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.

@DisorganisedOrganiser I felt very guilty initially blowing off school work then I learned another parent has complained about our year group and she’s a senior teacher in the school so that justified my concerns. One big issue for us is dh and I are working full time so need work they can do independently. I’ve decided that each family is different and home learning needs will differ.

Another vote for Visible Child - there's a tween group too.

Janet Lansbury is great but RIE parenting is principally aimed at age 0-2 and so her work usually focuses on younger children.

Lots more useful info and reading thank you so much.

Bertie I definitely wonder about ADHD. I can be scatty and disorganised and could make a mess in an empty room. Constantly trying to organise myself!

I am just doing a tidy up as DH putting DD2 to bed and DD1 is reading. Then I plan to get a glass of wine and sit in glorious silence and read through some bits and make a plan.

I’ve had a look at more of the Bitesize content and it looks great and I think DD2 would respond much better to it. So I think we will try that as an experiment for the first half of next week. I’ve uploaded enough stuff to the school that I think they will leave me alone for a week. At the end of the day I’m sure people have worked very hard on developing the Bitesize content too so it seems ridiculous not to use it out of a misplaced sense of guilt. DD1 has enough stuff from school and I will concentrate on getting her to chose a writing task and doing some of the online maths games the school have linked to.

Maybe some Harry Potter Lego / drawing too.

I have requested to join the Tween group, thanks :)

OP feel free to join one of the currently running ADHD threads as a side note - e.g. this one: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3910531-ADHD?msgid=97031358

Will try to read more of this and come back later