How Late At Night Do Your Parents Contact You? My Turn To Vent

[saved4always]

Well, I decided to get a new cell phone and new number just for my personal use and use my current cell phone - with the number that my parents have just for daycare. So, I am going to get, for the first time, a touch screen 4G cell with internet access delivered Wednesday. Of course, I have to pay $90 more per month for this, but I will finally have a phone comparable to my teenager! (haha!) and be able to turn off my old cell whenever I don't want to receive calls from daycare parents.

Thanks for letting me vent and giving me suggestions here.

I was going to post that you shouldn't have to spend money on another phone just for daycare and should give all the dcp's a memo about the latest they are allowed to call, but it sounds like you are going to get a really COOL phone out of it, so.... never mind...! ::

[saved4always]

I would tell her to please not call you after (insert time here), and send a written reminder to all the parents, or put it in a monthly newsletter.

Have you tried melatonin for your sleep? It is a natural sleep remedy and did wonders for me, and its non-addictive

I take one called Midnight or something like that and it seems to work well for me. I do not always have trouble falling asleep, but for those nights I do, this seems to do the trick for me.

[MarinaVanessa]

Do you have a seperate business phone line?

I signed up for a google voice account and that's the number that I give out to clients. I just told my clients that I was changing my number and handed them the google voice number.

The way it works is the client calls your google number and the call gets transfered to whatever phone number you want to send your calls to. You can even send them to two lines at the same time. During DC hours I have the calls sent to both my cell phone and my house phone. At 7:30pm I turn turn the house phone option off and put my cell phone on silent (it doesn't bother me but you can turn your cell phone option off too). The nice thing is that of you allow texting google voice receives texts too and you can respond back on your cell phone and they get the text as your google voice number. It might be an option for you, and it's free.

[Heidi]

I don't have any problem with parents calling me after business hours, as long as it's not after 9:30 or so. "decent hour" I guess... One of the trade offs for working out of my own home is that I don't always have "office hours". It doesn't happen really often, in any case, and occasionally, I will ask a parent to call me later so that we can talk without interruption.

At the risk of offereing unsolicited advice (sorry in advance) but have you considered that going to bed at 6:30 might actually make your sleep issues worse? Personally, I would FORCE myself to stay awake until a "reasonable" time, and that might help you sleep through. Maybe 8 1/2-9 hours before you have to get up?

Of course, I don't know your personal situation, and am not asking you to share private information!

I do remember when I was pregnant, I would sometimes go through stages where I needed to go to be waaay early!

[permanentvacation]

I usually go to bed between 9 and 11pm and I get up 6:30/7:30 for work. Usually, even if I'm tired early, I make myself stay up. I typically get into washing clothes or doing paperwork. But yesterday, for some reason, I was simply exhausted. I know that my body really likes 10 hours of sleep. So since I was so tired, and I know that it takes me a while to fall asleep, then any little noise wakes me up, then it can take me a couple of hours to fall back asleep, I decided to go to bed at 6:30 hoping that even if I wake up a couple of times, I would get enough sleep throughout the night. I fell asleep around 8:30 and the call woke me up at 9:40. That's only a one hour nap. But I couldn't get back to sleep til 4am! That's just crazy!

I had a mini stroke about a year ago. Since then, I have had problems sleeping. I have high blood pressure as well. So, I have to be careful of what medicines I take. I talked to my doctor about sleeping aids and she said not to start taking anything. She suggested using a fan to block out noise, limit caffinee, and get on a schedule of bedtime and time to wake up. I have done those things, but I still have problems sleeping.

I just told a couple of my parents that I will be turning my phone (the one they have the number for) off when I decide that my business hours are over for the night. The parent who texted me last night doesn't come here until 5 or so tonight. I'm going to make sure to tell her about me turning off my phone!

[MarinaVanessa]

This is your cell phone? I'm not understanding why if it's your cell phone you can't just turn your ringer off and put it on silent? Not on vibrate, on silent.

If you tell DCM that you're turning your phone off after a certain time she might still send you texts at whatever time she wants, you just won't get the texts until you turn your phone back on in the morning. Just turn it to silent and lay it facedown on your nighstand so that you don't even see the little light go on if she continues to text after a certain time. May sure you tell her what time is too late. If she texts you to ask if DCK can come the next day or something DONT answer her until the following morning and DONT let her drop off DCK until you have confirmed that she can drop him off.

If your DH has a cell phone for himself you can tell DD to call his phone instead so you don't have to worry about not hearing her call if your phone is on silent.

[permanentvacation]

I'm a single mom. I don't have a husband for my daughter to call if there's a problem. So my phone is the only one my daughter who is away in college can call to get ahold of me. I would be the first person she calls as her father was abusive and although she now has a bit of a relationship with him, her relationship with me is MUCH better and she would call me first. Often, we don't even put his phone number or any info about him on the school records. So I want a phone that I can leave on so I can hear it mainly - actually only - because if anything happens to my daughter in college or if my younger daughter is spending the night at a friends, if they need to get ahold of me, they can.

So, yeah, even though it is a pain that I am going to be spending another almost $100/month to have another cell phone, I think by having a personal phone that my clients do not have the number to and a business phone that I can turn off after business hours will work for me in this situation.

[MarinaVanessa]

Sign up for a google voice number, it's free and all you have to do is log on and turn it off once you're ready for bed. Easy peazy, free, convenient. And you don't have to get another phone.

[renodeb]

I havent had a problem with late night calls from parents but thats a great idea to get a seperate phone that you could turn off. You could just tell them its your business phone. I have 2 that text me. and the rest either call my home phone or talk to me in person. They have been nice about not calling to late. I hate even calling them at 8:00pm (its rare that I do) I wish they would all just text but thats not realistic.The reason I say that it that all the texts are date and time stamped so its a good record. Are you just a real light sleeper?
Debbie

[Abigail]

So far out of 3 families only 1 mom calls on a weekly basis about dropping off late or early. I have a personal and business cel phone. One of my families might have my personal cell because they were referred to me from a friend and all I said was "I have a different number you can reach me at" and left it at that. I'm hoping they don't have my personal cell anymore .

I completely understand about leaving your phone on for emergencies. That is best to get separate phones and NOT even tell your daycare families about it. You can still enforce your rules even if you turn off your volume when you sleep. The best part is you can write off more of your phone bill because you add your total monthly bill up and divide it by how many phones you have and claim that amount towards business taxes! My phone is just $10/month, but we have 3 cell phones total in our household.

[Sunchimes]

When this thread started, I was thinking how lucky I was that this wasn't an issue.

Last night, dcm texted me at 4:30 to ask me to keep the baby today, although I was suppose to be off. Apparently there was some drama overnight and she has some ugly personal issues to deal with today and didn't want the little one there. I was looking forward to finishing taxes and doing a bit of sewing, but I guess I'll be working after all.

I get paid for 5 days, and this would have been a 4 day work week-bonus!--but I made the mistake of making plans. ;-)

Luckily, the dog had just got me up wanting to go out and I hadn't gone back to sleep. I'm going to tell her not to do this again. She could just as easily have asked me at 6 or 7 instead of 4 am.

[permanentvacation]

Sunchimes, That's absoutely ubsurd that she contacted you at 4 in the morning! The latest that I've been contacted is just before midnight. Which is ubsurd as well! I don't understand some of the parents.

Maybe we should contact them at all hours of the night to remind them to bring diapers or something like that! ....I'm just saying.....

[Crazy8]

just curious.... what kind of phone did you get that is costing you an extra $90/month???? I pay $175/m for 5 phones on my plan, 2 iphones and 3 "regular" phones all with unlimited texting, etc. $90/month for one phone seems really crazy high?????

I am a night owl so I don't mind dc families texting me, I think the latest has been about 10pm though - sometimes we've texted back and forth a little later. I also prefer them texting me if they aren't coming rather than calling at 6-7am when I am in the shower and the phone rings and wakes up my whole house!!!

[Hunni Bee]

Mine costs $110/month . Verizon is very expensive.

My director calls me at all hours of the morning, night and weekend...to ask questions that clearly can wait til the next day. Not much respect for others time.

I dont answer anymore. I'm not paid to be on call.

[Meyou]

I have one family that are weekend texters and callers. They're normally calling or texting because they've seen something that I've mentioned I was looking for so I can't really complain. It makes me feel slightly stalked because they remember my every word but they're being nice so I just let it go.