9 24/7 Schedule

Remember that there is more to schedule than work/daycare/school; your family needs groceries, laundry done, errands, meal preparation, activities, and etc. Where and how do these things get done?

When you developed your family budget, you made choices about what shift/s your adults would work, and on what days. In this exercise, you need to figure out who takes the kids to daycare/school, how (by bus or by car), and when?

If the adults work different shifts, who picks up the kids, how and when? You might have decided that to cut down on daycare costs, one adult would work Monday to Friday and the other would work Saturday through Wednesday; this would mean only two days of day care costs. However, most day cares have a three day a week minimum, so you might end up paying for a day that you don’t use (or, Avery could go to daycare, and the adult not working could use the day to get a lot of errands done). As you work through your 24/7 schedule, keep asking yourself where all four people are at any given time: we had a group once who made their schedule work really well, until someone realized that the two children were home alone every morning from 6:25 until 7:30 (hint: this is not a good idea, to say nothing of being illegal!).

Also remember to ask yourself what the implications are for quality of family life based on your schedules.

Do your adults ever get to spend time together, either in the evening or at any point during the week, or are their lives spent passing children from one parent to the other as one gets home and the other heads off to work? And no passing judgment on families who are forced into this choice; for many, it’s the only viable option within their budget.