Do you recognise this life?

[devilwearsprimarnidoesshe]

I’m tired. So tired. Almost 44. Co-parenting at best with my lovely DH, rather than any sort of relationship. We both talk about wanting it to be better, but it’s a low priority, always.

2 FT jobs, both in London x 2 or 3 per week. 90 min commute each way. Flexible timings but still both have clients so not always free choice.

2 kids in fee paying schools. One DC off to secondary, one mid prep. Both very sporty, one does gymnastics to a high-ish level (think 3 or 4 x 2 hr evening sessions) plus hockey and netball. The other is football/rugby/swim. This collectively takes up basically all evenings (we work or do our own sport (run) whilst they train).

Family help minimal - parents. There but quite scatty, and they’re getting older.

We live in a keeping up with the jones kind of a place, where I grew up. Life is just really fast.

We can’t give up prioritising the kids, but theres just no time. End up booking holidays late/not doing house jobs and everyone is bloody knackered.

Does anyone else genuinely live like this, or is it just us?

how do I do less without feeling like I’m failing? I’ve got into a habit of more is more, but I’m aware that’s not going all that well.

even just writing this makes me realise it’s a lot - but is it that unusual?

I work 28 hours a week, my husband 40. I have 2 days fully wfh and 3 at least partially in the office. DH is wfh 3-4 days a week.

DS(9) finishes school at 12:30. He walks to and fro alone. Monday, we eat lunch together and he goes back to school for swimming lessons, they’re practising swimming 15mins without a break.

Tuesday, he walks to his Granny‘s, they eat lunch together and he walks home any time after 2pm or straight to football practice at 5pm. One of us usually picks him up at 6.30 so we can catch up with the other parents. If we can’t, he walks home.

Wednesday-Friday he has lunch at school and is home at 2pm. After 30-60mins homework he goes onto the football field with his mates, he plays in his room, or we play or create something together. Sometimes he has a friend round. Today, we did a woodland barefoot trail with his mate, his mate‘s little sister and mum. The kids ran ahead while the adults chatted. Football again on Thursday (he walks to and fro), athletics on Friday. He needs a lift there so I do the weekly shop before picking him up again.

The secret to this work-life balance? Village life in Germany. Can recommend.

I feel lots of people on this thread don’t understand what a huge blow it would be to a child to say they have to quit eg football. None of their friends would understand and your child would know several times a week that their friends were all together training and playing but not them because their parents didn’t care enough. Sport is really central to lots of kids lives and frankly for those kids parents should support as much as they can. My son has just done his school interview questionnaire, there’s sport mentioned in every answer. These kids won’t appreciate their Saturday free time if you cancelled it.

Saturday sport is compulsory at many of the private schools around us. Sport is fundamental not an add on. Dh and I feel the same way.

Sorry but one sport is quite enough. Three is obviously far too much for OP.

It's certainly not that parents don't care for god's sake. There's only so many hours in the week and it's not fair to expect parents to spend hours out of the house most evenings driving people back and forth after they've already worked all day and will have to make dinner and clean when they get home. Parents are people who need rest too, and while they're the ones paying for and running the house their wellbeing needs to be prioritised over a third hobby.

"Don't care" indeed!

Sorry you feel like this OP and I hope that you find a solution that works for you. Many people have advised you to cut your hours, which is not always practical and often not desirable if you enjoy and value your career and don’t want to be sidelined for promotion and other opportunities. And there’s always pension contributions to consider.

Cutting back on the DCs sports is the other popular suggestion, but again you will probably really not want to do this if these are activities that your children genuinely love.

I suggest that you look at other areas of your life where you can cut corners and yourselves a bit of slack, eg simple easy dinners like jacket potatoes or beans on toast; making sure everyone pulls their weight at home to keep house stuff manageable; saying no to the inevitable volunteering demands from school
PTA etc etc. Also, are there other parents that you can perhaps do lift sharing with?

Finally, as with the baby and toddler years you know that this phase won’t last forever. Your eldest in particular may have moved on to other things in a couple of years as he or she reaches their teens, and if not they will become increasingly independent and able to get themselves to and from places. Your DC will look
back and be grateful for the opportunities you gave them, you’re clearly doing a great job so try not to be too hard on yourself.

Edited for typos.

I don’t mean the parent doesn’t care, I mean that’s how a child would feel. If all their friends do this, but their parents say it’s too hard for us, a child won’t think oh my mum works an extra day a week compared to Joe’s, or my parents have two other children and Joes don’t- they will think my parents just don’t care as much because that’s what all the evidence the child sees tells them.

Then those kids find a team close to home so they can get themselves to or from training easily. Or play with school, and train after school. If they’re committed, they’ll find a way.

My eldest is 10, he cannot find a way, plus parent commitment is mandatory even if he could get himself there. Children who aren’t supported to play at this age won’t be able to play competitively when older as they won’t get into the teams.

It sounds like my life could be if I worked FT. I understand not wanting kids to give up their hobby. I am home early enough to have dinner done and DH can eat quickly and go or I go. I can get on top of laundry etc. Mostly activities are midweek afternoons and this frees up weekends, to some extent. But it still felt like an endless treadmill for a long time. My afternoons were incredibly busy and an evening together was rare. However the kids started to drop sports around 10 or 11 or focus more on 1 or 2 and it got more manageable. Now and the eldest just got his drivers licence and my life is suddenly my own again.

Despite all this I almost always car pooled or tried to. If someone didn't ask, I did. My first priority at every new class group was looking for someone who lives near me and asking if they were interested. It almost always worked. If I was going to a match I'd always fill the car by asking around, and it paid off. There were times I called in favours. Even if you could outsource one thing every other week it would make a difference.

Yes, I agree.

It is fine - great even - for dc to enjoy some extra-curriculars, but I do think some households put themselves under inordinate pressure thinking it counts for more than it really does. And I also think where you take from downtime, you can't get it back: there ARE only so many hours in a day.

Agree. Try the Gabor Mate book ‘Hold on to your kids’.

Then the parents explain! We can't afford all three sports and we have to save money / it's too far and it's too much after a long day etc

At 8 and 11 the children are more than capable of understanding rather than being pulled out with no explanation.

Bluntly, so what, though? You seem to be suggesting that a ten year old's sport is more important that his parent's working life. That's quite ridiculous.

But very illuminating. I used to wonder what on earth was going on with a certain type of terribly socially aspirant British parent who seemed heavily over-invested in their children's sporting achievements. But I suppose if you've essentially made frankly insane sacrifices so that young Josh can play football/tennis/rugby/swim competitively, you are over-invested.

Meanwhile, as I've seen over and over again, Josh, not surprisingly, either feels under pressure to continue doing it because Mummy has gone PT to facilitate it, or sees whatever it is as just a hobby he drops when he loses interest, leaving Mummy looking at her lost earnings...

I so agree with this! I think some very physically active children really respond well to having a few scheduled activities but others need more down time. But I also believe in children being bored and having to rely on their own imaginative and creative inner resources sometimes,

When my child was about nine or ten and was at primary school, she met a lovely friend on a half term art course and they really hit it off. The art course was only three half days and my dd naturally wanted this other child to come home and play in the afternoon later in the week.

So I asked the nanny who picked her up to get a message to her parents to ask if this was possible. What I received back was a message from the mother saying that her daughter was only free for half an hour on Friday afternoons or half an hour on Saturday mornings, because the rest of her time was scheduled! We tried once more during another school holiday and failed again! Both of her parents had big jobs and the child’s agenda was indeed planned like that of a CEO!

There was no time in her life for spontaneous friendships or for two young girls playing together outside of a scheduled activity. The dc themselves were hugely disappointed and I found it very sad.

I don't recognise the life because where I live it's either private school where all sports are included in the school experience and although happen after core school hours and at weekends, kids travel independently or with friends so one parent takes 4 or 5 of them in a rota.
OR it's state school (like us) where parents do facilitate a range of clubs and do more to make that happen but then don't have the same financial pressures of paying private school fees.

I think the biggest thing though is we live in a small city with commutes of 30min by bike or 40 by bus at most and the kids walk to school then bus in secondary.

I think that you've chosen to live 90mins commute from central london and the type of life that means is just like you describe. It sounds very very radical but why not both look at options to move your work away from commuting into London? If it just reinforces that it's not an option and you MUST be where you are then maybe that will help you to accept things as they are.

Sorry @devilwearsprimarnidoesshe that sounds really hard. I don't recognise it. My kids are younger, and at state school, and I wouldn't send them to private school for many reasons. The kids do a bit of "extra curricular" stuff, once or twice a week, with no expectation from the school. I'd take a dim view of a school that dictated what my kids should be doing evenings and weekends.

We'll play it by ear as they get older, how much more they want to do, but there isn't a chance they'll each be doing three activities per week that leaves me an unpaid taxi driver. I want them to spend most of their evenings and weekends hanging out together with me and DH, family swims/ hikes/ bike rides.

You can opt out of keeping up with the Joneses. Move house? Move your kids to state school?

100% this is our exact life we live rurally. 3 at fee paying schools. Would like to sort our garden out at some point - but zero time, at this point it will become a retirement project. Girls ride competitively which takes up most evenings and weekends with training and competitions, it’s a lifestyle, our boy does hockey, cricket, rugby at school but also out of school so more clubs/matches they all love their sport, and are very happy well balanced children so we are loathed to upset the apple cart. We both work f/t luckily London is only one or twice a month as it’s 2hr commute, but as it is we hardly ever see each other.

Also this @devilwearsprimarnidoesshe - this book might help you let go, if it's an idea that all these activities are the "right" way to be a good parent. Of course there's nothing wrong with lots of a sports, but only if it's really what works for the whole family.

My dd was only allowed one after schools sports club and one weekend activity. If she wanted to start something new she had to give up something. It taught her she can’t have or do everything - she had to make choices. I was going to suggest you get your children to do similar - but maybe it’s you and your husband who need to do it first!

You've made a rod for your own back. No one to blame but yourself.

Sorry didn’t mean that to be harsh. I just want you to feel you have choices in life - and that you really don’t have to do everything. Good enough is enough 😊

It’s not working so something has to change. Probably, radically.

Some radical options… sell your house for a smaller/ less expensive place & use the money you’ve gained to either pay down mortgage or live off whilst you work less days….. And/or, cut some savings/ expensive etc to allow you to drop a day or choose to live more frugally…And/Or choose the evening of sports that’s less busy & just keep the kids home eg gymnast goes 3 times a week, not 4. everyone stays home this evening…. And/Or reevaluate your values and what you want from the next 5 years and make that happen….. is this what you want for the next five years…..

There is no magic wand. It sounds miserable and difficult and you need to make changes.

Ask yourself what am I doing all this for?

f your children do more than one sport/activity, tell them to choose which is their preferred one. Support this and free up some time to do non organised activities. This could be a walk, visiting museums or just sitting and chatting at home or in the park maybe just reading a book or watching a film. Not every moment has to be organised and on a schedule.

Work to live. Don't live to work.

I could have your life and I’m so glad I don’t - because I chose not to. Stepped back from FT London job (DH has continued) and went part time in a less senior role, pulled kids from private primary into excellent local state school within walking distance of home. Kids each do 2 sports (plus school ones), music and theatre/dance. We have holidays. We have time together as a family. It’s busy, at times crazy but we’ve chosen to live in an area where the Joneses don’t give a flying fuck what car you have or what water bottle the kids drink out of. Much happier than in the competitive hothouse private school environment.