Why parents fear going home, prefer killing time at work when schools have closed for holiday

With schools on April recess, most parents now fear going home and, instead, choose to dillydally, go on Facebook, gossip and generally kill time at the office, Crazy Monday has discovered.

This has seen many of them extending their working hours. Employees who are usually the first out of the office the moment the clock strikes five are now are among the last to leave the office — late in the night. The maxim for parents during the school holidays seems to have been reversed from ‘arrive at the workplace late, leave early’ to ‘leave home early, get home late’. 

“Gosh! When I think of the trouble my children could have caused the whole day in my absence, I just find myself not wanting to leave my desk. Aki going home reminds me of what I used to feel every time I was summoned to the headmaster’s office!” one parent confessed.

Parents with teenagers are among the worst hit. Jane, a parent of three teenagers has confessed that her hormone-ravaged children have proved to be more work than her job itself.

“I am happier at work than at home these days,” Jane went on to whine. “I fear my teenagers more than I fear my boss!”

Some of the problems parents are dreading encountering at home include losing their eardrums the moment they step into the house and find their teenagers playing music louder than clubs. Or finding the house in such a mess you’d think there was an earthquake.

And then going on to receive silent treatment with any effort to initiate a conversation being met with stony silence, blowing of chewing gum in their faces or even worse, the teenagers plugging in their earphones and choosing to engage with their modern, cutting-edge devices rather than the relics that their parents use.

“Those who will be lucky to be talked to will actually realise they are being talked back to!” moaned another parent. “Teenagers are terrible creatures... they eat your food, turn your house into hell and still refuse to accept your Facebook friend request because they don’t want you to see what they are up to online!”

As evidence of how bad things are, recently conducted studies show that school holidays are not just a stressful time for parents but are also detrimental to their health.

“Not only do the sales of painkillers and headache tablets boom during the school holidays, but there are more heart attacks during this time of the year,” revealed a reknowned sociologist.

 More hours

But not everyone is unhappy with the school holidays. Employers, for instance, are a happy lot. “If more hours at work automatically translated to increased productivity, school holidays would turn out to be the most productive times of the year for most organisations,” argued one human resource expert.

Credible sources reveal that the Federation of Kenya Slave Drivers is secretly lobbying the Education ministry to lengthen the duration of school holidays in the hope that their employees may end up working more hours without requiring extra pay.

But as tough as things are, parents are being asked to ‘take it easy’; it’s just payback time for what they once did to their parents when they were at that age years ago.

“Be comforted by the fact that the children and teenagers who are now making life hell for you will face the same or worse in future when they themselves become parents... karma and elephants don’t forget!” one grandparent added.