Please help me figure out how to fix my kids ' childhood

Your children eat too late and go to bed too late. I have an 8 and 5 year old

we get up at 6.45. They get dressed then they have breakfast. I get ready whilst they eat. We leave the house at 8am for school at 8.30

they do after school club on a Monday and Wednesday. So those days are slightly different.

if I pick up at 3.30 they come home, do homework straight away if required. I make dinner for around 5-5.30. They do their own thing whilst I cook. They eat which does take ages sometimes. Bath is 6.30ish. We do their reading- 20 mins. Both in bed by 7.30. The youngest goes straight to sleep. The oldest is allowed to read or write in his journal. Generally he’s asleep by 8.30

They do golf/football/rainbows/cubs/dancing/swimming between them. So very busy, only Thursday and Sunday there isn’t a club. They can stay up later Saturdays and we don’t do homework on weekends at all. they sleep in at weekends

we both work (me part time though)

First thing I’d picked up on was the late dinner. Could you feed both of them at 4ish? And swap things around that way? Dinner 4ish, homework 5ish, free play with a snack 6/6.30?

our day looks like this if it helps.. (days I’m working)
7.15 up
8 leave
childminder then does school drop at 9
pick up from school 3
snack 3.30
collect 5pm childminder
tea 5.30/5.45
homework 6.15
free time from 6.30
bed - anywhere between 8&9 (depends on activities on at night)

days I’m not at work which is 3days a week, I feed both mine (6&14) at 4pm and they then get a snack 7/7.30ish and bed remains the same for 6yo. 14yo will often eat again 9.30/10 as he has football til late.

Hope you find something that helps ☺️

I would think about winding back bedtime. This time of year is perfect as it's dark earlier. Children aged 3-5 need 10-13 hours and aged 6-12 need 9-12 hours.

Earlier to bed and earlier up !!

She needs to eat earlier and go to bed earlier so that she’s less tired. Kids love to chat at bedtime. Build in 30 mins of chat/homework time into your evening routine. Feed them at 5pm.

Agree with others, something is a little unusual about how long everything takes for her. Get support for this.

Can you get a nanny to do the mornings for you? Write yourself a list of what you need each day and pin it to the front door to stop you forgetting things. Make ‘pack school things’ part of your evening routine.

Has she had a coeliac test re her weight? I know you say she doesn’t eat much and she forgets/isn’t hungry but it could be that food makes her uncomfortable and it could also have depleted nutrients that can cause her to feel less hungry.

I think you need to lower expectations a bit I have never had time for homework or clubs in the week , the kids go to school come home watch telly have tea mess about bed , don’t do anything else ? The food duration sounds stressful and sounds like you have to travel a long distance to school which will add stress

@DrowningInChaos everything you've said about your DD sounds like she is ASD/ADHD. Please get her referred and assessed. In the mean time look up how to manage executive dysfunction and ASD management in general. You say you're diagnosed and medicated for ADHD, it runs in families, and if you don't have the right support and management in place it makes life very stressful.

You are not doing anything wrong, you are just struggling to manage an undiagnosed ASD child.

It sounds like ADD to me. Go see your GP

Yes this is a good idea.
My Dad always used to tell me stories to speed up the going to bed process, teeth cleaning, washing, pyjamas on etc.
He told stories of his school days in a boarding school. I loved them. Especially the ones about the boys getting up to all kind of tricks. He later confessed he made most of them up!

We had a very similar slow eater. Timers were a disaster as they just caused so much stress. What worked (much better than videos, in my opinion, because they don’t get distracted and forget to eat) is telling stories over dinner. So the children were told a story - made up from mum’s or dad’s head - as long as they were eating. If DC1 stopped eating, the story would stop too and the next sentence wouldn’t be forthcoming, until the fork was being reloaded and put into the mouth!

DC2 wasn’t a slow eater but used to enjoy the stories just as much, and both children used to put in requests like “can we have a dragon in it?” etc. In the end it because like a serial, of which we had the next instalment each mealtime. At some point we grew out of needing to do it, but while DC1 was between 5 and 10 we did it every day and it worked like nothing else for getting food to go in in a reasonable time frame.

I have inattentive ADHD. There are some great books and podcasts about executive functions. All that you are missing is the implementation of some of these skills.

I would add in my experience structuring the day around mealtimes works really well. Food gives you energy and energy along with structure helps with regulating Adhd symptoms. After school snack and earlier dinner.

Keep changing and improving the routine until it works for you.

Now as an adult I have some fruit as soon as I wake up so I have some energy for the morning routine.

@garlictwist but the OP is not.

Dinner at 5? Most people are still at work then.

I'm aware that you're getting lots of comments on here with similar themes.

I wanted to add a suggestion to take the pressure off yourself a bit and think about which of the things you are worried about do really matter...
You have a lot of 'shoulds' in there about what you think your children should be doing? It might we worth thinking about where they come from - messages from your childhood or from what you think the children need to develop to succeed? Is it putting too much pressure on you all?
Things that I noticed were play dates / being outside, practicing regularly (what does that mean quickly play one piece when she feels like it or full practice for 20 mins?), reading fast, finishing craft projects, getting up fast etc.

If she has a bit of the inattention/adhd
Difficulties with organisation she's probably exhausted by school and needs things to be a bit chilled at home.

I would suggest taking the pressure off a bit, allowing free time to play or read slowly as something very developmentally appropriate at 8, and helping her find a gentle routine without stress and pressure.

I wonder whether it is you that's getting really stressed about things and feeling a pressure to give them a lot of opportunities when they are actually really little and play/not finishing craft/chilling out etc are what they need?

@Tryingtoread has mentioned an interesting point @DrowningInChaos - as you need to work in the evenings (because you are employed full-time but are only working school hours), this is probably putting extra pressure on bedtime.

You have made it very clear that you’re not keen on long school days (and I wonder how your parents manage your short school days - was one of them a SAHP?), but most people who work full-time would accept that they need to use after-school care for some of the week. Even a couple of days would reduce the pressure of working every evening, and if the children get a snack there, they’d only need another snack when they get home, not a full dinner.

It also seems that you’re the only one comprising your working hours now that you’ve gone full-time. You’ve mentioned that your DH works long hours and usually doesn’t finish until dinner time (does he wfh?), but could he do the drop-offs so you can start work earlier, for example?

My AuDHD child sleeps best when he has stimulating music playing. Not calm relaxing sleep music. He needs sensory input to be able to get to sleep quickly. Apparently this is common for kids with ADHD.

Yeah my DS has discovered that high energy electronic dance music helps him relax so now listens to it while reading :) He puts comedy or science podcasts on to help him go to sleep!

Also - I dont think you can seperate any of the issues from neurodevelopmental concerns. ADHD and autism are very strongly genetic. What will work for a typical child won't necessary work for ND children.

My AuDHD child sleeps best when he has stimulating music playing. Not calm relaxing sleep music. He needs sensory input to be able to get to sleep quickly. Apparently this is common for kids with ADHD. Perhaps looking up parenting techniques for ND children would help.

The other thing we make a lot of use out of is timers. So we’ll set 10 minutes and try and get room tidying done in that time or 15 minutes practice or say you can have free time to faff until the timber goes off but at that point we have to start doing x or y. It also removes some arguing.

I have a child with AuDHD and another awaiting diagnosis. I probably also have ADHD as a minimum.

What you are describing seems to be more about your own anxiety. It's a bit extreme to think your kids childhood needs fixed. Perhaps you would benefit from extra mental heath support?

Having dinner for 1.5hrs to make sure dd eats what you feel is 'enough' is likely counterproductive and making things worse. It is usually recommended to have more smaller meals in these situations. Otherwise the stress of forcing long mealtimes can increase eating issues over time. I'd have snack after school in the car, dinner earlier and snack before bed.

If you need more structure you could do a visual timetable. But I think it's perfectly fine for kids to have unstructured time after school. I do homework based around how my kids are feeling on any particular day. A set time for homework wouldn't work for us.

The car journeys you could chat, play games, have audiobooks, breakfast on the go etc.

I would add in outdoors time every day as it doesn't sound like they get much fresh air or exercise. Park, bikes, scooter etc will likely help sleep and eating.

I also think neurodivergence but I appreciate you don't want the thread to get derailed by that. As for practical solutions-

• prepare as much as possible the night before.
• visual schedules for mornings and bedtimes and possibly a visual weekly timetable too.
• use the mundane parts of the day to connect, listen to music together if you drive to school, play some kind of game on the walk etc.

Working and managing kids is hard work but given the adhd I think you have to be very regimented to get yourself into a routine. You actually have loads of time in the evening as you collect without that much wrap-around and aren’t doing that many clubs. I have one child who is efficient but disorganised (my y4 child) and another who is very organised but slow.

I have at times struggled to fit in the app based homework but we do tables now on the walk to school and it fits much better. 5 minutes every day feels easy and has made a massive difference- she’s really strong now in all of them but didn’t know lots of them in September. They will start ramping up pressure on this with the maths check in the summer.

My daughter’s schedule looks a bit like this and it is quite heavy going but we are hyper focused on using small pockets of time well.

Monday- wrap around care and then activity. She does her maths homework in wraparound and then does 2 games of spelling online, 10 mins of reading and 10 minutes of instrument 2. there’s no time really on this day for much down time. while she’s at this activity child 2 does reading and instrument practice with me.

Tuesday - wrap around care. 2 spelling shed games, instrument 1, 20 minutes reading. Child 2 does her reading plus instrument.

Wednesday - child 1 has instrument lessons after school then one spelling shed and reading Child 2 does reading with me during that time.

Thursday - both do activity after wrap around. Homework free and instrument free night.

friday - no wrap around. Both do one instrument practice plus reading but tend to stay up later, maybe day for play dates.

The schedule is written up and we tick things off as we go. I do the same for cleaning so tasks that need to happen each day that are 15-20 minutes so something is always getting done and I don’t have to think about it.

Could she do the homework app in the car on the way home from School?

I enjoy reading and have visual stress. I have met a good few people with dyslexia and visual stress. Dyslexia may make reading more challenging but it does not stop people who have it from enjoying reading.

Irlen Syndrome.

Some forms of dyslexia can manifest like that too.

It's unlikely though because the girl likes to read.

@DrowningInChaos sorry I haven't read the full thread so this may of been mentioned. Wanted to hop on and ask if your daughter has been assessed for visual stress? There is a fancy name for it but basically when reading black letters/numbers on white paper, the message becomes blurred, words jump around. Math numbers get muddled up and sums end up with the wrong answer.

How quickly one can read is also likely to be affected.

Different coloured paper and glasses which are tinted help correct the stress.

I wasn't diagnosed till 26. I thought it was normal to see letters and numbers that way. Couldn't believe it when I put my glasses on for the first time and read a sentence that didn't jump around the place.