I’m not crazy about school. Learning has always been an ordeal for me. Add the bouquet of mental quirks I have, and the traditional classroom is an uncomfortable place to be. (Much to my chagrin, I love biology. A subject that is, traditionally, closely tied to academics.)
Staring down the barrel of reproductive success, I wonder if finishing my B.S. is possible.
Have any Dopers attended college with little ones in your life?
Thanks.
I didn’t, but my Mom did. I was actually born over Spring Break of her freshman year of college–she didn’t miss a single day of class. I remember sitting under her desk coloring while her professor lectured. She graduated when I was 7 with her degree in Engineering.
So, it can be done. Actually, I would say the fact that she accomplished this as a single parent has always been where, for me, the value of education started. And knowing that she somehow did it has been a motivating factor for me to finish no matter what difficulties I endure along the way.
Just, if you don’t mind, try not to resent your kid for causing so much hardship. S/he really wouldn’t have been born if s/he’d known how much suffering it would cause. Really.
Wow, your mother sounds like an amazing woman!
My mother was 20 when I was born. She quit college and went back five years later after divorcing Father. I would sit in classes with her. (Pointless Cute Story: I had a stuffed dinosaur my grandmother made for me - Bronto. This calico cretaceous creature went EVERYWHERE. Once, in a class with Mother, I put Bronto in the seat next to me. A student came in late and reached to move my stuffed toy so he could sit down. I remember being scared of this strange man trying to take Bronto. “That seat is taken,” said the professor. “Try the back of the room.” 
)
Haha, that reminds me of when my Mom was attending a huge lecture class and the prof said I could be there as long as I was quiet. During a pause in his speech I shouted, “MOM! I GOTTA GO BATHROOM!” and everyone laughed and embarrassed her.
I think if you stick with school your kids are going to value education more. I have no citations to support this statement, but I know it was seeing my Mom do it that made a difference. I remember when I myself was in college, I called her and said, “How ON EARTH did you DO this with a KID?” She told me about how she got so stressed at one point she had to drop down to only one class… but keeping that one class made a difference, and she made it through. She said, “I at least had to try. I didn’t want to look back on my life and wonder if I could have done it.” Those words sustained me the many times I was on the verge of quitting myself. I think if you stick with college you will send a very strong message to your children.
Both my parents also did it. They waited until we started school. After school we, my sister and I, would either go to an after school program, hang around outside the classroom or hang out with my dad in the computer lab where my dad worked. Hilo at the time was an extremely safe place where we played without worry. Later my mother even managed to get her masters.
One of the most common “punishment” I remember from this time was “GO OUTSIDE!”
I was eight, and Vynce was two, when our mom graduated from college. None of her classes allowed kids or babies (I’m not sure how many do. My college wouldn’t either) so we spent a lot of nights with a babysitter when she was at class and my dad was scheduled to work - he worked nights half the year. That wasn’t a big deal to us, though, because with both parents working full time, we’d been in day care or going to daycare providers’ houses since we were infants.
I don’t remember how stressed she was to work during the day and take classes at night, but she did manage to earn her BA in less than three years, so she was clearly coping!
Hi there! We have 2 little ones in our lives. My husband and I are both full time school students…well, I was until I finally graduated December 2006 (first in the entire family tree, just had to throw that in for some reason). Setting the scene: My husband is in a mechanical engineering program and I was in an accounting program. His school is an hour away, mine 5 minutes away. My oldest daughter just began Kindergarten and my second daughter was born smack dab in the middle of my summer classes 2006.
For the longest time I worked full time and attended school part time. The opportunity presented itself for me to leave my job and finish school in three semesters so I jumped on it. I found I had a lot more time to spend with my daughter and had a more flexible schedule. My last last semester of school was pure hell with a newborn, but managable with the help of my parents. My husband and I push through school and simply just do not look back.
I would say as long as you have an excellent support system in place, finishing school should be no problem for you. There were some nights that we absolutely needed help and my parents kept the baby because our exam schedules always seemed to fall at the same time. If my parents had not helped out, my grades definitely would have suffered. One word of advice…always keep up if not ahead of your class. Children always seem to be sick during your ‘big exam’.
I do not know what your working situation is. Just keep in mind that you may only be able to carry one or two classes at a time. Doing this is frustrating and I found that at times I would lose sight of my graduation goal. To encourage and pick myself back up, I would attend a graduation.
As far as adding value to my children’s education by suffering through school with me? My 6 year old has definitely taken many lessons from my education. Not only has she learned that telling my former finance teacher he looks like an “oompa loompa with big ears” will earn her candy (from the professor) for any future classes she may attend with me, when she talks about school she already says “when” I go to college.
Did that, still doing it.
I went to college when my son was just 8 months. Managed to find a great dayhome, and my Mom helped a lot (and still does!). Went full time, so I wasn’t working except during the summer and my classes for the first couple of semesters gave me my afternoon’s free which gave me lots of time to do assignments and still get to pick him up from the dayhome.
It’s challenging in that you need to find a time and place to study where you aren’t distracted by them. I’m working full time and taking on night class right now and I still have that trouble, especially since I feel guilty about being away from him so much as it is, but I’m doing this so we both can have a better future. I’d rather not be doing data entry the rest of my life, I want to buy a house and be able to take trips and stuff. That’s for the future though, what I work towards (and what keeps me going is dreaming for the both of us) since it’s pretty much just us. My mother helps out a lot though, and I really don’t know if I’d be doing as well as I am if it weren’t for her help. She watches my son the nights I’m at school and between the time he gets out of the dayhome and I get home from work.
The hardest for me is definitely balancing the need to study, time with my son and time for myself so I don’t go completely batty.
Whatever you do, I beg of you do NOT take the kid to class with you.
It always drove me up the wall whenever someone did this. I paid over $800 to attend a class to learn the subject matter, not to have to keep half an eye on the kid running up and down the isles. I could never figure out the mentality of someone bringing their kid to class, but to me that is beyond rude.
Thank you.
Not me (no kids) but my mom.
Warning…this is gonna be long and sappy. I’m very proud of my mom.
She first went to college when she and her older brother (he stayed back a year) graduated together. They moved from their home in upstate NY to a college in Ohio. They were both kicked out less than 1 semester later due to bad grades. Something having to do with getting out of control once the controlling abusive mother was out of the way.
Anway, they both joined the Army. My mom met my dad while serving in the Army band (and working for the Army PO) and they got married and had 3 kids. After they divorced, my mom moved her three daughters (I’m the youngest) to a Section 8 apartment in Worcester. She started going back to school while working nights as a sorter for the Post Office. Eventually, she left the PO and started working in the Co-Op office at her school. We also went on Welfare for a few years. It took her 6 years to get her Associate’s but she graduated with a 3.94 GPA and was offered a scholarship to Wellesley. She also received many awards from her school. She had to turn down the scholarship because she couldn’t afford to live anywhere near Wellesley.
During her time in college, she frequently had to take at least one of us to class with her. Her professors and classmates were very understanding and accepting as we were wonderful children 
.
One of the advisors at the school, Sister Helen, helped us out a lot. She would watch us while my mom worked in the Co-Op office and she gave my mom lots of guidence. She also arranged for us to receive a new fridge, filled with food.
My mom was very active in the school paper, and won a few awards for her stories, one of which had to do with her fear of being investigated for abuse, as I was very accident prone. It was a very funny story actually.
She also organized a clothing donation program for the other poor parents at her school. It was called The Clothed Door . Students would donate old clothes, toys and other necessities. The staff would sort the stuff and then display it in a corner of the student center. Anyone was welcome to take what they needed. Last time I checked, the program was still in operation and had been for at least 15 years.
My mom would use us as inspiration many times during her school years. The most memorable was the story about my injuries. Another time was when my mother was talking to my sister about a lesson on artificial insemination (no I don’t know why she was talking to a child about that). My sister drew a picture to show my mom that she understood the lesson. It showed a mother leaning over her daughter, obviously yelling about something. They were standing in a kitchen. In the thought bubble, it said, “You just wait until your father gets out of the dishwasher!”. My mom used that, with my sister’s and her teacher’s permission, in a paper aboout “Turkey Baster Babies”.
My mom’s favorite memory about her time as a student parent involved my oldest sister. Mary must have been about 8 or so at the time. My mom was taking a class on US Geography. Mary was at school with my mom because she was sick. The professor gave a pop quiz on the states and capitols. As a joke, he gave my sister a copy of the test (a picture of the US which had to be labelled). It took my sister less than 20 minutes to finish the test. She beat out all the adult students for time and got the only 100 (my mom only missed 1). The teacher had a jar of coines on his desk. When he was done grading the tests, he gave my sister the whole jar.
I’m 27 now and have not managed to finish college. Neither of my sisters have either. They never wanted to and still don’t want to. They have their own families now and are happy. I was always closest to my mom and spent the most time with her at school. I learned to type when I was 8 because my mom’s boss in the co-op office would let me play with a spare typewriter while my mom worked. I got up to 45 WPM before I hit 3rd grade. I loved sitting in her classes and I actually learned a lot from them. Every time I see my mom now, I make a point of telling her how much I respect and admire her for finishing at least her Associates (something the sperm-donor never did, even though he didn’t have the burden of children). My one goal in life is to live up to my mother’s standards and finally get at least one degree, no matter the cost. She was the first person in my entire family to ever graduate from college and she held that record for another 12 years after her graduation.
Even though my mom never got a Bachelor’s, and even though she worked as a secretary, I still see her as one of the two most accomplished people in my family. The only person who comes close to her is her own father.
I found out many years after the fact that my mom not only did this while raising 3 kids (with no support from him), she also did it while suffering from ADD. She didn’t start getting treatment for her ADD until her late 40’s - over 7 years after her graduation. Even now, with treatment, she is no longer capable of working. I always knew my mom had no attention span and no retention skills. But, I didn’t realize how bad it was. Knowing what I know now, and knowing that she still managed to graduate, receive a scholarship to a very good college, receive lots of awards, and become a member of Phi Theta Kappa, makes me respect her even more.
Everything you do will influence your children in some way. From your previous posts, I’ve already gathered that you have a good job and are skilled and knowledgable. But, a college degree will help you to advance to new heights. In your field especially, it must be difficult to receive the proper compensation and recognition without a degree. I’ve always felt that many people perform better in college if they wait until they’ve lived life for a while. I also feel that having children in the picture causes the student to have more respect and care for their education. But not only that, it helps the child to have more respect for their parent’s sacrifices and their accomplishments - because they got to experience it first hand.
I got to go with my mom when she toured Wellesley. My grandfather came down from NY and we made a field trip of it. I saw the school and the resources which were opening up for her. I met the professors and advisors. I was old enough by then to recognize what she was giving up for us, when she had to turn them down. I wish she didn’t have to do it but living it with her made me understand why she made the decision she did.
To me, the experience is so much more important than having a parent say, “you know, I coulda gone to Wellesley but I couldn’t do it with kids”.
I went back to school about the same time my kids started school. Its doable - espceially if you have a support network (helpful husband and grandparents).
I hope you don’t get to finding yourself in a similar situation. It wasn’t college, but I thought you might like to hear the story. And you can read it to your kid when (s)he’s old enough!
My great-grandfather was born in Las Hurdes. Portugal is a rectangle with a nose, right? OK, see that top right corner? The Spanish parts thereabouts are one of the poorest parts of the country. That’s where great-gramps was born.
Back then, military service was compulsory for healthy males about age 20. Being one of the six tallest guys in his year, great-grandfather (who was 20 at the time and of course nobody’s great-grandfather yet) was assigned to the Royal Guard. So, he went from “potatoes for breakfast, potatoes for lunch and potatoes for dinner” to watching the King eat. This led to a very fast decision about not setting foot in las Hurdes ever again.
So, when his military service was over, he enlisted in the Guardia Civil. The Civil Guard is a national police that has a military structure, people live in barracks called “cuarteles” where they also have the offices, and they take care mostly of borders, prisons, and crime in rural areas. Ed, let’s call him by his name because it’s shorter than saying “my great-grandpa” every time, Ed went to sign up and there was a sergeant there who would read the recruitment form and fill it for the recruits, since back then most people couldn’t read and write. When the sergeant asked “figures?”, Ed said that yes, he could figure (add and substract); when the sergeant asked “reading?”, Ed said no.
Well, Ed could read, really, a bit, but he figured he’d better say he couldn’t, since anyway he didn’t do it so good.
Ed got sent to a big city, to a very big cuartel. One day he was sitting “honor guard” at the door to the post’s commander, who was a colonel. The colonel, who noticed that day’s guard was unusually still, peeked out to see what was he doing and caught him reading a book. When Ed tried to stammer an apology, the coloned said “son, it’s honor guard, reading’s not forbidden. Actually, if you’re going to read, you better read this (and handed him the regulations): here in page 15 you have it, it’s permitted to read during honor guard. The exams for corporal are in two weeks. You’ll be tested on reading, figuring and the regs. I’m the head examiner.”
So, Ed read the regs and became a corporal. To progress through the ranks,
he had to learn to write stick letters,
then he had to learn to write small letters and to type,
and he had to learn to do multiplication and division and percentiles and fractions.
When Ed Jr (my grandfather) was in 4th grade learning multiplication and division, his dad was too. Ed Jr went in the mornings, Ed Sr to the night class. They had the same teacher and did their homework together. Ed Jr still remembers that Ed Sr had serious trouble with division, and then one day he just figured it out and didn’t have trouble again.
By the time the Spanish Civil War of 1936 started, Ed Sr had the highest non-com grade in the Guardia Civil. During the war, all the officers in town had to flee or were murdered by mobs, so he was the ranking member of the corps. He escaped at least one shooting: his horse had been killed, he’d been taken and bound and was already with his back against the wall, when the Justice Counsellor (an anarchist whom Ed Sr knew well, having taken him to prison at least once, but that is another story) happened by and freed him. After the war he spent two months in prison because of anonimous tips that were thrown out as soon as a judge could find time to investigate them and he was recognized as an officer. He retired with Captain’s pay.
Sometimes I’d like to hit Gramps with a big baseball bat but that’s a story I love (the original telling is longer).
I’ll be honest with you. My mum left her job to go to university and I really resented it. I’ve never told her this, but I resented the lack of presents at Christmas, holidays and her time. Irt sounds selfish now (and it was) but I was pretty angry about the whole thing. Especially after she graduated and then quit her new job, and went back to her old job. As a child I couldn’t help but think - then what the hell was the point?
As an adult I now understand, and am proud of what’s she achieved.
Just a little comment. I agree about kids running up and down the isles. However, I paid just as much money as the next person to attend college classes. I understand that yes, it was my choice to have children and my choice to attend college while having them. However, I am a firm believer that IF AND ONLY IF you have a child that sits quietly in the class with the parent then it is generally accepted. I would only take my daughter on a few occasions when we got in a pickle and when the material was G/PG rated (when it was a lecture/class I did not want to miss). The only reason I felt comfortable taking my daughter with me to any of my classes was because she was extremely quiet, well mannered, well behaved, and I took activities with her to keep her entertained. Except for physically seeing her in the classroom, students did not realize she was in the classroom. I, too, wish people would respect the fact that not all kids are the same and that not all kids can sit quietly.
And I just had to add… it’s not always about a “mentality.” It’s about not having money to afford babysitting, or not having family available to take care of the kid. For some people there is no choice involved, if they want to finish school. I get irritated with children as much as the next person, but not everyone is blessed with good child care or supportive parents. I’m sure some people resented my Mom for bringing me to class, but I happen to respect her for it.
You might want to check with your school and see if they have daycare on campus. My local community college did, and it was actually part of the Child Care Careers program - licensed and qualified people as well as college students studying child development, psychology and child care services provided the child care. There was an observation room with one way mirrors and speakers that parents were given key cards to. I would go eat my lunch in the observation room, as well as sneak in there during class breaks, to reassure myself that WhyKid was well and having fun. It was a great relief when, as all kids do, he’d scream and cry when I left him there, and the teacher said, “Go right into the observation room and see how long it takes for him to calm down and have fun.” Little brat was fine before the 12 seconds it took me to open the door and flip on a speaker!
It was almost fun, going to school “together”, and cheaper than any other daycare option around. In fact, I think my Pell Grants covered it, because it was billed by the college!
I got my AA. Now he’s 14, my daughter is almost 2, and I’m going back to get a nursing degree! (Yes, I should have done it before, when he was old enough to take care of himself and she wasn’t born, but it wasn’t until she was born and I spent all that time in the hospital with her that I figured out nursing is the career for me!)
I had a friend who finished her physics degree while having a baby. She took slightly longer, and since she lived in married student housing, there were lots of people to trade babysitting with. (Hilariously, one professor didn’t notice she was pregnant–she’s a very slim person and stuck out a mile, and in office hours she jokingly commented that she’d had some things on her mind. The professor responded, “Oh, guy trouble?”)
My mom worked on a master’s degree when I was tiny, but once she had two of us, it became too much. Since this was a second master’s anyway and mostly for fun, she quit. So–finish quick before you have another one, I guess?
I have to say in four years of my first attempt at a degree and in three years of my second, I have never once seen a child brought into class. I’ve missed class when my own childcare hasn’t panned out. I’ve seen my share of women who were in that “thirteen months” pregnant state attend class - but none of them have shown up with a baby the next semester.
I wouldn’t plan on it being doable - I am absolutely certain it would have been unacceptable for a number of my professors and am almost as certain that if any student complained to the Dean it would be resolved in favor of not having the child in the classroom.
About kids in class:
In some cases, I agree with not bringing kids. If they’re contagious or just plain obnoxious then they shouldn’t be in class . In our case, my sisters and I actually enjoyed being in class with our mom. We sat at a desk right in front of her and listened to lectures. When we got older, we actually sometimes participated in discussions. I’m sure it was weird for some 18 year olds to have a biology discussion with an 8 year old. But, no one was ever bothered by us.
If we were contagious, my mom would also miss school. She actually missed almost a full semester when I was 5, because I gave both my sisters chicken pox, and then fractured my skull.
In my time at school, I only ever saw 2 people bring kids to class. Both were very well behaved and one even asked some questions. None of my professors would have ever allowed kids to run or be annoying.
But, this also depends on the school. My mom’s school was a fairly small community college in a very poor section of a large city. Many, if not most of the students were low income, single parents. It was not uncommon for more than 1 student to have their kids in class. The school didn’t have a daycare at that time. I believe they do now.
Another mother story. My mom is really amazing - she decided to get her fourth degree when I was 8 and my brother was 6. She continued to work full-time, and took night classes to get her MBA in four years.
We were in school and had a live-in babysitter/housekeeper. which kept her sane. My dad was also working full-time, but we always had a sit-down dinner with the four of us, and I never felt neglected. My mother is a huge inspiration, although I’m often intimidated by the amount of willpower and dedication that must have taken. My brother and I are both currently in graduate school, him in Computer Science and me in History, so it can’t have hurt us too badly! I do remember that I was probably the only 8 year old around who could have defined ‘puts’ and ‘calls’ - I often helped her study with her flashcards.