Ideas for staying in touch with a stay-at-home mother during the summer

May 23, 2008 5:20 PM

Summer is here and my wife is now at home all day every day with 5, 7, and 9 year olds. I am looking for ideas for things I can do while I'm away at work during the day to try to help her maintain sanity. I'm already planning multiple daily phone calls.
posted by TheManChild2000 to human relations (15 comments total)

Come home at the end of the day ready to keep the kids out of her hair for at least an hour so mom can go read or relax or something. And if you can cook, offer to fix dinner.
posted by phunniemee at 5:24 PM on May 23, 2008

Is there a pool near you?
Any chance the kids could go to day camp for a couple of weeks out of the summer?
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:29 PM on May 23, 2008

Phunniemee has it. TELL her you're taking the kids for an hour. Don't offer to do it, just do it. Make sure she has some down time on the weekends also. You don't have to go in to the office on weekends but she's expected to produce meals, do laundry, supervise the kids, and keep the household running 7 days a week. So remember that the weekend should mean some kind of break for her too.

Encourage her to have a regular activity that she can do every week, or every day, something she wants to do, like a half hour for a daily walk, a weekly card game or movie night with her girlfriends, whatever it is she likes, so that she gets a mental break from chasing after the kids. You're a good hubby for recognizing that this is hard for her.
posted by Kangaroo at 5:35 PM on May 23, 2008

Come home at the end of the day ready to keep the kids out of her hair for at least an hour

Exactly. NO working late.
posted by R. Mutt at 5:42 PM on May 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

E-mails, if she has a chance to get to a computer. Texts, if she's a cell phone texting kind of person. Occasional surprise deliveries of unexpected treats. Mail her postcards.

I'm a full-time borderline-insane mom, and, as much as I love the contact with the outside world that phone calls provide, they always always always come at a bad time, like when the kids are shaving the cat and the kitchen is on fire and the doorbell is ringing and I'm still in my pajamas. That's why I like e-mails.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:42 PM on May 23, 2008

Plus... alone/quiet time on the weekends.
posted by R. Mutt at 5:44 PM on May 23, 2008

Quick clarification: I'm only looking for mid-day, weekday ideas. I already take complete control of the kids during all non-work times and as this is not 1950 she is in no way expected to do all that stuff all on her own 7 days a week.

She doesn't use computers but does read texts/MMSs.
posted by TheManChild2000 at 5:45 PM on May 23, 2008

When I was a wee one my mother and several other mothers organized a cooperative day camp. Each day one mother took all the kids and organized activities, which were everything from trips to the community pool or zoo or just hanging out in someone's back yard. The kids all went to school together and so we were friends.

I was only 6 years old and still have very fond memories of that summer. It was very fun and that way every mother had four days to to herself to take care of errands, work or just have a little time off.

This is perhaps a little harder to accomplish in these overly litigious days, but maybe not?
posted by brookeb at 6:03 PM on May 23, 2008

Any chance you can work a semi-flexible schedule? I think getting the children out of bed, dressed and fed would be appreciated on occasion.

Is it possible for you to come home for lunch occasionally? Picking up a few sandwiches and having unplanned adult conversation is nice sometimes.
posted by beachhead2 at 6:06 PM on May 23, 2008

I think surprising her with things that allow her to keep the kids occupied would be awesome. (I'm speaking as a mom who works at home with a 2 year old.) A lot of times, I feel completely burnt out on being the cruise director and chauffeur and house cleaner and chef, etc. So when someone else makes the plans, it becomes fun for me too.

Every week or two weeks, you could make her a care package of mom support tools for that week:

-summer membership passes to things that they would want to do more than once (like the zoo! Or a cool pool!)
-fishing poles/bait/map to the local fishing hole
-a scavenger hunt with treasure map of things that they all have to do together (and you'll be at the end! with ice cream! At the end of the day!)
-A session to go paint pottery together
-Send a pizza to the house for lunch
-Etc.
posted by jeanmari at 6:06 PM on May 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'll admit the disclaimer first -- I do not have children. I also lived in a fairly safe neighborhood. So my response is not based on my experience with parenting, but with remembering what my mother did each summer with me.

But that said --

....what's wrong with simply telling the older kids, at least, to "go outside and play"? My friends and I spent most of our summer days under our own power and not bothering parents unless one of us hurt ourselves or something. And I KNOW my mother wasn't peeping through windows eyeballing us the whole time; she was instead taking care of house stuff and enjoying the fact that we weren't underfoot.

I'll grant you that this may not be easy to do in EVERY community, but -- I'd wager it's possible in more communities than you'd think.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:54 PM on May 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

Prepare lunches so that she only has to unpack them and/or heat them up. We've started putting lunches in the little glass dishes with plastic lids from Pyrex - 2 for an adult, one for a kid should work. Then you can heat the food right in the glass dish (YMMV mixing glass with kids), and easily rinse and put the dish in the dishwasher when you're done. She can then focus on things other than preparing food and washing up. Every single day. For years and years. For a total of 6,242 hours (est.) of her life devoted to preparing food for kids who don't really appreciate it.
posted by amtho at 8:07 PM on May 23, 2008

Your wife's life is my life. Except mine are now 6, 8 and 10. Summers are rough.
If you're at work, there really isn't much you can do...phonecalls aren't really going to cut it because then you hang up and go out for a nice lunch or whatever and she still has 3 bored kids running around. You need to help her pre-organize stuff and think of ideas for her to occupy the kids.

Some stuff I do:

-Packing a picnic, walking to the park, eating lunch there and hanging out takes up about 3/4 of the day. Our park also has one of those shallow splash pool things that they start filling up in July.
-Every Thursday we do "trip day." We go to a movie, or the Science Centre, or High Park, Riverdale farm or something like that.
-She needs to find a pool that's close, that's for sure. We have a neighbourhood one and also my mother-in-law's, but it's a bit of a drive (although that eats up time and has the added benefit of getting grandma to occupy them while I sit in a chair and have a beer.)
-The YMCA rocks.
-She can take them to Ikea and feed them lunch for $1.99 each and then they can play in Smålland for an hour while she shops.
-Arrange playdates with the kids' friends. Take their friend one day and then it's payback another day. If your really crafty you can co-ordinate it so all 3 are on playdates and you have a few hours to yourself.
-She's going to get tired and unmotivated...it's okay once in a while to let them watch too much tv. Some days we'd have a "pyjama day," especially if it's raining.

Your kids are actually at a really good age now; while they do get bored really fast and whine about it incessantly, they can also occupy themselves at a park or a pool or a playground and she can be there and enjoy watching them and also bring a book and relax a bit. It doesn't have to suck.

In the summer, some days seem to drag on and on...other days you wake up so tired and not into it, and wonder what the hell you are going to do with them today.
But I've never looked back on those summer days and regretted spending it with them for a second.
Good luck and have fun.
posted by chococat at 9:50 PM on May 23, 2008

Good ideas here, everyone, thanks.
posted by TheManChild2000 at 9:14 AM on May 24, 2008

During the holidays in my city there are a bunch of community-group organised kid event/course things during the school holidays; ones I did as a kid including film making, shooting, you name it, mostly under the auspices of the YMCA. These days there are computer courses, and so on. Do community groups in your area run age-appropriate day (or most of the day) long course that some or all of the kids can be on?
posted by rodgerd at 7:19 PM on May 24, 2008