i have been working for more than 18 years and I have 3 kids. My youngest stays with my mum during weekdays and returns home with us during weekends and long school holidays. The two elder girls in primary school have a lot of homework. They have a lot of after school activities.
I don't hire any helpers. After school, picking up girls from interest classes, preparing and cooking dinner, housework, checking girls' homework is all my life. Luckily F6 students are on study leave. There is less marking. But the F1 class causes trouble from time to time. Very annoying, very naive.
The best thing is to see how students grow. It is very rewarding when they come to visit me after graduation.
Yet I am happy to be a working mum. I am no better than others in any aspect but I am blessed to have healthy kids and a loving husband, supportive parents and parents-in-law, cooperative colleagues.
The worst time has passed... September to December can be a nightmare yet students come and go. So does tonnes of workload. I do complain about students, workload and the boss when the earth keeps revolving. Adopting a positive attitude does help.
My worst time was marking compos and listening tasks in a shopping mall every Saturday, standing and waiting for my kids' extra curricular activities to finish in the first term.
I don't cook every day. Kids have ECAs in the evening and we eat out 2 evenings out of 5. At weekends, we eat at my parents and my in-laws.
Well, it depends. I sometimes idle and don't want to work. Yet after idling, I need to work at a turbo speed. I need to hurry to finish work at school before rushing to kids' school to pick them up after ECAs.
My parents help a lot too.
My husband helps with weekend ECAs but works late on school days because of extra lessons at school and private tuition.
An old colleague of my husband quit the secondary school last school year and then a primary school in the middle of the term (2013-14) and started teaching at DI after January 2014. She seems to be more satisfied with post secondary students.
The worst was to express milk in the handicapped washroom and when it was time to express milk, I had a double lesson.
I felt terribly irritated when I was sleepy at about 9 pm before my kids slept. Yet when I look back, I always feel blessed to pass the bad time. I know some worse time will come when dealing with my kids' school work (as I sometimes face) and my own work.
When we open our eyes in the morning, we have passed another day. Let's face it positively.