dealing with dh's wacky schedule.

[iona]

dh's schedule changes monthly from days, to swings to nights as well as having his weekends rotate. this month he is working swing shift with thurs/fri off...next month will be nights with fri/sat off. the work days run from 9-12 hours, and many times he doesn't know exactly how long it will be.

 

i've thought about making a weekly schedule with days labeled A, B, C, and D, so that they can fall whenever they need....and adjust for mornings or afternoons depending on when he is home. I'm not very organized, and I think that is why this is stressing me out so much.

 

btw, my oldest is in k and i have a 4 and almost 2 year old. i know that isn't much for academics...but just living life around that schedule is frustrating.

 

any words of advice or encouragement would be appreciated.

[iona]

have to run, so i'll check back later.

[Starr]

I would work on adjusting to his schedule. K is very flexible. I guess you have to decide if you are all going to change schedules all of the time or get used to dad being home at different times, different months. Your A,B,C,D idea sounds good. You can tweak it as it goes. Someone here on the boards must be doing this.

[Sherry in OH]

I think having several schedules would work.

 

You want to plan to do quiet activities or to be away from the house when daddy must sleep during the day. Perhaps you could plan field trips or park days for some of those days.

 

Plan play-dates at your house and boisterous activities for days when your husband is at work.

[JoyfulMama]

My husband works nights, mostly. He usually works Sunday night through Thursday night, and can work any shift Friday and/or Saturday. Makes for fun planning. :glare: Only days we can guarantee him off are those he schedules vacation. Each week we get surprised, as does he, for what his end of week schedule will be, as it is based on production and maintenance needs.

I plan 4 days of "school" each week. I just call them Day 1, 2, 3, & 4. But A, B, C, & D would work, too.

Now, I don't let his schedule completely run our schedule. I can't. But I try to make it flow with ours as much as possible. I know when his normal sleeping times are, and I try to make sure we are home when he is awake at least some of the time. We don't start "school work" first thing in the morning, as he'd interrupt it when he came home. I don't want him to feel like he is interrupting. One of the benefits of homeschooling is being able to see him.

 

Yet on days like today, I had to send him to bed, as he was certainly hanging out with us for WAY too long, as we had plans this afternoon. Well, he didn't listen very well. He ended up with the two older kids in our bed for fun time. I got frustrated, and went to vacuum. They all then stood in front of me with hanging heads as they all told me that not one of them was doing what they were supposed to be doing. INCLUDING my darling husband. Needless to say we didn't get much done today. If you want to be flexible to his schedule you will have to allow for this. :chillpill:

[hsm6kids]

 

My husband has an irregular schedule also, What I did was instead of having Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday , I have is day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and day 5. Then regardless of DH's days off we still have 5 days of school scheduled every week. I then have the issue of irregular hours so we have just set it up that when DH walks out the door for work, we pull out the books for school. So no matter when DH works we have school 5 days a week for 5 hrs. a day.

Right now we have Tuesday, Wednesday's off and do school between 2:30 and 7:30 pm.

 

 

[iona]

I think having several schedules would work.

 

You want to plan to do quiet activities or to be away from the house when daddy must sleep during the day. Perhaps you could plan field trips or park days for some of those days.

 

Plan play-dates at your house and boisterous activities for days when your husband is at work.

 

 

good idea, i definatly need to plan a better rotation of away from the house activities. last time he was on nights, most evenings we'd walk around walmart for at least an hour (it was too hot outside), then try and sneak in and get the kids to bed. He'd sleep from 2-9 pm, so the first part coincided with naps which was nice.

[iona]

I don't want him to feel like he is interrupting. One of the benefits of homeschooling is being able to see him.

 

If you want to be flexible to his schedule you will have to allow for this. :chillpill:

 

I love the fact that since we are homeschooling, he can see the kids more...even though it makes my planning more complicated. and we were able to head out of town last week when he finally got time off.

will try and be positive, flexible and chill.

[iona]

I would work on adjusting to his schedule. K is very flexible. I guess you have to decide if you are all going to change schedules all of the time or get used to dad being home at different times, different months. Your A,B,C,D idea sounds good. You can tweak it as it goes. Someone here on the boards must be doing this.

 

thanks for your thoughts, i am glad that what i need to fit in for k is minimal, but my overall planning and scheduling is so poor, this schedule is putting me through the ringer. I wish i was more of a natural at planning and implementing.

[iona]

My husband has an irregular schedule also, What I did was instead of having Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday , I have is day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and day 5. Then regardless of DH's days off we still have 5 days of school scheduled every week. I then have the issue of irregular hours so we have just set it up that when DH walks out the door for work, we pull out the books for school. So no matter when DH works we have school 5 days a week for 5 hrs. a day.

Right now we have Tuesday, Wednesday's off and do school between 2:30 and 7:30 pm.

 

 

 

 

that sounds like a nice plan. i'd like more of a consistent rythm to the day. we haven't started school some days until after dinner...which i guess is fine, but i wish it didn't seem to be so thrown together, more planned.

 

i also wish i knew how to multi quote, so i wouldn't be posting 4 times in a row. i do appreciate all who have chimed in.

[eclipse]

My husband is a retail manager, which means his schedule changes week to week, day to day. Sometimes he's gone before we wake up, other times he leaves in the late morning and isn't home until long after the kids are in bed, he rarely has two days off in a row and they are almost never weekend days. Honestly, his crazy schedule is one of the reasons we home school. When ds1 was in k and 1st, there were weeks that dh and ds saw each other for only a few minutes on only a couple of days.

 

So - we make our "off" days coincide with dh's. On the days he leaves before we're up, we start school first thing, so everything's done by the time he gets home. On the days he's home for most of the morning, we start a little later so the kids can have daddy time in the morning. Sometimes we do a little while he's home - if I have a read aloud planned, dh will sometimes take that over. If I have a video for the kids to watch and it's something interesting to dh, too, sometimes we'll all watch it together on the evenings he's home or in the mornings before he leaves, or even on his days off.

 

So, I would suggest to you something like this - take days off when dad has days off, except for things that dad might want to help with (in some families, dad is the science guy and does all the experiments or something like that). Have a schedule of what you want to get done each day, but be flexible about when you start for the day. If you aren't doing all the same subjects every day, write a schedule as Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. So you'll know that on Day 1 and 3 you do math, phonics, language arts, and science and on Days 2 and 5 you do Math, Phonics, LA, and History/Social Studies, and on Day 4 you do Math, Phonics, LA, and Art. Or something like that. So it doesn't matter if Day one falls on a Wed this week and a Monday the next week - you know what # day it is, so you know what subjects you're covering. Then you need only adjust the starting and ending times of your days based on what time he leaves for work. This can be a little more complicated if you have to work in extracurriculars, but you can work around those.

[Parrothead]

I tried all the flipping of days and schedules. It did not work for us. I keep a mainly "normal" schedule for dd and me. Dh fits in when he is home and/or awake.

 

For years and years he did not have weekends off. If we had to go shopping or run errands that usually meant a day trip due to our location. We either went after school, had a short school day or skipped it all together and made it up later.

 

There was a long time that I had no idea what shift dh was on from one day to the next or what days he was off. We went about our business and if dh was home great, if not we made that work too.

 

Now, finally he is working M-F 7 to 5. It is making me crazy because nothing is getting done. He comes home, we eat, tidy up and watch TV until he is ready for bed (9p). There is so very little interaction.

[KidsHappen]

My hubby travels for a living. Sometimes he is home for months and then gone for weeks and then gone Sun-Thurs except for weeks where Mon. is a holiday then it's Tues. - Sat. or something like that. Most of the time, I honestly don't know if he will be home this week or not and if he is gone where he might be. I tell him to just let me know when I have to go to the airport.

 

So, in this house momma sets the schedule and that's what I would recommend. I really can't imagine how we would function otherwise. I'm not saying it can't be done just that I couldn't do it.

[gaillardia]

We tried to fit it to dh's schedule, but can only do that when he works a regular day. Otherwise, we just do our schooling as early as possible for the formal book and pen stuff.

Dh's schedule has been all over the clock. At least he has off on Sundays always.

We do what we need to do, on our schedule. It's easier now because our youngest is 9. I know it was really hard when there were little tots.

He even makes dinner before he leaves for work sometimes. Whoa.:tongue_smilie: