How often do you manage get out without your kids?

My lad is 13 and my Daughter is 10. They’ve never had a sleepover at their Grandparents. Both sets live locally and have hardly helped out since they were born. My wife’s mum is on her own and just lives down the road (nearly 80 now so a bit late to expect anything) but she’s great. My mum on the other hand is 69, more than capable financially and retired but never offers ever. Just nothing and I cannot understand why (although it echoes my upbringing somewhat).

It is frustrating as a Parent, but I brought them into this world and my responsibility, so who am I to complain?. It does annoy me though when you hear about other kids being whisked away by their Grandparents for trips.

Me and the Mrs hardly get out on our own so its nice when we do. We go for meals a fair bit with the kids now they are a bit older and we cherish the time we all spend together. Sooner or later they wont want to spend it with their farty Parents. 🙂 I have a brother about 12 miles away with 2 kids so we help out with each other when we can which is nice. Good relationships there. You’ve just got to get on with it.

That’s Life eh! Wouldn’t swap them for the world. Blooming great kids and I love em to bits.

My parents have my niece and nephew for a night at least once a month and have them during the day once a week. I know my brother relies on this.
Our first is due next week and mum has already said she’ll come over when ever we want to go out, they live a hour away. The in laws are in Denmark so naturally we won’t get so much help from them.
Sound like we are going to be lucky judging by this thread as the experience of some of our friends.

Any time I want. It’s soul destroying.

When he was at school, when he was skiing or doing athletics with his club, and the time it took to watch a film on TV. Not often then.

Our two are 9 and 12. My parents live 10 minutes walk in one direction and my in-laws live 5 minutes the other way, so they have them quite a lot. I knew there was a reason we lived close to them 🙂

We don’t. Neither of us has any family to call on. Me as they’re all dead and hers all live in London. It’s always been like this for us. It’d be nice to have someone to babysit for us from time to time but it’s never been possible. I guess when the oldest one gets old enough to babysit we might get a night out one day.

The thing which strikes me from this thread – does nobody actually pay for somebody to babysit any more?

> that’s our first night away since the youngest was born

And you took time out to post on here? 😉

In my defence, at the time of writing that I was lying in a hotel bed listening to my hungover wife snoring like a drain delicately purring next to me. 😀

does nobody actually pay for somebody to babysit any more?

I wonder if that is partly down to PaedoFear ?

Also there don’t seem to be many adults doing babysitting these days (not sure why? Pay? Health and safety?) and we feel our kids are currently too young to be trusted to the typical teenage babysitter.

Are there no longer such things as babysitting circles?

We have a nanny who works 7-4 5 days a week. She works probably 3 Saturday evenings (6-11pm or so) a month when we have date night. Our sons (3 1/2 and 1) are in bed by 7-7:30 so we only really miss their bed time. Still have the full Saturday together as a family.

Date night’s important. Getting time to yourselves is important (we find) in keeping your marriage strong = a strong family.

Living as ex-pats and both working, we have a great nanny / maid who’s fantastic with the boys. We miss having family around to help out (although the grand parents do love to when we’re home in the summer).

We’ve only had one night away from our boys when they stayed with granny.

Couple of times a year.

We’ve got two, 10 and 18 months. Sitters is a problem, my Mum had our eldest once, but he was asleep and she came to ours, he didn’t even know we were missing, but since little one came she’s not been up for it.

My MIL died a few years ago so she’s rubbish too.

My Sisters in Law do the bulk of it, they’re great,

Sometimes we moan out loud about not going out, but when we just had our eldest and sitters were easy we didn’t go out much anyway.

I still get the odd night away for riding, and I’m off to the Alps next summer for a long weekend, Mrs like nights out with her friends now and again.

How often do I ride?

Okay I’m not riding as regularly as I used to i.e. every day but I still ride at least twice a week. I have come to fatherhood later in life and at 45 years of age we are expecting our second. We have no local family and we are both in full-time employment. Childcare is with a childminder just once a week.
The thing is I have led quite a nomadic life upon until now, have travelled extensively and actually have no regrets about giving my time to someone else.
The truth is, I was one of those people saying I didn’t want children and I often mocked those with children about my fabulous child free life.

I lost my mother three years ago and I just think that this put things in perspective. What is life about?

I’m also a paramedic and without getting too deep have become acutely aware of how lonely people become in later life and whilst this is no reason to have children it is certainly a common reflective theme for the childless elderly.

Life with children is all about compromise there are gaps within my life that allow me to ride, and yes my partner is very supportive of this and I guess I’m lucky. I also think shiftwork is a huge advantage freeing up space or time when otherwise it would be left purely for weekends.

Am I knackered? You bet!

Am I happy?

Never been happier !!

OP – I know this one. I have twin girls love them to pieces but they are nearly 2 and in that time I’d say twice. One of those was a successful ‘date’ night where we stayed over in a hotel while grand parents looked after the girls but the other we were both shattered and nearly fell asleep in the cinema.

All the advice is to try date nights but that’s easier said than done in my experience. Its a nice idea but harder to arrange than you’d think.

never but we never really did it before so not an issue for use (7months, 6 and 11 years). if you go out we take the kids, we like our kids lol we also get time on our own which is much more important.

Kids one and three here and thankfully are now sleeping reliably well so babysitting a viable option. Have a few good sitters lined up too so it is getting better, but still really limited to 7pm to 10pm. Overnight much rarer as family are not local. Maybe once or twice a year. Got a weekend in Rome without the kids coming up soon, most excited 🙂

If anyone tells you it gets easier, they are lying.

Don’t be daft. Ours are nearly 2, and 4. It’s way, way easier than when they were babies – not so easy to go out for the night when Mrs R is breastfeeding, and there’s the prospect of an extremely broken night’s sleep making going out for a few drinks less than appealing.

We get out on our own for the evening about once per month on average. Overnight about once per year.

My wife’s mum came up to stay with us this weekend. Next weekend they are staying with my parents. Two weeks after that her parents are staying in our house while we go out for our anniversary, this is pretty typical so yeah, quite often.

Both sets of grandparents are mad about their grandchildren and want them around, I can’t imagine things being any different. I’d say almost as often as we want or need without taking the piss.

We get to go out perhaps 3 or 4 times a year as a couple – babysitting duties shared between my wife’s parents and a good friend (who we also babysit for).

Possibly once a year our girls (aged 6) stay over at the grandparents and have just (for the first time) had a sleep over at the above friend’s house.

We have just got the details of a well recommended babysitter who we plan on using so we can now start to get out more together (Spectre and the new Star Wars film will require nights out for….)

I’d say almost as often as we want

This is pretty much the deal for both my brother and sister with their kids, both sets of grand parents on tap with regular overnight and impromptu stays. Would make a MASSIVE difference to our lives if this were the case. But it’s not. Ho hum.

If anyone tells you it gets easier, they are lying.

It does get easier. It’s the people who say that two aren’t much more work than one that are lying.

It does indeed get easier esp when they can drive and pick you up from the pub

mrblobby

This is pretty much the deal for both my brother and sister with their kids, both sets of grand parents on tap with regular overnight and impromptu stays. Would make a MASSIVE difference to our lives if this were the case. But it’s not. Ho hum.

Ironically my sister and my wife’s sister have had virtually unlimited access to granny day care. My mum watches both my sisters kids every day and my mother in law watched all 4 of my wife’s sisters kids. But in both instances they live next door. So whilst my wife and I are relatively fortunate, we’re only getting our “fair” share of the grandparents time.

We have to do a lot of travelling to make it work, but it’s worth it, from a free time perspective and from the point of view of my kids having a good/healthy relationship with their grandparents.

The fact that both sets of grandparents live in the countryside is a bonus as I don’t want my kids becoming insulated from real life.

None. Nearest family are over 6000 miles away, no really good friends.
But as others, even when I have tried to organise an evening, my wife refused.

We’ve had one meal out (& a funeral) as a couple in three years.
Maybe 8 nights in that time ,L’il J has stayed at grandparents
(we live away). On each of those occasions by the time we sat down, we both fell asleep or were too knackered to go anywhere.
During the last few visits North , the little bugger pulls the “I want my mammy/daddy/to go home” routine.

We moved to a new road in our area and were invited to join a babysitting club,which was kind, but i politley postponed joining until I knew the members better…We are just at the stage of having maybe 3 or 4 friends who can help out or more importantly ,the boy wants to sleep over with their kids. So maybe we’ll get to go and see Macbeth soon. 🙂

Got 3 boys, and it’s maybe 1 or 2 nights a year staying away. That only started once the youngest was reasonably self sufficient (i.e. could build own shelter, knew which fungi to eat and which to avoid/spike siblings food with).

It’s not that big a deal, and makes the evenings away more of an event for all of us.

I try to get out for a ride every week. Not bothered about going out drinking etc, and the wife can go out whenever she wants. I have no problem looking after my son alone. Give and take innit?

I think you’re missing the point, wrecker

I try to get out for a ride every week.

OP:

Out of interest how often do you manage to get out on an evening/night with your other half without your kids?

Our daughters are 5 + 8.
During the early years we had hardly any nights out, but as they’ve got a bit older (and my Mum and Dad moved closer) it is getting easier.
We’ve probably managed to get a night out every 4-6 weeks, and had one overnighter so far this year.

Having my folks 15 mins away is proving to be pretty handy..

Individually we both get out a fair bit, I work away a few nights every month, and my wife does a few things like Brownies in the evenings, so we both get a bit of quality time alone with the kids.

we both get a bit of quality time alone with the kids.

We both work part-time (Mrs doesn’t work Mondays and Tuesdays, I don’t work Fridays), so quality time alone with the kids is easy enough.

It’s quality time alone with each other that is the rarity.

Out of interest how often do you manage to get out on an evening/night with your other half without your kids?

Ah misread. Thanks for pointing it out ransos; very helpful.