Burnt out and overwhelmed

[bluecoat63]

Hello, I’m really interested to hear how you stop yourself feeling burnt out and overwhelmed as a parent? What works ? I’m a single parent to three who are 15, 13 and 10, their dad lives six hours away and sees the kids in the holidays. Last year he saw the kids for a week at Easter, two weeks over summer and a week at Xmas. When they stay with him, I often can’t take time off work (although I did last year and had two weeks to myself) because I’m using my work annual leave to cover family holidays with the kids, plus other school holidays like half term etc when their dad doesn’t have them.

I am def practical, resilient and doing my best but it’s just so relentless and non stop. I started running and swimming again in January and that really helps but would like to go more often. But I get bogged down in house stuff and jobs and need to prioritise the excercise.

The kids are great but I think they could do more to help - interested in what kind of jobs your kids help with ?

Write a list of the balls you’re juggling ( & be specific) cleaning the house, drop offs/pick ups, work, cooking, kids activities.

Once you’ve written them down strike out anything you can stop/ask someone else to do.

For example, what household tasks can the children do: take the bins/recycling out, feeds the animals, empty the dishwasher - it can take a few weeks of nagging/monitoring but they will get use to it eventually, can the 15 year old use public transport a bit more for any activities they do/social events - I think we get use to being the mum taxi, is there money in the budget for a bi weekly cleaner, can you do a weekly online food shop delivered early one morning - this stops the weekend supermarkets/shops after work.

I wrote a list like this a few years ago (it was long) but really did help streamline my life.

This is really helpful and I will def try it.