is more room in the bed! I do miss that he can't go to scouts or baseball, but I still like this shift.

[dalynnrmc]

My dh works nights - leaves around 9pm and arrives home around 7am. We stay up late and sleep late; if my littles were up at 8 o'clock he'd never get any sleep!

 

Usually, we get up around 11 or 12 (yes, noon), and bedtime is around 1am. I'm trying to get in the habit of getting *me* up at around 9am, and the kids are up by 11 usually, and we start school at 1pm after we've eaten. School is to be finishd by 6pm, which is a great time to spend outside - 6pm to 8pm are outside hours, when it's cool enough and all the neighbor kids are home to play also. And of course, any evening out-of-home activities are usually during that time frame as well.

 

We eat soon after we get up, what everyone else would consider lunch. We usually want a snack between 4 and 6pm, when others are getting ready for dinner, and we eat our evening meal later - usually around 9pm. Dh leaves for work soon after, and sometimes the kids and I have another snack a little later.

 

My youngers take meds to help them sleep, and I give it to them around 11 so that they are asleep around midnight. I head to bed at about 1am... which is earlier than it has been previously. (We had to adjust to a slightly earlier schedule like this when my oldest boy's schoolwork went to taking more than just a couple of hours. Plus, they enjoy having the evenings to play with the neighbor kids, whereas previously we were doing school from around 3pm to 8pm, and that didn't allow for that at all. We're in a better neighborhood now though. LOL)

 

 

My dh is home days, and usually gets up to eat with us (when you all are having lunch). Even though it's our first meal and technically breakfast, we usually have lunch-type food for this meal. Afterward, dh is up for a couple of hours and then goes back to bed. OR - he will stay in bed until around 4pm and then he's up for the rest of the day and he goes to work. (DH has worked graveyards since he was a teenager, but lived in a household where his mother and others didn't understand that he needed to sleep during the day and wasn't being lazy. SO, his body is used to sleeping in 4-6 hour spurts, and often he can't sleep much longer than that.)

 

But when he can, he sleeps until the late afternoon and then we have a good span of time as a family. He often is around for afternoon school though, and on those days school often gets pushed later into the evening, or gets set aside to make up the next day... and sometimes it causes it to carry into the weekend. We used to school Tuesday through Saturday, because his regular days off were Sunday and Monday. That worked for that time, but he hasn't had "regular days off" in a year now, so we sort of fly by the seat of our pants there. (This is hard for us, but it seems that it may work out where he can have regular days again. We shall see.)

 

 

Anyway. Our schedule is a bit odd, but it works for us. We tweak it now and again as dh's schedule changes, or like our recent move to a nicer neighborhood with kids I'm comfortable letting my own play with in the evenings. It sure is nice to have this freedom of schedule, and sometimes we get aggravated because we're running late to whatever event... and I try to remember (and remind the family) that we DO really enjoy being able to go to all these things, so let's please not stress that we are a half hour behind where we wanted to be. After all, it's Thursday afternoon and we are leaving town to go visit grandparents for a couple of days, without worry of school or work schedules getting in the way. How fantastic to be this free! YAY!

 

Okay, I'm done. :P

[Melissa B]

We work our schedule around my dh's schedule. He doesn't work the swing shift, but he works an odd schedule. He works six days, so the kids school six days as well. When he is off, they are off. He goes in around 3:30 or 4:00 am so he tries to get to bed by 7:30 or so. Since the house needs to be somewhat quiet, we school in the evenings. The older girls can be up until 10:30 doing school work.

We generally stop school whenever he gets home as well. Twice a week he is home around lunch time, so the kids have the whole afternoon off. Twice a week he is usually home around 3 or 4 so we wrap it up then. When he works until dinner time we call it a day at 5pm (although the older girls usually do history and literature every evening.) I find it very difficult to school when dh is home so I don't even try any more. :D I think it is important for the kids to have time to spend with their father. And our months run much smoother when we work with dh's schedule instead of maintaining a strict time schedule and trying to convince dh to adjust to it.

[dsacco]

I try to stay on schedule.... but DH's schedule is different every day.

 

Mondays 7am-3

Tuesdays 7am-3 then back in at 11pm-7am Wednesday Morning

Thursday-Friday Off

Saturday 3-11 or 4-12 depending on the week and I never know which week it is

Sunday 1-9 or 2-10

 

Then I have to deliver eggs and do stuff on certain weekdays. So I try to make it so at least some school can travel with us (readings etc) and then the Farmer's Market is Saturday mornings and the farm is open to the public in the afternoons.

 

Now of course to make life a LOT easier ;) next year will change to something new. He bids every year on a new schedule.

 

We do get up between 7-8 every day and TRY and start school by 9 and get done by 12-2 depending on the child.

[AudreyTN]

My dh just started a job 1.5 hours away (after being unemployed for 4 months). He leaves at about 3:30pm and gets home about 5am. Then he sleeps til 11.

 

We do some school before 11... eventually I'd like to say that we get MOST school done by 11. It also helps to do school then because it does keep them quiet for the most part. We do the Bible portion of our studies with Daddy and the rest after he's left for work. So, I guess we're schooling in little bits all throughout the day.

 

They do go to bed between 8-9, depending on the child's age/behavior. Everyone is usually up by 7-8am.

 

Now, last night dh didn't work and he also has today off. So I let the kids stay up until 10-10:30 to spend a little more time with dad.