Working from home and sick days

[Tutor]

I need some advice on how to handle this, plus I just need to vent a little.

My dh is a full-time PhD student and teaches one class a day at a local private school. I work from home 20-25 hours a week. I do about 3/4 of the homeschooling and dh handles the other 1/4. Since we both do a lot of our work from home, we have days (or portions of days) when I am the primary parent and dh focuses on work and days when dh is the primary parent and I focus on work. Generally, sickness doesn't throw-off life too much. If one of the kids is sick, I just give them work that they can do depending on how they are feeling and they can catch up on work over time. If I am sick, I will lighten-up on the mom-intense things and give the kids lots of reading or have them do what they can on their own. I will ask the older kids to help the younger ones. I may miss a few hours of work, but I just rearrange my schedule later to add on an hour here and an hour there to catch up. I'm working with a long deadline, so I have some flexibility.

My problem is when my dh is sick. It seems like when he gets sick it throws off my work schedule completely. School and housework get done, but if dh gets sick on one of the days when I am supposed to be working (like today), I generally get little to no work done. Since dad is resting, the kids come to me with all of their needs, and I get interrupted so often I often just give up trying to work until the kids go to bed. I guess what bothers me about this is that when I am sick, dh doesn't stay home from work or class. I have to be sick and teach and work and be the parent. I know that I sound like a kid stomping her feet and saying, "It's not fair", but it's really bugging me. When I wasn't working for pay, this didn't bother me, but now that we are both working for pay it bothers me that I'm the one who sacrifices work when he gets sick, and I don't get uninterrupted sick days.

I know that my schedule is more flexible than dh's, but I feel like my work is being deemed "less important" since it's the first one to get pushed aside. Am I being unreasonable? Is there some way to work around this? Should I just take off to the library on my day to work whether dh is sick or not?

I'm probably answering my own questions, but if anyone has any experience, advice or perspective to share to help me out or talk me out of my tree, I'd appreciate it.

TIA

[Jean in Newcastle]

Print this out and show it to your dh (when he isn't sick!) and then have a long objective talk about it.

[Claire]

Print this out and show it to your dh (when he isn't sick!) and then have a long objective talk about it.

I think this is excellent advice. Many men (my dh included) don't notice things like this. They need to be explicitly explained. Forcefully. Life is much happier afterwards. My only regrets have been the times I have put up with things like this in silence.

[Melinda in VT]

Although we're not currently homeschooling, we do have an inn and a toddler, and I also telecommute 25 hours a week.

First, I would definitely work to resolve the issue. For me, things only get worse if I let them fester. It's much better if I address the problem when things are calm.

I've found it helps to be really blunt and specific:

"Can you be in charge of the phone for the next hour? It's been ringing a lot and I really need to concentrate on my writing."

"If you're going to lay down for a nap right when the kids get home from school, can you sleep in the bedroom? It's really hard to keep them quiet enough for you to sleep when you're on the couch."

"When you do Y, I feel that you don't value my work."

"I need to work X # of hours today and I know you need to do Y. How are we going to juggle the baby so we both get our work done?"