Meetups & Bedtimes
I personally love attending meetups (especially the Atlanta Indie Hackers Meetup). They are a great way to stay motivated and productive and a great way to meet other people.
One of my biggest struggles now that I have two kids is how can I attend meetups because they all seem to start at the kiddos bedtimes and I am not about to leave my poor wife with 2 kid bedtimes while I go and socialize.
Anyone have any tips on how they have dealt with this?
I happily leave my kids with my husband to go meetups, haha. I just need to make sure he gets his 'credits' for other evening things that he wants to do. For meetups that I organise, we have tried to go together, but babysitters got too unreliable so we kind of gave up on the idea.
I'm not sure if there is a way around it as most meetups are at kids bedtimes and I know personally I wouldn't bring my kids along.
One thing I'd like to start are casual coworking type sessions during the day and also meeting up online just to talk (kind of like the IH virtual meets) but strictly for people that are local to me and the meetup group.
I guess I just feel guilty leaving both kids with my wife now because our newest is so little it is almost impossible to do bedtimes together. Hopefully that will change during the day.
I like the idea of during the day sessions. Meetup lunches would be great, but I think it would be harder to convince people to come at that time.
I think the only way to go about it is to talk to your partner about how important those meetups are to you. You can then agree on a maximum number of evenings that would work for her and how early she would like to be informed about your plans. Like other posters said, maybe she can go out in return some time?
Yeah, super hard when they are so young. I guess either wait a bit until the routine smoothens out (wishful thinking?) or maybe get a babysitter/someone in to help your wife?
I wonder, could you set up a Parent Hackers Meetup? Hold it in a place that's good for kids and families and with the people who will have a similar problem?
While it doesn't have to exclude non-family hackers, it does set an expectation that there will be kids and families.
My buddy with 2 kids also wants to meet other founder parents. (he's in Japan right now, from U.K.)
I like the idea, but the group might be to small in a single city. Maybe it would be best as a virtual meetup.
You may be surprised.
Or even if one other parent shows up. Its a meetup! I met my cofounder earlier this year when he was the only one to show up to a newsletter meetup in Bali.