Can I shift my mindset to believe I should have more of a day than my kids?

[DisorganisedOrganiser]

Can anyone help me change my mindset.

Like many others, my DC (7 & 9) are hating this lockdown. Behaviour is not awful but really not great. They are a nightmare to motivate, need to be nagged to do anything and really should be helping me in the house a bit more. They are also so ungrateful, eg moaning that our garden is small yet we are so lucky to have one at all.

I know that if I could be more ‘in charge’ things would be easier. I have always struggled with discipline. I was a very good child and have never really understood bad behaviour. Instinctively I have never understood why kids should automatically obey me just because I am an adult. Just because someone is older does not mean they know better IMO. I know lots of parents who seem to automatically think the parents views and opinions are more important than the child’s. I think the opposite, have tried to be child led and would put children above adults in terms of needs and wants in a family (assuming the basics of food, shelter etc). I suppose what I am trying to say is I view children as equal to adults and their opinions equal or maybe even more important. I have never understood why the fact that I had children means I automatically know more.

However, I don’t think this attitude is helping me and with lockdown dragging ahead with no real end in sight I would really like to change. So how to I go from thinking we are an equal team to being the manager of the team? Given we are all stuck together for the forseeable.

I have been inspired to post by reading various threads about lockdown and behaviour but I don’t mean this as a thread about any specific threads.

Ilive, yes, we had abandoned a formal timetable but it might be time to give it a go again. We can do that this weekend and I love the do not disturb idea!

'maybe we could go for a Harry Potter theme next week?'

That sounds great!

I know what you mean about the after lockdown jar, it's maybe worse to tempt them with what they can't do!

You could maybe do a lockdown list instead. Have a family meeting and list a few things each that you'd like to do in lockdown and then really promise to try and enjoy everyone's choices. You could maybe have a cinema at home (close the curtains, have some popcorn). You definitely do cake, but it might have to be takeaway rather than in a cafe.

Could you organise some socially distanced play dates if that's something that lifts spirits?

Great. Start there.

20 mins of schoolwork followed by 5 mins of planning Harry Potter themed fun. Repeat 3 times then have a break. When they have competed schoolwork/chores etc. Actually spend time with them doing the fun activities.

Doesn't have to be crafts.
Could be:
Harry Potter story time with mum. Make it cosy with blankets, pjs, snacks, all take it in turns to read parts of the book.
Create alternative plots/characters for the story's.
Design and build Lego Harry Potter characters/buildings (YouTube tutorials)
Themed Mindful colouring
Making potions in the garden (for younger DC)
Learning about historical castles

If DC aren't interested at first, do it yourself. They may watch you and engage. Then share your passion with them.

OP, do you have fun together? They are much more likely to engage when it's light-hearted and silly and that's a healthy platform for building good will on. I am very guilty of long, worthy chats - it doesn't do much for the morale of younger kids and it doesn't change much. Kids of that age are really attuned to your perceptions of them and it may be that they're on the defensive knowing they're going to displease you but not yet having the maturity to change direction into something more pleasing. I've read all your comments and it really sounds to me that they are defensive and know they're failing every day, they're going to be gits in that environment- you too. All the whinging and competitiveness and inability to find satisfaction sounds to me like they are resenting their environment. The screens are undoubtedly addictive and entertaining but they also are respite from getting things wrong, a safe haven.

Maybe start (in your own head) with really small targets as trying to bring in new rules very often can be too chaotic to force a change. If you see a chance to praise them or to say a kind word - even better to let them hear you say it to someone else - then do it. Fake a smile very often (I do). Don't bake as a joint activity. Three people, 3 bowls, if they can't share the scales you measure it out at first. Maybe make different things - rice Krispy cakes with different chocolate, one red sponge and one green, etc. If you do it too (at first) they've got something to follow. Don't comment on the spills, comment on the way they're using the tools or the way it's coming together. Do divide the tidying up. 'We need to clean the table, wash the dishes, brush the floor - I can do one, let me know which one you can do. I can't wait to sit down together and try them, can I try a bit of yours when it's ready?' Just let go of the mess, their behaviour improving is the win here. If you're stuck with the all the cleaning then your partner needs to help more.

Make them laugh. Be silly. Laugh with them. Spontaneous dodgeball. Music. Dancing. Turn a den into a spa (add a hairbrush and get them to do yours lying down).

It just sounds to me like you need a lot more fun, lower standards and more praise. This first and then move onto smaller tasks to build up their stamina but grow the good will first. I think the stuff you're getting frustrated with might be because you need more support and encouragement yourself. Good luck.

Another one who thinks you are being far too hard on yourself ...it must be far from easy under lockdown with two active, very sociable and energetic children. I agree with Lane about getting your DH on board a bit more and with the poster who suggested scheduling in time when the DC go off and play themselves (once you have set them up with some ideas and materials).

It's obvious you love them and want the best for them or you wouldn't be posting on here for ideas in the first place.

What are your interests/passions? If you can show genuine enthusiasm for something I think you can build quality family time from there.

I think this^ is really great advice from Skylarkdescending.

Is there any craft maybe sewing or knitting, embroidery, rug-making etc you really like doing op? Sewing is less messy than some. Would you enjoy learning or passing any of these these skills on to your DC?

Seven and nine is an age when DC start to develop more manual dexterity (esp the older one).

Ignore this if it sounds like the last thing you would want to do ...but hand-sewn patchwork might work as it is VERY structured.

One of you cuts out the shapes on brown paper and cuts them out. One cuts the fabric. One irons and pins. Another sews short edges together. And so on ... You could all make a quilt together using your old clothes. . There are loads of good videos on You Tube explaining the process. Or work through a basic sewing course together maybe? You could start by sewing masks?

Good luck

draws out the shapes

Very guilty of the long worthy chats that nobody listens to!

I might look into the sewing in a few weeks.

"I have that How to Talk book. Thank you so much for the suggestion but I have never managed to find it useful. I don’t know if I am doing the wrong thing... I even went through a phase of doing the exercises and using the scripts word for word and nothing changed."

To be fair I've never actually read the book. Sorry it wasn't helpful!

The little kids one is good (for 2-7 year olds) but they are different books of course.

I honestly think this is mainly a lockdown problem and not a parenting problem. But we can always improve as parents and lockdown certainly forces us to!

I'm a get out of the home type of mum. While I generally don't have issues with boundaries and expectations, my internal motivation is very weak unless something really ignites my motivation so I need lots of external structure to my life to function properly. I'm barely existing at present as there is no external focus, no tangible goals, nothing concrete to look forwards to and I LOATHE LOCKDOWN IT IS FUCKING SHIT SHIT SHIT. 11 interminable weeks of pointless existance and still no material change to life.

Back to parenting, focus on the outcomes. Mine are 7 and 9 too. 9yo has ASD, dyslexia and dyspraxia. This shadow existance is not the time to fake our way through normal. Zooming scouting just doesn't work because they lack the connections. Prioritise. My children are not the ones on the weekly class collage with their rainbows crafts and projects, they don't even go there. We diverted off to bitesize after Easter because the short, structured interactive tasks and videos suit them better. As long as they go back to school with functioning brains, can still cobble a sentence together and are numerate, that's grand. Obviously different children need different priorities and mine are based around my DC's educational challenges and the fact that there is no respite from each other when things get heated. I could have higher standards but it's balancing their needs, wants and our thresholds.

Give closed choices, maths or english first?
Do they actually understand the work? Is some of it "busy work" that's not worth the aggro? Will they go back to school at least as intelligent as they were at the start of this shitshow? Most families are struggling in some way and the few that are genuinely in their element not putting on their best highlights are few and far between.

With tidying break it down. 2 minutes, all the clothes in the basket. Now the books on the shelf... Mine like the "tidy up song"
Sadly mine didn't inherit my bookish, artsy tendencies, they got the distractable lack of focus. I have had to learn to tidy in adulthood. I find the sucession of microdecisions about where to put everything draining. (Yet my CDs are in alphabetical order and books by genre...)

Ignore any sancti-mummies. We don't have to adore every moment with our precious poppets. Getting out and needing external stimulus is normal (REAL normal not a phoney "new" normal... temporary is as far as I will accept) and healthy. It's not normal to be trapped with your children 24/7 for months with no sign of escape with fuck all else to do beyond the house other than walk past padlocked playgrounds, shut schools and locked up leisure centres where they should be socialising with their peers and doing their activities. I agree with you about exercise, geting out is mentally and physically healthy and better that my DCs are wearing out a footpath than venting their pent up energy on each other.

If you haven't already, have a look in the "zero authority" thread. While that situation is ingrained much more deeply than yours, some of the advice and suggestions particularly early thread, overlap with your concerns. Lockdown and enforced time together is highlighting many cracks in families, which isn't suprising, we're all only human.

We will emerge from this. The transmission rate in the community is plummeting rapidly with most administrative areas reporting less than a handful of cases per 100,000 weeknow. It won't be many more months before we are phased back to a real normal for 90% of our lives.

The book gets rave reviews and is a good read. I think it’s just not for me.

Love your post BogRoll, so true . I have actually seen that thread and commented on it but hadn’t wanted to put anything about it in my OP as didn’t want to make this a TAAT. I will reread the first bits though.

Schoolwork is not the best tbh. I know the schools are trying their best though. DD1’s school is amazing and very relaxed which means that they are given a menu of options. She just picks art each time. Have made her do some online maths games too.

DD2’s school is very English and Maths focus. Unfortunately the stuff they set is incredibly boring - sends me to sleep and I am used to studying. The school have made it clear they want students to do what is set then upload it rather than Bitesize or anything else. The trouble is that it is frankly shit and not engaging. It takes so long to get her to do it that she then has no interest in any of the more ‘fun’ stuff. This week I gave up on the maths and out Bitesize maths on which was so much better and, as you say, has interactive videos and tasks which was so much better. Really tempted to sack off the rest of the school maths but I feel bad for the teachers who have put so much work into it. Plus they contact you if you haven’t uploaded anything to ask why. Can’t bring myself to tell them it is because it is such awful material and they are wasting their time setting it. Judging by the parents’ groups most feel the same.

To actually answer the question, DD2 doesn’t understand the maths and neither do I. There are no explanatory notes for parents. Obviously I know the answers but she is meant to show her working. They work things out totally differently to how I would so I cannot help her. Honestly I wish they would just tell us to use Bitesize or oak academy but of course not every child has access to the internet to work.

Hello OP, how did your morning go?

Can you post pictures of the maths? We can have a look and see if we can explain what the school wants .

Tbh I find it strange when schools demand their work to be done and nothing else. A child that is engaged and learning something is much better than a child that is refusing to do anything or does it half arsed/begrudgingly.

A good piece of writing at the moment , is a good piece if writing regardless if it's about Roman, the Great fire of London or Aliens.

I'll PM you later with some links to writing booklets/activities. They are aimed at y3, so not exactly for your girls, but they're quite easy,fun and self explanatory as well. If you can print them out then even better .

Even now DD2 is refusing to go to sleep but doesn’t want me to leave the room so I am stuck in here or she will cry.
So let her cry, it's not the end of the world. After a couple of times she will realize that it won't make you stay in the room, and she will stop that method of manipulation.

Ds2's teacher messaged me yesterday. Contact has been quite low touch. I just said that DS chose to revert to bitesize as he was more comfortable with the structure of the tasks (he'd been set a project and just doesn't have the independent learning skills to handle it and neither does DS1) Teacher replied that that was great, anything better than nothing.

Ultimately teachers can't do anything about the work being done or not done at home with no physical contact for months. I'm a former teacher, I know the pressures they are under, but ultimately we have to blag, adapt and emerge from this with as little colateral damage as possible.

Normal routines will be restored, we pull it off every year in September. Obviously this is different, but I want my children to go back in to school with a love of learning intact, not having it nagged out of them in an unnatural situation for months with no respite.

Teachers will have had a good idea from the start of who will not have attempted to engage, let alone those who run out of steam, those whose parents haven't had the resources to prioritise home learning and those who have had other priorities.

My 2 make me miss y9 set 4 Fri p5 sometimes

Hoping this isn’t too outing but these are a couple of examples... I am a bit paranoid having spilled my soul that if I post the whole thing someone will recognise it! As you can see she is making errors, I then have to tell her the answer but to show the working I would have just written the sum. I think they draw it out in units???! They certainly do not just write the sums. I am so tempted to sack it all off and go with Bitesize but am fully aware I am not a teacher and the last thing I want to do is upset the already stressed school staff. The scales one I am not even sure my year 4 child could do. This is meant to be Year 2 maths! The rest are about the same level. I think all our lives would be much better and she would actually learn more and engage with Bitesize.

Today was ok. I will admit I have let them have YouTube and of course haven’t had to test my resolve at bedtime yet. But the house and their bedrooms are tidy... ish. Just pondering what to do for tea now then hoping to sit down with a big glass of wine later and make a plan for the weekend and next week.

Did they tidy their bedrooms themselves? If yes, and you also had an ok day then take it as a win! Baby steps..

Yes bedrooms done by them .

This would be one example of how I'd expect a y2 to show their working out, but unless the learning/question specifies a particular method, then showing your working is literally writing all the sums down, rather than just an answer.

Ah see that is how I would write it too (sort of anyway!). I think they draw dots for the numbers? But maybe I am overthinking and I will just write the sums.

We’ve stopped doing what school sets and instead pick bits from school, oak academy and Bitesize so it’s stuff they’ll engages with. School stuff was really boring but they’ve stepped it up this week after a number of complaints (honestly, it was tedious with little thought). My aim is to keep dc interested in learning and not destroy their confidence.

Something i picked up from a previous post ... have you managed to have 1 on 1 time during lockdown at all?

That’s the thing isn’t it m0ther, we are trying to keep them interested. The problem with our school is that it is tedious but with a lot of thought put in. So makes me feel more guilty for wanting to stop it but I might try a week of Bitesize and see how we go.

One on one time... good point actually! We have but not sure it would class as quality time. So they get time at bedtime and if we are doing schoolwork I will try to work with one then the other. Once a week or so DH will take one child out on their bike and I’ll take the other (DD1 much faster and goes further). In terms of proper one on one time then not in the way we used to, no.

Ah, see, I really love the toddler stage even though I struggle with boundaries/authority, because at that stage you absolutely know they are just exploring and being curious, they aren't willingly being naughty as such and so you can just gently show them the right thing to do and they will do it. Age 3-5 I struggled with because there was lots more boundary pushing and in hindsight looking to find where the boundary WAS which I wasn't always clear about.

Some more things I've learned over the years.

Consistency - that people always go on about - it doesn't necessarily mean that you have the same RESPONSE every time, what is important is that the BOUNDARY is always the same. So let's say you have decided no jumping on the sofa because it might misshape the cushions. It doesn't especially matter if on Monday you nicely set it up in an inviting manner, explain carefully about keeping it nice and then keep an eye on them so they know not to jump on it. On Tuesday you're tired, they jump, you shout and scream, they stop. On Wednesday you threaten punishment (and are prepared to follow through). On Thursday you distract them by offering something else to do when the game gets more boisterous, or tell them they can jump around on the trampoline outside. That isn't being inconsistent - you're enforcing the boundary of not jumping on the sofa, just in four different ways.

What would not work would be if every time they jump on the sofa, you intervene at different points. So on Monday you stop them straight away and explain it's wrong. On Tuesday you let them do it a bit and then after half an hour get annoyed and stop them. On Wednesday you're in a bad mood and barely even let them sit on it. On Thursday you're knackered and feel guilty about yesterday so let them do what they want. On Friday you go back to Monday's rule and feel irritated that they haven't picked up on the boundary yet.

On being the "fun/yes parent" - you're accidentally calibrating their sense of normal wrong. Even if you were a naturally very well behaved child, think about the occasions which were really exciting - it was probably where a grown up allowed you to break the rules. But think about it - the exception of being allowed to break rules was only exceptional because the rules are usually in place. If you normally eat at the table but once in a blue moon you have dinner in front of the TV, that feels exciting and special. If you always eat in front of the TV but one day you have people round and want to eat at the table, it will feel confusing and boring to them to suddenly have to do this weird thing. I think with my DS I would get all frustrated because I felt like most of the time I was being the fun/yes parent and letting him do things which I would have thought were amazingly fun as a child, but the problem is they are just normal and therefore mundane to him. And then when I want him to stick to something more conventional he would fight it, precisely because it was not normal to him. You actually have to enforce the rules most of the time for the "fun parent" or the yeses to register.

This is also uncomfortably/lightbulbishly true for me:
www.janetlansbury.com/2014/03/parents-struggling-with-boundaries-3-common-reasons/

And this one:
www.janetlansbury.com/2013/02/i-think-i-know-why-youre-yelling/

Admittedly, the answers in the final one are more appropriate for toddlers. I'm still working out how I can make my new found insights work with a pre-teen.

Lastly.... this is completely off the wall and I might be barking totally up the wrong tree, but I'm getting a distinctly ADHD-ish vibe from your posts and even your username, is that something you've ever looked into or been told before? I'm just wondering because you're repeating so many of the things I used to say before I was diagnosed and your patterns are so familiar to me!

OP I would recommend looking into Respectful Parenting/RIE parenting, especially the Facebook group 'visible child'. Also Ross Greene's work on 'plan b'.
I've sort of fallen into this way of parenting because of my first child, who is now 8. He has a type of ASD called PDA which amongst other things means that authoritarian parenting absolutely does not work for him and simply leads to meltdown, aggression and anxiety. I also have 2 younger children.
We have found that treating our household like a democracy, including the children in our decision making, and only holding limits that we really do need to (eg no hitting), work best for our family.
This means that a lot of their decisions are autonomous, and self motivated.
It also means that to the outside world there may be things other people find outrageous, eg no punishment for swearing.
Consequences are all natural and not arbitrary.
The main aim is to focus on relationship, not control.
I'm not saying it's perfect and it's never how I thought I'd parent, but maybe look into it and see if it might work for your family.

One other point. You do actually need to practice self care/protect your own needs.

When you allow the children to override your needs (because they don't know any better unless you teach/show/tell them) and become a martyr to it, you have nothing left to give. They erode you and you cannot have a fulfilling relationship with them.

When you make space for your needs first you can actually relate to them because you have the energy, the physical, mental and emotional energy to do so.

I just wish I had understood this when DS1 was much younger :( I don't know how to get it back to a place where I'm not irritated with him.

I'm going to check out that FB group Visible Child.