I had a breakdown in the toilet at work today. Why? Because my kids school called me to say that my husband hasn’t picked up our son from school. It’s my son’s second day of school today and he should have been collected at 11:30am (11:30am is the collection time this week to get Reception year kids settled into school life)… it was already 12pm and no show. My husband was at home sleeping. This isn’t the first time that this has happened. About six times now, he has been late to pick up our other child for 3pm because he was still asleep. I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I’m not… I appreciate that he went to work last night and got home at 7:30am so he was tired but he insisted that we don’t need to hire someone to do the school collections because he will be doing it. This morning before I left for work, I set four different alarms but none woke him up. I had to authorise for our building concierge to use the master key to open our door and that woke him up. I am so angry because him picking up our kids late makes us look like the worst parents and puts our kids at risk. I have explained to him that the school can report this to social services and I have begged for him to allow us to hire someone to do the school pick ups but he has refused. Unfortunately my husband can get angry and if I hire someone without his approval, he would be very crossed with me and send the person away. I hate feeling so stuck and I can’t stop working because we need both incomes. I don’t know what else to do and I hate the thought of my kids sitting at school waiting for their parent to pick them up. This thought and the anger towards my husband made me cry at work today.

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Thank you for the responses. The after school club only runs for an hour and someone will still need to pick the kids up after the club ends. The problem isn’t the time, it is my husband. He will often oversleep no matter the time. Calling him to wake him up hasn’t help. I called him over 10 times today to wake him, I set four alarms before leaving the house. None woke him up until I asked our concierge to go inside our house. I had to lie to the concierge that I was concerned about his safety. I was out of options. The only family apart from our kids that we have is my mother who is aged and lives in another city.