... To just scream FUCK IT ALL and shove them in the local primary.

[Mrsfullhouse]

Good god I'm exhausted. I have three beautiful DC's. DS1 in Reception, DS2 in nursery and DD in year 6. All at a lovely prep school. So far so good....

However, by the ripe old age of 10, my DD has managed to become a rather excellent singer a consummate LAMDA exam taker and very talented hockey player, so all of my time is spent running her around to fixtures/ training/ concerts/ practices/ performances/ exams... you get the picture. DH is at rugby on Saturdays, so it is invariably me that does all the running around because he's either working or too tired on a Sunday. I just seem to spend my life in the car. This excludes all of the actual travel to and from the lovely prep (bloody miles away). Extra travel for all of the lovely things that they do that nice mummies actually turn up to an clap politely as they watch little Horatio murder a violin in cold blood. Plus all the lovely coffee dates- oh and you know, the actual job that I do... that I barely have time for.

The thing is, her lovely prep has encouraged DD to pursue these avenues having 'discovered' her talents- along with a million other things that if she had gone to the local primary, I'm pretty sure I would have been too smugly lazy to even think about. That is no reflection on state school mummies- I know some super-tiger ones.... but I would probably been awful and not even let her join recorder club because- well, who the fuck wants to listen to the fucking recorder.

So this is my life now, and I barely have time to think, let alone spend time polishing my turd enough to look acceptable in public.

I love the lovely prep.... but I think about how ridiculous it is now, and in a few years time I will have three actively participating in all of this shit. No doubt they will stumble upon some glorious talent that DS1 has that will involve me traversing the country, burning £50 notes and chucking them out of the car window as I go.

So, would it be unreasonable to just shout FUCK IT ALL, pull them out, stick them in the lovely, but not as lovely as lovely prep, primary and spend my evenings and weekends drinking very very cold wine and talking to my chickens?

Anybody else just feel like, as much as they love their DC's and their wonderful talents, they wish that they'd just never fucking encouraged them in the first place?

A lot of people with no sense of humour on this thread. I took your post as you meant it (I think).
My three went to state primary schools and did various activities but they had to choose what to continue with and what to drop at a certain point. I didn't mind being a taxi driver up to a point but it was also the hours spent watching or waiting while they did these activities.
If you send them to state school you'll probably be more likely to meet other parents to share lifts with. If your DC are clever anyway they'll do well in any school. My DC did. One got a scholarship to public school and went to Oxford, the other two got good degrees at top
Universities.
Life is a bit more relaxed in the state school world

Your OP was obviously a bit grating to read...I've read your updates and I'm sorry about your grandmother.

Not sure what to think really. I've zero idea about how authentic your comments are since you've done a few u-turns throughout your posting.

I get the impression that you want to create a certain impression, and you have, for better or for worse.

I would be surprised to read in a year's time that you did 'reassess' to be honest. The somewhat hubristic side of your OP was so unstealthy that I can't believe you don't actually get a little kick out of saying it all.

I'm aware that I'm being less charitable than others here, but there is a very deliberate - for want of a better word - tone to your posts that mean your later, more modest ones haven't quite broken down my initial views.

I realise I'm not offering much by way of advice. Listen to those other posters, is my advice probably. Those more charitable ones

I just know I would be a different mother if we were at state

It's a comforting fantasy that if you sent your children to a state school you wouldn't overwhelm yourself taking them to activities. But that's all it is, a fantasy. Instead you would probably end up running round taking them to all the activities that you imagine - or that your mother in law imagines - they are missing out on by being at that school.

The problem isn't the other parents, or the school, or even the activities. The problem is you running round trying to please everyone in your family and trying live up to some impossible standards. I can't tell how nuch if this is real pressure from your MiL and how much is just your own expectations of yourself. But whichever one it is, it's not very healthy.

So I think you are very right to reasses. Do keep your priorities straight about what children's activities are for. They're less about talent and success than they're about exploring interests and putting in effort and getting enjoyment. Make sure you don't get to a state where you ferry your DD to lots of activities because she is so good at everything whereas a younger child who has no special talents and is never on a team or chosen for a show or wins a prize doesn't get to do anything. Nor to push your children to keep up activities they're "good at" rather than ones they're interested in and enjoy.

I just suddenly realised that life is bloody short. I spend it running around after my children to impress God knows who and I haven't had a haircut in over two years.

Get a gorgeous haircut. And sod the MiL!

Life is indeed short. And also long. It seems that you've come to a point where you need to look at what matters to you and in your family.

Children don't need a myriad of clubs and activities. One or two is enough. They certainly don't need to be ferried around in the overscheduled mayhem that seems to count as a privileged childhood nowadays. Sounds like you don't need it either. Give them time, space, fresh air and cardboard boxes and let them talk to the chickens with you. I don't think it's an easier way of being a parent, because in some ways it's preferable to hide behind being super busy, rather than really getting to know your children. You don't need to change schools, just perhaps have a think about how you want to be together as a family.

I don't always practice what I preach, it's really easy to get drawn into the world you describe. But in my professional life I speak with young people, who have spent their whole childhoods performing, doing and achieving but who haven't always been given space to become a person. They are not mentally well, and until they find some way of finding who they are ( and they don't always do that in the most positive ways), they have feet of clay. It's very sobering to see when you are trying to raise your own young children.

In short, pour yourself wine (or better still, make your own), let your children see you sit down and read a book ( maybe Tom Hodkinson's The Idle Parent) and spend rambling, idle time together. That's what being a family is, at the end of the day.

God, I read my original post and I wanted to give myself a good kicking. But honestly, it's how most people (from school) I know are- until you get a few glasses of wine in them and the barriers of ''Look at me and my smug life, aren't I terribly fabulous, would you mind holding my discovery keys whist I tune young Henrietta's harp'.
It just becomes a bit second nature to assume that the whole world is in on the act. The truth is, although I do have a terribly posh voice (elocution lessons at prep darling) I find the whole private school thing incredibly overwhelming as a parent.

The mum's are all really really lovely (i do love that word don't I!) but it's all so showy and you just feel rubbish if you say no to anything, and then like I said, it all spirals whilst you burn a whole in your satnav and you bank balance.

It really is a first world problem, and considering what I want to do in the future, is a bloody awful thing to moan about. My Aunty and uncle ran a therapy farm for troubled inner city kids and it was amazing (they now run an orphanage in a war-torn country- they are very very brilliant people). We'd like to do something similar, maybe when DS's are a little bit older

I have quite rightly taken a bashing today. And it's been exactly what I needed to shake me out of this coma of taxi driving and feeling under immense pressure whilst constantly having the feeling that i've forgotten something terribly important ie. key/purse/ feeding the chickens (yes, i do love my bloody chickens)/ actually spending time with my whole family at once.

First thing on the list to change.... stop talking like a cast member of 'Five go mad at boarding school (albeit whilst drinking scandalous amounts of cheap cider and snogging all the wrong sorts of boys) . It's not big and it's not clever and in fact makes you sound like a (insert your choice of magic word here- I'm going with the C-word).

Second. chat to DD. she's got to pick two things and that's it. no more. Nada. I love her dearly, but i'm missing my little boys grow up driving her around.

Third. Spend more time with my boys. lots more. and more time with DD... just not in the fucking car

Fourth. Do not post flippant threads on mumsnet when family members have died- you are and idiot- and you will cry.

Stop saying 'lovely'.

That will do for now.

Nothing to add apart from 'A most excellent post OP! Hilarious!'😆

I know number six should be to tell MIL to fuck off....... that can be a lovely (oh fuck it!!!) fantasy for now.

For goodness SAKE.

Just stop it. Take some CONTROL.

I have had kids in state and private education. Private is much easier in terms of not spending your life in the car, believe me! Onsite homework, sports, clubs, late childcare, tea, even flexi boarding, it's a fucking breeze compared to activities being spread over a 20 square mile radius, which is what I do these days.

Grow some LOVELY BALLS and make your life what you want it to be. If you want to stay private do. If you want to move them to state, do. If you want to stay private but stop playing keeping-up-with-the-Windsors then just be a grown up.

Here is my genuine advice for you, given despite my intense irritation at your implied judgement of the rest of us.

Take yourself out for coffee for half a day with a notebook and pen. Write down your VALUES. You don't know who you are anymore, or what you stand for. That's why you're being buffeted all over the place. Write down what is important to you and what you want your life to look like. Not what someone else wants it to look like, and not what you think you should say. Be ruthlessly honest for once.

Then go and live the life you actually want.

One extra-curricular each. Get them to pick one thing only. I have four kids at an amazing local authority primary school, child 1 does horse riding on a Sunday, child 2 does cross country with the school on a Friday, child 3 does ballet Saturday mornings, child four is a baby. If they all did the amount your one child does in year 6 I would not have time to swallow my own spit. You are right, it will become stupid in years to come.

Do you know what? I see people like I think you are and think they look like they've got it all, and have everything under control. I always feel a bit inferior.

It's kind of nice to know that 'people like you' also have meltdowns and haven't always got their shit together too.

I found your first post cringey, but fair play to you for coming back and not running for the hills when you saw some of the replies.

I'm sure now you've realised you can't carry on the way you are, that things will improve.

Aww, OP, you have taken a bit of a kicking.
What it all boils down to, is that life isn't a show. Children can be over scheduled in pursuit of admiration at how marvellously we nurture all their talents and sometimes we lose sight of ourselves.

I have 4 kids. They can do after school stuff, while I am at work anyway, but evenings and weekends they get 1 choice each. The teens barely move out of their rooms at all now anyway, but littlest has just abandoned ballet finally and number 3 has extra super hard maths tuition (his "talent" and what he loves. Why not?). I need to rest and so does dh. My kids are well loved, nurtured kids who are free to pursue things they really want. However I am not running around finding stuff for them to do. I know I am a damn fine mum and I have nothing to prove 😁. And you know what? Number 1 has found a brilliance at programming via being neglectfully left on home computer, and number 2 now has an encyclopedic knowledge of films and classic series and is headed for a career in media. Winners all round!

You don't have a lovely Prep problem OP, you have a DH problem.

Get him to shift his idle ass.

Right I need to sign off of this now. I've just got back from hockey and i have so so much to do, plus I want to sit quietly and write some nice things about grandma (preferably not about the time she pinched me and said 'by god Suzanne (not my name- or even close to it) you are a big fat girl aren't you, you know one day you'll get stuck in a gate and all the local will boys will take turns to have a go on you'.... i was about 13 and couldn't have died more).

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to this, good and bad- I needed it all and there has been some brilliant advice on here that has made me think about prioritising what is important.... and more crucially, what is not.

Have a good night all, no doubt I shall pop up on mumsnet in a few years time moaning that the price of organic bread flour is pushing me to the point of insanity and that my MIL finally managed to replace me and adopted my children, they've all been renamed Roderick and they all live happily shooting grouse and local peasants.

Thank you
(one very humbled arsehole) x

Just let children be children

Children want to play and be happy, let them play outside

What is unreasonable is your husband's 'extra curricular' activities. Your children are the ones at prep school, not him-what is he doing play bloody rugby? The only husband's I know who play rugby either have a nanny or an exhausted wife who gives them too much slack. It seems as if you have done a wonderful job on your children, I think that it's about time you whip him into shape. I know it's hard and embarrassing but really many husbands are inconsiderate bastards when it comes to these things. Just last week my own inconsiderate bastard announced that he was going to start his own Shakespeare company-a bloody Shakespeare company! Needless to say it's not happening until the children leave for boarding school.

Still not funny.

You sound fab. Good luck !

Think you need to have a word with DH. He's slacking!!

Good luck, you are not an arse but I think I may have been one sorry. Also quite like the name Roderick!

See I read the OP in the voice of a Miranda Hart cross Sue from Outnumbered type and found it funny.

I didn't see a dig at state schools anywhere. If anything it was a dig at 'lovely' prep schools that are too far away and push too hard.

Glad people are starting to apologise because some of the earlier posts were extremely harsh all things considered.

Jeez, the NHS is gonna be fucked when they realise they have all these sense of humour bypasses to sort.

The OP made me laugh! If you’d kept schtum about the prep school part, and said “state school” instead, the viper posters would’ve been saying “oh Hun, what about a Spa day? You sound like a wonderful Mum”. There’s a lot inverted snobbery about private schools on MN, it’s pathetic

Poor you, my daughter 'slums' it at the local lovely primary. She plays netball, swims, has maths tuition and does 8 dance lessons a week.

I'm a single parent and do all this on my own. I do it because she loves it and it makes her happy.

Did you mean your post to sound so smug!

It would be a good idea to read the thread!
ilovewelshrarebit123

Ooooo of yous lot are horrible shits at times.

Sorry about your Grandma op.

So because op's kids are in private school she's too privileged to be allowed to be overwhelmed and sad ever?

Fuck's sake.

So because op's kids are in private school she's too privileged to be allowed to be overwhelmed and sad ever?

Hardly but her OP didn't frame it that way did it.