Balancing SEN parenting and PT PhD

[ManaTea]

I’m one year in to a part time PhD and in many ways I really love it. My brain feels alive and I feel it has been great for my sense of identity but also now it is the summer holidays I’m just finding it impossible to study at all.

I have a 6 year old child who is autistic and unable to go to any holiday clubs and doesn’t have any friends he can go to and we have no family nearby so I’m looking after him all day… I planned to study in the evenings but I’m just feeling too shattered and he’s not usually asleep til after 9 at the moment.

how is anyone else balancing studying and parenting over the holidays?

it is tough. very tough when they are that age.

can you set up a timetable for each week, so you have a set amount of computer gaming time / outdoor time / lego time etc. it might help your child to have some structure and you might get a little time to read / think during the 'gaming time'.

This sounds really hard OP. My suggestion would be to park the PhD work during the summer hols, or perhaps 30 mins of reading in the evenings, if you feel like it. No pressure.

Are you able to build up your support networks so that you/your child has contact with others during the long hols - how about making contact with other parents from your child’s school and setting up a playdate? You don’t say much about your child’s autism but I wonder if they would be able to take part in any swimming classes? Also, do you have family that you could visit and stay with for a period of time?

It’s very hard: I started a masters with a view to progressing to phd but couldn’t make it work with two autistic kids. If you can have quite structured days that will likely help him, and if you know that (for example) after lunch he has one hour on his tablet and you get one hour to read them that may help you keep your momentum. But really you’re just not going to get as much done while he’s off school.

Btw does he have an ehcp specifying a 1 to 1 in school? If so some local authorities will also fund a 1 to 1 so that disabled kids can access holiday clubs, worth looking into for next year.

Thank you for all your supportive responses! I realised reading them that what I was looking for wasn’t so much a strategy to make it all work but really what I needed was permission to be doing a bit less, to just acknowledge that during the holidays I’m not going to get as much done and that’s okay

DS has autism and learning disabilities and is 7. He has an EHCP and 1 to 1 at school.

Last summer I took the summer off because of child care.

This year he has gone to the holiday club run by his (mainstream) school with LA funding for the one to one.

If it helps, I finished mine last year, similar situation and although my autistic child is a lot older the being 'on-call' and available was ever-present.

Over the 6 years it took me, I had some significant fallow periods, interspersed with intense periods of productivity. I was lucky that I had supervisors who understood and supported this so I never needed to interrupt, even though I could go 3-6 months without producing stuff. I did make use of my phone a lot, mostly for lit searching, planning and editing, which meant I could fit in tiny bits of work as and when.

I'm grateful to find this thread. My children have been mostly at home partly due to lack of funds, partly due to ASD.

I've been doing supervisions and marking and there's always something that needs sorting. I'm really, really tired, and depressed that it's nearly September.

The sad thing is that the children are pretty well-behaved and deserve better.