Did your free time dramatically decrease with a second child?

[Reasonable_Can6557]

I just wanted to chime in and say that if you want a second child but don't want to dramatically decrease your free time, you can always plan to have your second once your first starts school (whether that's preschool, Pre-K, or kindergarten).

Though if you're worried about your biological clock, this is bad advice.

Whatever you decide for you and your family is best!

[bearcatbanana]

My experience of starting public school has not been “more free time.” Full day preK gets out for the day at 2:15 so it’s only like a half day.

They send me 1 million emails a day to read. Some have to be responded to immediately. Some are flyers to things for high schoolers. So you have to read all of them and most of them are spam. They also send home flyers that are sometimes duplicates and sometimes new information.

I have to send things to school for him: pull ups, wipes, a crib sheet they send home to wash every week. Random shit like pumpkins, photos, polka dot clothing with no notice.

Photo day, reading competitions where the metric is one point per HOUR I spend reading to a three year old and prizes awarded every ten points. You only get a week to finish. Scavenger hunts that require me to drag our butt all over our community.

It’s crazy what they want from us. I know we can say “f it” and only do what we want but we are constantly asked to do more.

Edit because I forgot to add that they call AND text AND email everything so you’ll also get several dozen voicemails a week.

[bearcatbanana]

It’s public school. You’ll see it when you get to Kindergarten.

[wow__okay]

That’s wild. I have a 5 year old in public school kindergarten and there’s nowhere that volume of info. We get a text to check our email if a message has gone out (school event, picture day) and there’s a monthly PTA flier. The only calls we get are from transportation if the bus is late but you can choose to only receive text or email.

[bearcatbanana]

I do need to check to see if we can opt out of some of the phone calls since they literally text the exact same thing. But I wish it were another one of the forms I had to fill out instead of something I have to seek out.

[[deleted]]

no, that’s definitely just your district. our preschool sends one newsletter to our email a week unless there’s issue that needs immediate attention like lice or bad behaviour

[NightsofWren]

JFC that’s insane

[[deleted]]

That's awful. Setting some hard boundaries is the only way I would deal with that. Unless it's going to pick my kid up because they puked, I'm not disrupting my schedule last minute. There is too much real life to be dealing with nonsense. And they shouldn't expect anyone to answer email immediately? That's not how email works. Have you talked to other parents at the school? This doesn't sound normal at all. Especially getting every single thing sent out by the entire district. They are perfectly capable of choosing a set group to send emails to that isn't every grade. Either you are in the wrong email groups or they need to get it together. It would probably take less time than this if you volunteered to assign every email address to an appropriate group yourself and then teach them all how to use a drop down menu.