The day of reckoning is fast approaching. With January 2nd looming in the distance, it’s definitely time to start stay-at-home dad preparation. On the plus side, there will be a week in between my last day in the office and my first day as a stay-at-home dad. It’s the week of Christmas, so Jenny will be home for winter break, which will let me ease into things.
But January 2nd will come fast. And that means I need to start planning today. If I’m going to have a successful transition to my stay-at-home dad career, the next five weeks will be critical. To help out, I’ve put together a list for myself, which just so happens to give me something to write about today.
1. Identify Safety Valves
First and foremost, I’ll need personal support. Whether it’s a mental refresh, someone to talk to, or an emergency contact who can rush to the house to watch the boys, knowing I can get help is important. Not only does it provide a backstop for times when things get out of control, the existence of someone or a group of people can go a long way.
For now I’ll stick with family and friends, but my plan is find other resources, like drop-in centers, for the really sketchy times. Stay-at-home dads, or any primary caregiver, need to know who can help. All the grandparents live an hour or more away, but there is family closer to home, including my sister-in-law who the boys adore. Local friends have varying schedules, and some are more available than others. Based on all that, I will build a list of options down to the day-of-the-week level. From there, I can identify gaps I need to fill using unfamiliar resources, or if any are even necessary.
2. Keep Them Busy
Our current provider has a grab bag of entertainment options both in and out of the home. While some weekends we’ve resorted to the TV to occupy the boys, it’s not an everyday solution. We already have memberships to our local zoo and children’s museums, though both are enough of a drive to be an all-day event.
We have a local chapter of the City Dads Group which hosts weekly meetups at play areas or parks. There are also play spaces during the week at local community centers, some of which are free.
As for days when the weather is too bad to go out (a common problem in the snowy north), I’ll need to build up our arts and crafts cupboard. Who knows, it might be something I even enjoy; pumpkin decorating for Halloween was rather fun.
3. Prepare Them For School
While we have every intention of sending them off to preschool, every study ever done shows that kids need to be educated from Day 1. Some is just experiential learning, like how the physical world works. But structured learning becomes more important as they get closer to school-age.
This is the one aspect that scares me the most. While it will only be 9 months until they can start preschool, my worry is messing them up in the meantime. This is certainly an area I’ll be researching heavily over the next month. For now, I’ll probably quiz their current provider on where she’s left off (there is always a letter-of-the-week), and if there is an actual name for her curriculum. The boys certainly seem to know a lot, despite our lackluster attempts at home, so maybe there’s hope.
4. Embrace the Change
To make sure this is a positive experience for everyone, I need to remind myself that I’m not doing this under duress or protest. And while I’m not, there’s a certain amount of turmoil this brings upon me. A stay-at-home dad is enough of a rarity that it’s hard not to internalize the reactions I get when I tell them personally. They often break across gender lines: women typically being supportive and saying how great it will be, while men are more… circumspect. Fathers especially have a visceral reaction; I can see them imagining themselves in the same position, and they often voice how their feelings about such a hypothetical.
All of this is to say I need to jump in with both feet and ride out the chaos. By going all-in like this, I feel as though I’ll be satisfied with the choices. So for the first three or four months, that will be my focus. By that point, I should be fully immersed in stay-at-home dad mode, and I can start adding in other things.
Look forward to more posts on the subject, including one on educating your kids as a stay-at-home dad.
Thank you for reading!
