How to parent well when you're extremely stressed?

[NotReallyCoping366]

I'm not really coping at the moment. I have two small children, one still waking 2-3 times a night, a heap of work deadlines to meet and lots of other pressures on my time and other life problems. My OH is fairly useless - long-term I will be dealing with this but I don't have time to sort things out right now. I have an ongoing worry that I'm not parenting my children very well at the moment and they're missing out on things and my time and attention because there are just so many other things to cope with and I feel constantly overwhelmed. It's just a matter of getting through it at the moment... a few of the things I'm dealing with should get better or be sorted in the next few months.

But in the meantime I want to minimise the impact on my kids. They're getting the same few meals cooked on rotation the whole time as I don't have headspace to cook anything new and too much screen-time. I'm also feeling zoned out and unconnected a lot. I need to sort this out.

I'm just wondering what others would do in this situation. I have no immediate way of reducing the work or other pressures on my time and energy. But I'd like to try to give a little more to my kids in between. Any tips for staying connected to them even though I'm constantly feeling that I don't have much to give?

They don't care about the meals.
Even if you just snuggle up and watch a tv programme with them they'll be happy.

Heap on the love and praise when your feeling everything else is taking over and that connection will be felt more easily each day.

It's the hardest thing I think balancing work and children, the quote goes something like 'the expectation to work as if you don't have children and to parent as if you don't have a job' is very true.

Nor sure how old your kids are but when i had times like this, my best bonding with my kids was bedtime.
I would put them to bed, read a bit, and then would stay in their room chatting, sitting on their beds with the lights out - sometimes we would do this for 30 mins, and they still talk about it now. To be fair my kids were about 6-7 then, not toddlers.
Also another tip is try to get rid of the not quality time like eating. I always thought family meals were so important but in our case they were not very pleasant for anyone. So I got the nanny to feed them (or get them to eat in nursery) rather than making them eat later with DH and I, and then DH and I would play board games with them for about 30mins before bedtime.

Don’t feel pressure to do ‘big things’ with your kids, it’s the little things they enjoy like making cookies on a Saturday afternoon or something- which is more manageable than some big outing.