AIBU have nothing left to give?

[millionaireshortie]

At the end of my rope with full time home schooling/childcare. Youngest gets up at 5.30-6, oldest doesn't go to sleep until after 9. I'm knackered and need some peace and quiet. Homeschooling isn't going well. I'm done with this whole situation.

Any suggestions to turn things round - new activities to appeal to a 5 and 8 yr old? We are all climbing the walls, bored, moody, restless, in need of change! What's the answer as the thought of doing this for even another 6 weeks at best feels painful. Help!

[Waveysnail]

Hand them an ipad at 5.30am and tell them to go back to bed

[edwinbear]

^^ This

[rabbitheadlights]

If the homeschooling is too much, take a break from it .. I have with my D's 7 and decided just to concentrate on reading for a few days. I second the I pad with an alarm set for 7 or 7.39 whatever time you want ... Then they can get up

[TweetUsOnFacebook]

Youngest is getting up too early. You need to use a clock or an alarm so they know when they can wake you. Do they still do those gro clocks?
Homeschooling isn't going great for most of us. Don't sweat it. As long as they're doing some reading and a bit of maths or some sort of educational game. Have a look at some wildlife programmes they might enjoy like Blue Planet etc. Relaxing for you and educational for them.
When things start feeling a bit crap have a disco! Put on some upbeat music and have a dance. It's amazing how it lightens the mood. We've been watching Sophie Ellis Bexter kitchen disco as inspiration
Maybe have afternoon quiet time where everyone goes to their room for an hour to break the day up. Can nap or do a quiet activity.
Don't beat yourself up if you resort to screens. The aim here is to get through this crappy time and come out if it in a good frame of mind to get on with 'normal' life again.

[pointythings]

The 5 year old is old enough to understand that they are not allowed up before a civil hour decided by you. Our DDs got that at age 4 - we called it 'earlybirding' and it was banned. A Gro-clock or similar helps.

[Isawamagpie]

have some days where you let them be kids.
Today my son has watched whatever the F he liked on tele, played in the garden, done some gardening with me, and we read a couple of books.
Tommorow we will do some "school work" reading/writing/maths... for prehaps 30 minutes or so. Then we will have some downtime/tele/let him play on his own, before maybe or maybe not revisiting some school work.
When we don't do any school work I don't beat myself up. We can only do our best and everyone is feeling the same way.
My DS spends time at his father's house, and I was feeling quite inadequate when I kept seeing things posted on the school newsletter and such like, of my DS doing great things with his fathers family, until as only a 6 year old could innocently tell you "mummy, they made me sit and do 'X Y Z' activity as pretend'

Turns out he hadn't been doing half the stuff that they had been making out, but taking photos to make it look like he had.

I personally think DS is getting just as much 'education' by letting him sometimes take the lead (prehaps look up 'unschooling' for inspiration)

To add, my DS (6) also gets up at around 6am. I send him back to his room to play/put tele on until I'm ready to get up (anything between 7am - 9am) and have absolutely no guilt about this.

We have also been enjoying doing 'science' experiments- ie paper mache volcano and making it explode (bi carb soda, water & washing up liquid) so prehaps looking outside the box, rather than the "sit down and go through the motions" method, that my DS hates and ends up us all being stressed.

Finally, you're not alone OP. This is not easy. So go easy and try and enjoy!

(And when you're not enjoying then just don't sweat it! I'm 110% not made for homeschooling. All we can do is our best!)

[Thisisworsethananticpated]

Have a break for a couple of days
Stop the schooling until you have your energy back
Go for some long walks alone
And sorry unpopular view here but as a single mother electronics have saved me and enabled me to work !

Also with schooling , I have gone a bit off piste with some topics
The BBC website has very entertaining and interesting stuff so sometimes we watch that together and do the quiz at the end

But have a break and clear your head a bit

[millionaireshortie]

@Waveysnail Have resisted for 5 years but considering it! Nothing else has worked - have tried various sleep clocks and sleep methods. Just slightly worried he'll wake up even earlier just for iPad time!