A flyer came home from school about this year’s Take Your Sons And Daughters To Work Day. When Dylan saw me looking at it, he asked if he could go to work with Daddy that day.
“I’m sorry, Love,” I said. “Daddy will still be in London.” Mike is back in London for the next few weeks building a cutting edge product development team to create cutting edge global online financial media products for cutting edge people in the global financial industry that want cutting edge global financial news, data, and analysis. You know, whatevs.
“Can I go to work with you?” he asked me.
Yes! I thought in a moment of utter righteousness as I posed in a strong, open stance with my fists on my hips (#poselikeasuperhero). Damn right you should see ME at MY job doing dishes, folding laundry, making doctor’s appointments, taking you to and surviving your doctor’s appointments, paying bills, getting bids on house repairs, watching the “Good Wife” on my lunch break, going to the grocery store, buying supplies for school projects and gifts for birthday parties, designing PTO newsletters, chaperoning 2nd grade fieldtrips (dear God), driving you to and from school and a million other destinations, helping you with homework, feeding you, bathing you, brushing your teeth, and taking care of every aspect of your life all the while writing smart blog posts and maintaining a relevant and humorous social media presence! Because – dang it – stay at home mother/blog-hood is the hardest job there is, I’m the glue that keeps this family together, and you should appreciate and idolize my job as much as you admire Daddy’s!
And then I remembered that he sees me in my workplace doing that all that stuff all the freakin’ time. He knows that I write stories about being a Mommy and that I “play” on my laptop at the kitchen table a lot. If he stayed home from school to observe and learn about it, he’d end up playing Plants vs. Zombies all day while I served him icy water and snacks in ten-minute intervals, and I wouldn’t get to watch the “Good Wife” on my lunch break.
“Dylan,” I said, “You’ve seen me do my job. You see me do it every day and night. You can have a make-up day at Daddy’s office once he’s home, okay?
“Okay,” he said.
“What part of Daddy’s job do you want to learn about?” I asked out of curiosity, because Mike is generally in an anxious, stressed, and impenetrable trance in front of three computer screens for several hours at a time when he’s at the office. I’m not saying that what he does isn’t intriguing, innovative, and incredibly relevant as we embark on a 21st century information technology revolution, and I do think it would awesome for Dylan to develop an interest in STEM beyond playing video games, but for an eight-year-old kid who has a hard time sitting still for more than six to seven minutes at a time, it would be a pretty boring day.
“Daddy plays ping pong at work,” Dylan said, “and he has a pool table, a Nerf gun, a dart board, and a remote control helicopter. I want to do those things.”
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty awesome job.
Do your kids participate in Take Our Sons And Daughters To Work Day?
The Runaway Mama by Jen Gregory 
Haha- same boat here…Nope. Unless the kids want to come to my community college classroom…Nah.
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It is definitely interesting to think about how they see our work – and how they process what we do. Bc they grow up in the culture of our homes, they don’t necessarily see our roles as unique…I know that it took a long time for me to realize/understand that every mom and dad wasn’t exactly like my own…great post!
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I tried to explain editing to my daughter one day because she thought all I did was sit at the computer. I told her that when someone writes something, I help to make it better and fix the mistakes. She thought about it for a minute, then said, “Oh! So if someone wrote “Once upon a DUCK,” you’d change it to “Once upon a TIME!”” Yes, sweetie, that’s it EXACTLY!
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