To ask what you prioritise as a parent...

[stilltiredinthemorning]

I wrote a thread a while ago about how knackered I was trying to parent my two very lively young children.

I'm still knackered!

I have a pretty full on job (only 25 hours a week though) and my husband works loooooong often anti-social hours.

We bought a much bigger house when our second one came along as we thought it would be nice for the kids to have a large garden etc. However, the garden is far too big for us to manage and just seems to be another thing for me to feel stressed/guilty about. I wonder if we'd have been better to keep our smaller house, but have less financial pressure...

I similarly worry we're not on top of the house, hideously badly organised, not eating well (us, not the kids), don't see our friends enough, don't make time for ourselves or each other, don't have sex enough, don't manage our money well (see bad organisation) etc. etc. etc.

I worry (ironically) that I am becoming a stressed out, grumpy parent who increasingly longs to be alone in a dark room...

I honestly don't think I can do it all. I'm sure some people can, but not me. What do you prioritise? I want my children to have a happy, relaxed childhood and to feel secure, safe and loved. I also don't want to have a nervous breakdown....

I think we put quite a lot of emphasis on having our own time as adults and as individuals to be better parents.

Wider family is pretty important to us - we live near our siblings and parents and when we (finally) got out of our flat and into a family home 4 years ago, we ensured we got somewhere with a big enough space to have big family groups over, and that's been really valuable for us.

Synchronised Google Calendar has been a godsend and mostly ended the (from DH) 'What do you mean, you never told me about that!' about plans I'd told him about at least 3 times previously.

We have a cleaner once a week, and we're keeping up an au pair even though DH is currently out of work and likely to be for some time in this climate, but we really like the au pair and he's taking a lot of strain off us and helping keep the house tidier (and freeing up DH to concentrate on job search, not domestics).

Downsize - choose the smallest, cheapest, nice home. (Me, dh and dd live in a 1 bed flat with a shared garden)

Get your children involved. My 2 year old loves feeling like she's helping. Buy small veg so they can put it from the bag to the saucepan or make food they can mix/spoon/crumble.

Clean a bit every day - 5 minutes wiping down the bathroom or walking around with the hoover once dc are asleep will be surprisingly effective.

Take time to look at each of your family members - husband and children. Really focus on them and nothing else, as often as you can. You'll see everything else literally fade in to insignificance.

I do things like meal plan for the week and freeze left overs so the kids or we can have them when one of the kids is ill and I don't get chance to cook. I iron clothes in advance and hang them up to save time in the mornings. I have set days for the washing and actually stick to that so I am not doing it every day. I make the dinner whilst the kids are eating breakfast so by time I have eaten it so cooked eg. A curry ( appreciate not all meals can be cooked in advance of dinner time but you can prep them). I do dishes as I go along or if the kids are being clingy or I can't be arsed, bung them in the dishwasher. Dh and I do set tasks and are flexible with each other.

I try to free up as much time as possible to play with the kids, building towers with them, painting, playing in the garden will always take preference over doing laundry! I find because I am so regimented with household tasks and doing set things each day it really frees up a lot of my time to actually have fun with my two. The weekend is family time and we priorities spending time at the park, soft play, going to grandparents over cleaning which is done in the week. We have a shared calendar for all appointments and have a family planner in the kitchen which dh and I both update.

I would avoid downsizing, if possible. Property is a solid investment for later on and financial stretch now pays dividends later as long as the stretch is manageable rather than terminal.
Larger accommodation looks less cluttered. It’s much harder to keep a smaller place tidy.
More personal space reduces squabbling and so creates calmness.

Cherry Pavlova - it's true that living in very close proximity increases squabbling however living in a house that's unnecessarily large means more time for upkeep and larger mortgage. Yes, it's investment, but it can also be a risk and reduce flexibility. Tying up all the money into property isn't particularly healthy for economies either.
Finally clutter can be reduced by simply not acquiring too much stuff.
In short, there is a middle point where you live in a reasonably sized house/flat and have enough spare cash for other investments, savings and fun, and you aren't the slave of the garden either.

Thanks everyone, some really good advice here

I think I'm guilty of prioritising things that I don't necessarily think are the most important, but I am worried other people will judge me on...

I would say we are managing to:

Feed the kids (but not ourselves) healthily
Have a good bed time routine
Keep them clean and in clean clothes
Make sure they get lots of exercise and time to socialise
Eat at the table for all meals (when we're in, though my husband is often not there)
Have stories both read and made up every day
Have lots of cuddles
Have some time down on the floor to play every day

Things we are not managing:

All of the above for ourselves
Keeping the house organised/tidy (it is generally fairly clean, but messy enough that I'd be embarrassed by unexpected guests and get v stressed about expected ones.
Keeping up with thank you letters/cards and seeing older family members.
Spending our money efficiently
Not wasting food
Keeping screen time to a minimum

I also feeling like I've been hit by a truck most days and all of my fantasies involve sleep... (this is not caused by sleep deprevation, I'm just exhausted by my life)

Sadly I don't think we can downsize any time soon. We only moved about 2 years, ago and the moving costs alone were about £10k (solicitors, agents, storage, stamp duty etc.). We've spent about £25k on building work, but ran out of money, so in this market would be unlikely to make our money back (and it wasn't our money it was the banks). I think we're going to have to stick it out for at least another 5 years or so. Tbh, the mortgage is affordable, I'm just very bad at budgeting (I'm not particularly spendy, just lack organisation) and get worse when tired/stressed.

I think a cleaner would help, but at the moment the house probably isn't tidy/organided enough for them to make much of a dent and I don't have enough time/energy to have the big TOMM style sort out that's needed...

I’m taking some useful tips for here!

I love the ideas for having time for kids to just be and talk.

We don’t have meals together every night in my house as tbh it isn’t the easiest time to talk and some people annoy each other eating! However that’s okay, there are plenty of other opportunities.

Like others have said, it really makes a huge difference if you are efficient and on top of some necessities- then those moments every day... how was your day? Hey what computer game are you playing? You look a bit down everything okay?

These are priceless. Let’s not be too busy for those!

My DC are 5 and 2. I prioritise:

Keeping reasonably organised - having a tidy round every evening, getting laundry, lunches and bags sorted. I do have a cleaner which takes off the pressure at the weekend.

Eating together every night as a family, and having mostly healthy home cooked (although simple midweek) meals, eith occasionally a bit of convenience food thrown in).

Being with my family almost all the time I'm not at work -eg. bedtimes and weekends. Mostly to spend time with them obviously, but also because I feel the responsibility of being part of a team with DH. I rarely miss bedtimes unless it really is necessary as I know it's a pain in the ass to get both of them to sleep, particularly when the toddler won't fall asleep by herself.

Low key weekends. The only regularly scheduled thing is DS's swimming lesson on a Saturday. Otherwise we have a fairly slow start to the weekend, with just local trips to playground/library/shops if necessary. Maybe some chores like gardening. Sometimes a playdate or birthday party.

Homework and supporting learning, including life skills like riding a bike and swimming. Learning to garden and cook.

Things that are deprioritised:

Work. I have felt down about this this year as I feel trapped in a position in which I can't progress much further. However, I don't want to work full time (currently 4 days) so that rules out most advertised positions.

Exercise and sleep. I am trying to address this but it is incredibly difficult to find time to exercise - you have to be very committed when you work and have a young family. I am now trying to improve this by taking opportunity of any small blocks of time I get during lunchtimes at work or evenings/weekends. Have signed myself up for a 10k.

Relationship with DH. We do schedule in a day of annual leave every now and then while the kids are at school/nursery. It's not enough but better than nothing.

Social life. It's a bit rubbish, but many friends are in the same position. I recently made an effort to see some friends I haven't seen in ages, and felt so much better for it. I don't have time to make any new friends these days though sadly.

Hobbies. Don't have any and can't see any time or energy for it at the moment!

I also feel like we struggle to do a good job of anything at times. One of the things that really helps in our house is a planner. As me and husband often work away, we needed one that is visible all the time. So we created a calendar on an Excel document on Google Docs and shared it so we can both update it from anywhere. We have different columns for each of us and we update it with everything we have on. From big things like working away overnight to small things like 'Wear pink day' at my son's nursery. As soon as we have a letter home from school or a party invitation etc, I take a photo and add the details to the google doc. I've found it's helped me stress less about remembering the small things, and it helps to share this responsibility where previously it mainly fell to me to remember everything.

Having read the things you feel you aren’t managing I will say

Cook once a week, you can make a pot of soup, a batch of chilli, curry, lasagne, a casserole and a cottage pie for instance all at the same time, portion everything in tubs and freeze it that way you don’t have to worry about having an available healthy meal when you lack time. My children always loved a picnic dinner on a Friday, in the garden on a good day or on a blanket in the living room when it rained, it was a nice opportunity to catch up with them at the end of the week.

Spend a weekend doing one big sort out then do a twenty minute sweep of the house every morning, after dinner and before bed, depending on the age of the children give them age appropriate jobs such as putting their toys back in the box.

Ban screen time for everyone two evenings a week and have fun together playing board games, crafts, you are also never too old to eat pretend cake and drink pretend tea at your pretend picnic.

Sit down and work out exactly how much you spend, set yourself a realistic budget, stick to it. You don’t have to stop every extra but I will always remember how shocked a friend was when she realised she spent more than £100 a month on take away coffee! Cancel subscriptions you don’t need, look for better deals on things you do need.

Give yourself a break, it’s tough trying to keep everything under control, the world will not end if you don’t get everything done.

Keeping the house organised/tidy (it is generally fairly clean, but messy enough that I'd be embarrassed by unexpected guests and get v stressed about expected ones.
Keeping up with thank you letters/cards and seeing older family members.
Spending our money efficiently
Not wasting food
Keeping screen time to a minimum

These are all pretty low priorities for me too, even now my kids are teens. And my garden got so bad this summer that my parents spent about 4 days sorting it out when they came to visit.

But we have a great time together with the children, and soon they'll have left home.

I have a friend who has the same age children as I do, and she has an absolutely beautiful garden. Every summer holiday (bear in mind ours are 11 weeks long) she battles with the fact that she wants to be in her garden communing with her plants, but she feels she ought to be out having fun with her children. Every summer the children get left to do their own thing, and she ends up asking me how we manage to spend so much time doing stuff with ours.

It really is about choosing your priorities. We all do our best but we can only do so much. To me, spending time with your children, keeping them safe and well fed, finding time to listen to them, is all really important.