Life is too much these days?

[ktitten]

Been a single parent for years now and I'm just exhausted with it all. Not the washings or the shopping or the ferrying around or the dentist appointments or the litter tray or MOT or the nit comb or the emergency childcare to cover work - it's draining but that's life.

I just feel like I can't do modern life anymore? In the last 2 days I've had to fill out a 3 page paper form for younger DD as they have uni students coming in to talk to them about careers (they're 8 btw) all the usual stuff like addresses and emergency contact details which the school already have. I've had to log into a system to put money on my oldest ones dinner money account. I've had a letter about an in-person meeting for a school trip eldest DD is going on next month. I've had to fill out yet another form for a sport she does, this one online, this one requiring yet another bloody log in with another bloody password.

I just checked my email and saw one from youngest DDs school and I know I'm being dramatic but it's tipping me over the edge. I will need to log on to YET ANOTHER FUCKING SYSTEM two weeks in advance and choose her school meal every day so they can give her a colour coded band each morning to show the dinner ladies which choice she has. You'd think there would be like a bi-weekly / monthly rotating menu so you could do it once at the start of the year and forget about it (I mean she either likes veggie sausages and fish goujons or she doesn't) but no, every bastarding week.

I could give her packed lunches but it's universally "free" i.e paid via tax and tbh it's a massive help. I had to give up my well paid professional job during covid, my side business folded, Cost of Greed Crisis and I've gone from comfortably alright to picking up shifts as a carer and £10 in my bank to last me til Thursday. Plus packed lunches is just yet another thing to do in the morning and another thing to go to the shop mid-week for.

So I ask my fellow mumsnetters... is this a terrible school meal system or just the straw that's breaking my back? I feel like I want to sell my house and buy a woodland somewhere and live in a bloody cabin. No more forms and passwords and appointments and pointless shit I need to do on a weekly basis. I am honestly drowning to the point I don't want to get up in the morning. I just want to sleep. I don't think I'm depressed but I do find myself thinking what's the point? How are people (single parents especially) coping? I've done it for 10 years now, coped well for a long time but I'm just so utterly tired.

I’ll be honest, I’m exhausted. Three kids, two have Sen and are in separate specialist schools, I work four days a week. Life just seems like hard work.

I’m exhausted and fed up of it all and I have only one child whose 13 and ignores most people of the time 😂😂

I'm sorry others are going through the same. I used to be okay but it feels like since the lockdown and CoL it's just slowly getting worse and worse for me. Maybe it was that when they were younger I really just dropped them at nursery and made sure they were fed and clothed and alive? Now it's cyber bullying and P.E kits and scouring the internet for black shoelaces (because white shoelaces are detrimental to learning or something?).

I keep finding myself questioning how / if any of this is making our lives better or easier or happier? All these so called "advances" and while some of them are fabulous (like modern medicine I guess) do we really need to use the internet to pre-select every single meal two weeks in advance. Do we really need to google our doctors phone number for a form for the eighth time this year - has any school ever phoned a doctor directly?? Or do they actually call a parent and failing that 111 / 999? Pointless pointless pointless and I'm so sick of it all

I really feel this OP. It’s all just too much.

We have the same school system but the bastard isn’t working at the moment. A different system for paying for school trips, one for looking what school nursery have been up to and their homework and another for wrap around. All the same school.

Yup I’m with you.

no advice, just solidarity

Oh I totally agree with the form filling in thing …
My DC school is the same , a paper form for contact details / doctors etc for every separate activity / trip / outing.
Surely we should just do a form at the start of the year and unless we call in to say we have changed doctors - it’s the same fucking Doctor for every child every time every year !!!
One time I decided to be a rebel and just didn’t fill that part in because it’s the same as every other time and they bloody called me to ask about the doctor part so I said it’s the same as every other form I’ve filled in this year ! And I had to give them the details over the phone ! Aaaahh so fkn pointless.
So yes , I totally get you with this.

I’m exhausted too. I’ve got covid and feel like shit but glad I can stay home for a few days

That's just life admin when you have school kids.

I've said it before, & I'll say it again - it was one of the happiest days of my LIFE when my youngest was finally out of education.
It used to drive me CRAZY. Forms, forms & more forms, as well as fund raising & all the rest.. & I didn't have all those different online systems & meal-choosing..

Do you get ANY time to yourself? :-(

I feel similar. It's just relentless.

Nearly Easter and at least it's a short break from all the school routine if nothing else.

I feel the same. Wish there was one admin system that all the clubs and school used. Also wish our school could match up details so I wasn't continuously filling out the same details. Feels like I have an admin job on top of my job half the time.

The form filling and logging in, is relentless.
What I hate even more is every damn car park you use now wants to to download their app to be ale to pay, too - different apps from the previous car parks of course. I met a friend for coffee in the Summer, and couldn't get her a coffee because they were only taking orders on the app

When my dc were at Primary school, they said which dinner they wanted at morning registration, and they cooked them from there. How am I supposed to know what dinner each of my dc fancy 10 days from now ? That seems a ludicrous system.

Yup single mum of one autistic dd. Life is very difficult.

I totally agree with you and have been thinking this myself, it's like companies have basically outsourced their data entry and admin to us, their customers. Technology has made many things much harder, and not easier in many cases. Hate it

I do think that women's lives, at any period in history really, were harder than they are now.

I'm not being flippant. I have four kids and have been a single parent for ten years. My family are in another country and I work full time. It can be rubbish some times but I would still rather be doing all that now than say even thirty years ago.

I@donttellmehesalive hmm I'd give anything to have a crumpled letter in my dc school bag. the type my mum had to deal with, vs the numerous pointless emails I get through from our school all day every day.

It’s a different kind of hard though. OP is talking about the modern world mental challenges, mental fiddly-ness of everything!!

Its unnatural to have to do and think about this stuff all the time. I am only mid 30s one kid and great partner and I still get stressed every now and again by systems and applications and passwords. And my job uses dozens of those things every day!

Same here. It all gets too much sometimes. I try not to spend a decent chunk of my day off from work and weekends selecting Primary school meals, topping up the Secondary school lunch a/c, completing forms, reading endless school newsletters, trying to book medical appointments, etc. The daily emails, text messages and app notifications from the DC’s schools are relentless. DC’s Secondary school constantly post important info and online permission forms for sports fixtures the evening before! Keeping on top of school admin is another job. It feels like I’m logging off from one job and then straightaway logging onto another.

I also have to set daily reminders on my phone to reassure youngest DC what they’re having for lunch the next day, so they don’t kick off thinking that that they’ve been given the wrong colour lunch band (we’re awaiting a possible Autism diagnosis). Another reminder to ensure we’ve got enough food items in for a decent packed lunch on the days that DC is not happy with the school lunch options available. Yet another reminder to prep the packed lunch the night before and another reminder in the morning just incase it wasn’t prepped the night before and to add any additional bits.

We’ve also got an adult DC and all this school/life admin stuff definitely wasn’t this hard before. I also worked and studied back then whilst also being a single
parent. I’ve learnt to be highly organised otherwise I think I’d crash and burn. I’m constantly updating To-Do Lists. It does get easier as the DC get older but the school admin is way too much these days.

For me, WFH in the main and working flexible hours is the key to juggling it all. And most importantly, a DH a who plays his part in sharing the load.

Scheduling in a bit of ‘Me-Time’ amongst the mayhem keeps me just about sane (I think!).

I get my 8yo DD to login to my account, book her meals every fortnight and then when she's chosen I pay for them. I then get her to write out the days she is school dinner or packed lunch and put in on the fridge. It's her job every other Saturday morning after she does homework, spellings and reading. Both my DDs have to log their reading every night too. I try to reserve sat am for school homework and admin. I agree its not easy, but I tell myself it won't last forever ...

Am with you. It feels like it has got worse in the last three years too. Work seems to expect more and more of me and school admin is constant. I have nothing left in the tank by the end of the week. And no relief at weekends.

Life was physically harder in the past but now it is just mentally draining.
By the time I arrive at work at 8am I have usually received my first email of the day from school (x2, one for each child) - I normally receive at least 3 emails daily from school about nothing much in particular.
I am also in 3 separate WhatsApp groups related to one of the children's hobbies (can't come out of them or I'll miss dates and times etc) my highest recorded number of WhatsApp's that I received during the working day was 43!! Then they carried on until 11pm that night.
My eldest is trying to sort a place at college so I now get emails of varying importance from them too.
Once I have read the emails/messages it usually means you have to log onto their preferred system to confirm whatever it is they are asking for information about.....and so it never bloody ends.
After a long day at work when I'm ready to come home and chill the hobbies kick in. So I usually get home, pick whoever up that needs to go somewhere and off I go again.
Life is relentless with kids. Mine are getting older now and I can't lie, I am looking forward to the time when I can drop the ball and they can log into their own shit and sort there own lives out!! I'm bloody tired.

I’m retired, I do a bit of caring for an elderly relative and some voluntary work but must still have 25 hours a week more ‘free’ time than most MN’s.
Ive realised recently I spend most of this time doing life admin. Granted it’s not with schools, but as another poster said most companies expect you to do their admin for them.
All of these systems are probably relatively easy, it’s the fact that you have to know how to use about 100 different ones to get anything done that’s the problem.

YANBU. I just want to say you sound like a brilliant Mum, and I’m sorry you’ve found yourself in such a hard situation.

My DS starts school in September and I’m partly dreading it. One of the nursery Mum’s with an older daughter says there’s so much to do and it’s so involved you could basically make it a full time job.

I have a DH with a stressful job and mental health problems, a DS, little family support, a 4 day a week job of my own, money worries and two elderly DCats. I also had a breakdown two years ago and ongoing anxiety. I don’t want more bloody life admin or hoops to jump through either. You have my utmost sympathy.