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Looking ahead to maternity leave with a child in school...

Hello all!

It's been a while since i've been on here but this site was so important to me while expecting DD!  So I thought I'd ask you lovely people if any of you have any advice or experiences based on this.

I work 30 miles away from home. DD's child care has been split between my parents (2 days a week) and chilkd minders really local to my work. She's now in part time nursery, going to full time next January once she's 4, again in a school close to my work.  It's all great, it all works. But we ARE planning on a 2nd LO (probably looking to try in a year and halfs time).

I had 6 months maternity leave with DD, and that amount of time worked great for us.  So if I guess that I'd be off for the same amount of time, that's 6 months of school runs to a school 30 miles away!! DH works in the opposite direction, and my parents are the opposite direction too (and the in laws live over 150 miles away so that isn't an option either!). I can't see it being at all possible to do a 60 mile round trip to take her and the same later in the day to pick her up - madness! And taking her, killing time during the day, and then bringing home 5 days a week wouldn't work with a newborn either!!

I don't want to more her perminantly to a school closer to home because 1) the current system with her being so close to my work works really well the rest of the time, and 2) we don't know where we'll be living! (We're hoping to move around the same time - madness I know!).

The ideal would be that we could move close to where I work / where she's in school, but housing costs in that area will probably write that off. Or the other ideal would be that I could move her to a more local school for 6 months and then back to her old school!!  But I'm sure that's not aloud!?! Is it?!

Has anyone else experienced this dilema? What did you do?  Any thoughts?!

Thank you all in advance!

Clare

Replies

  • I can see the dilemma you are in!! (Poor you)! I'm a teacher and all I would say is if you decline your daughters place at school close to work someone else could get the place meaning when you want to move her back there may not be space at that school! I think if your wanting to move maybe look into it sooner and also look into whether the school Is over subscribed etc. If it was me I would look into a more local school and perhaps a more local nursery that has a breakfast and out of school club that could take and drop her off or that your parents or OH could help out with the school runs! If you don't want to do this I'd say 6months isn't that long to have your daughter settled and happy at school and to give her the chance to really get into the swing of things at the same time as the rest of the class. Guess that wasn't much help ha. But good luck with whatever you choose. X
  • Lol thanks for your reply!  It's difficult isn't it. We can't really afford to move any earlier than that, which is half the problem.   I also can't afford to reduce my hours - to be fair, work are great and I can do flexi working of sorts (which allows me to currently drop her off at nursery int he morning the 3 mornings she goes - child minders pick her up and have her the rest of the day, she's with my mum the other two full days) but having her local to home long term would cause more problems I think. At the moment, being so close to her school means that if there's a concert, parents evening, or if she's ill, I can pop there really quickly.  If she was closer to home, it would be a 40 min drive!

    So difficult!! lol

    Clare

  • Yeah it really is. Well from that last message it seems you've made your mind up! Remember things may have changed by the time you have another baby so go for the school close to home and make do travelwise for 6months knowing your little girl will have stability! X
  • I'd be very interested to hear if anyone else had this type of problem and what they did.  Happy to be convinced either way!

    Clare

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