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 think life is very.complicated and lots of tick boxing in the UK.

But remember all this shit makes the person that implements it feel so so important.

I just don't understand. Am I just useless at coping? Or is this a totally unreasonable amount to expect one person to do on top of a very difficult professional job and being disabled themselves? And if it is unreasonable then why does these "services" give so much help to people in much objectively easier situations than ours, and none to us? Yet they're quite happy for them to take a huge chunk of salary every month as tax to pay for these "services" that do not appear to exist. Stop taking the money then I can fund it privately myself or spend more time with my children/ repairing my health myself? Surely it's not ok to take all this money and provide nothing for it at all, worst of both worlds, take all the money and leave us struggling and filling in endless forms and making the parent's health even worse worse by harrassing them with all of these queries and forms and nonsense and still doing nothing at all that actually helps in any way?!

I don't get it. How is it even meant to be possible to do? I have been surviving on 3-4 hours of sleep per night for years now. Why are they doing this and pushing people over the edge? The result will eventually be total health collapse for me and less tax money for them. I really do not understand it and am at the point of collapse now.

The school stuff is irritating and unnecessary. But the rest is just totally overwhelming. And all the advice just says "prioritise, stop doing things that don't matter" when every single one of these things matters a huge amount so nothing can be dropped. But nobody helps, either. I feel we have been set up to fail because what is being asked is literally impossible unless the days were 40 hours long.

But it doesn't have to be. Our school don't ask for all this on every form. Just a signature and a tick of yes or no. They have all the data they need on file. They even go as far as sending one form out st the start of the year with all the local attractions on so we can do one signature for all, cutting all the admin everything time they want to take then to the park or the library etc.

No, you aren’t being unreasonable.

Probably won’t make any difference, but tell them what you’ve told us. Feedback matters - sounds like a shit system.

I fecking hate the level of parental input that seems to be required for every bastard thing. Choose my kids’ meals on a three week rota? Why can’t they choose their own? They have no allergies and the school at least pretends to be serving healthy food (despite pizza featuring twice a week), so just crack on. Why do I need to be in the middle? Ditto bloody Google Classroom. The school has an app which beeps with a new notification every 5 minutes, but every now and then they like to catch you out by only posting certain info on Google Classroom so you have to log in there to see whatever it is. I usually find out from the class WhatsApp that I’ve missed something and have to run around making bloody models demonstrating forces made entirely of recycled materials at 11pm. (And yes that was a real example.)

I’ve always wondered why the school needs the GP phone number. What would they phone them for? Surely it’s either an emergency and they call an ambulance or not an emergency and the parent deals with it. Would they even get through to the GP anyway? And I live in a small village with one GP practice so why do they need every parent to list the bloody phone number?!

Other than that, our primary is pretty good with not sending out a million forms. We can choose about 6 weeks of school dinners at a time, which probably takes me less time than making one packed lunch. The menu rotates though and my kids always have the same so I do think it’s a bit pointless. Just let me say in the first week of the year that DS wants fish fingers every third Tuesday for eternity and that be it.

When I called an ambulence for a student that was fitting, the ambulence service booked them an appointment with the GP and I had to give their GP details. (Couldnt getvhold of parents) we had to take the child to the gp if parents didnt arrive

i also had to read out GP details when I called for an ambulence on a split head. I have no idea what the ambulence service used it for but I assume it helped access medical records? The parents met us at hospital later amd we had to give the same info at triage.

So far today it's been:

• 2 app notifications & multiple texts/emails that the school absence line is not working
• multiple emails that after school club is closing today for the rest of the week - great - just what I need
• email about Wildlife club fees
• email about after school club fees
• headteacher update x 2 schools

Bla, bla, blah.

My son has been blind since birth. Every few years I have to reapply for his disability money and blue badge. It takes months. I also have to fill in a 60 page form to say how he lives and any changes. His eyesight will never change but I still have to prove this. Letters from here letters from there. He's blind always will be. Drives me potty

Don't even get me started on the "how did we do" emails/texts/messages sent out by companies after EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION with them - Imagine if we did the same to them!

I suppose that’s what they need it for then!

To be fair I took my DD to a&e for a split head (happened at school and I went to pick her up) last week and they did ask for our GP practice there. Not the phone number though! I assume it’s to do with their medical records.

I hear you sister.

I'm a single parent too, work full tim

God, posted by mistake.

I'm a single parent in a demanding full time job. 2 DC, 1 with autism, 1 with ADHD.

I've just counted, I have to use 11 different apps between the 2 schools! I try to do the bare minimum, never get involved in fundraising etc. I miss things. I missed parents evening as I forgot, and missed the letter for the bikeability course. DS was upset about that.

Now DD 12 has a phone that's a whole new ballgame of ensuring I know what she's doing ( and constantly deleting bloody Tik Tok from her phone.)

I fantasise about sleep. If I ever have any time to myself it's all I want to do.

Some of these schools sound mad.

We don’t have to select a lunch option.

We get a weekly news letter plus occasional additional letters (via email) but probably only one per week max.

Yes we get the usual events to pay for, send £1 for charity days, dress up days but isn’t that just part of having kids?