Psyd program and 4 kids?

[psycho1391]

To add to this. LPC and SW jobs at the VA range from GS-9 to GS-12 generally. So, about $59k-89k. And I even saw an LPC manager position at GS-13. Most are GS-11 to 12, so $70-80k.

Yes, its pretty decent pay! Plus throw in possible EDRP and you're sitting pretty.

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[summerbabe]

So, the "healthy relationship" crowd is just going ignoring the time honored tradition of "Labcest"?

Asking for a friend.

The odds are good but the goods are odd

 

[biscuitsbiscuits]

Question can you go in more detail about how you handled child care? My biggest fear is just not having anybody to watch them or the daycare is closed a day I didn't expect. Because that is all I have is daycare and my S/O no other back ups.

Also did you ever have to sit home with the kids because of a snow day if so how did you handle that?

I threw money at it (student loan money). I hired a babysitter and put my kids in afterschool programs whenever possible. My partner handled dinner/bedtime. There were still last minute childcare panics.

Who will be the one to pick up a sick kid in the middle of the school day? With 4 kids, you're going to have a lot of sick-kid-at-home days. You'll also have snow days, random school holidays, school breaks, entire summers. Babysitters get sick and need a day off and you're going to find out a couple of hours before you're scheduled to give some kind of talk. Can your partner rush home immediately? You need someone on call for immediate coverage 4-5 days/week.

We also went through several babysitters (life circumstances change and people move on) and each change was an additional stressor. Finding and managing your childcare is another part-time job. You're an employer.

I can't emphasize enough the stress (for me) caused by the interaction of high-unpredictability-low-flexibility-kids and high-unpredictability-low-flexibility-program. It was a compounding situation.

I also have some perfectionistic and high achieving traits/cognitions which I should probably acknowledge contributed to my stress level. I took on extra research and teaching and in hindsight I should have probably practiced saying no. Now I say no all the time and it's wonderful. But when you are in a doctoral setting, there's definitely a push to do as much [hot take: free work] as possible.

Others have also mentioned the toll it takes on relationships and I encourage you to make sure your partner is 100% informed and on board with this. It's going to be hard on them and hard on your relationship to balance this all.

What schools are you looking at?

 

[summerbabe]

I threw money at it (student loan money). I hired a babysitter and put my kids in afterschool programs whenever possible. My partner handled dinner/bedtime. There were still last minute childcare panics.

Who will be the one to pick up a sick kid in the middle of the school day? With 4 kids, you're going to have a lot of sick-kid-at-home days. You'll also have snow days, random school holidays, school breaks, entire summers. Babysitters get sick and need a day off and you're going to find out a couple of hours before you're scheduled to give some kind of talk. Can your partner rush home immediately? You need someone on call for immediate coverage 4-5 days/week.

We also went through several babysitters (life circumstances change and people move on) and each change was an additional stressor. Finding and managing your childcare is another part-time job. You're an employer.

I can't emphasize enough the stress (for me) caused by the interaction of high-unpredictability-low-flexibility-kids and high-unpredictability-low-flexibility-program. It was a compounding situation.

I also have some perfectionistic and high achieving traits/cognitions which I should probably acknowledge contributed to my stress level. I took on extra research and teaching and in hindsight I should have probably practiced saying no. Now I say no all the time and it's wonderful. But when you are in a doctoral setting, there's definitely a push to do as much [hot take: free work] as possible.

Others have also mentioned the toll it takes on relationships and I encourage you to make sure your partner is 100% informed and on board with this. It's going to be hard on them and hard on your relationship to balance this all.

What schools are you looking at?

This sounds a ton like a good friend of mine in grad school who had 3 school aged kids.

More unique to his story is that his wife was a SAHM. Our school was in a super cheap area and our dept stipend of nearly $800/mo could basically cover rent for a 3 bd house in a decent neighborhood with a fenced in yard.

His wife was an artistic type and sold stuff on places like Etsy but they were primarily living off his student loans & he had a different career before school so possibly savings or asset accumulation like paid off vehicles.

His wife was primary for all things kid related things including sick days and doctor’s visits. But he found way to help like running home during a down period in the middle of the day to get a slow cooker meal going and things that took major time commitments like coaching his son’s Little League.

So even with a pretty ‘ideal’ setup, I can’t imagine the amount of things that he had to juggle that I didn’t and the extra stress. He excelled in our program & matched to a very competitive internship & is doing well in his career last I heard so it’s doable.

But I have to imagine that some of the unique factors of his marriage/family combined our program characteristics (primarily it being in a small town with minimal commuting and a super low cost of living) played a major role in his success and perhaps, if some of those factors were different, his grad school experience would likely have been much more negative.

 

[R. Matey]

We also went through several babysitters (life circumstances change and people move on) and each change was an additional stressor. Finding and managing your childcare is another part-time job. You're an employer.

We had a nanny bail on us halfway through the term after our kiddo was born. I dropped some responsibilities so we could make it work back then, but it came at the cost of a few missed opportunities.