To ask 'How do people do it?'

[HowDoesSheDo]

I will preface this by saying I have ADHD. Late diagnosed in my 40's, but now medicated and much better than I was..... but I still don't understand how people (mums in particular) manage to keep on top of everything and still manage work, life, balance.

My husband does more than his share of the parenting / house work, and is getting cross that I'm working so much and can't manage general life admin. I only work 4 days a week as well

I take 1 of our children to school while he takes the other in the morning, I work pretty solid throughout the day Monday-Thurs some days from home, some days in the office. I make the children dinners every evening (often have to make twice because they get home at different times due to activities). I clean up the dinner mess and get the youngest up to bed, read story, etc. come back down and battle with the other to do their homework while I make my own dinner (different dietary requirements than the children and DH), watch some TV with my eldest once homework is done and then finally get them up to bed about 10. Then I get a bit of time to myself to spend on my phone scrolling MN, online shop browsing, Reddit etc. for maybe 45 mins and then DH joins me and we watch some TV. Fridays are usually spent catching up on housework / errands that have built up during the week before picking up one / both of the children. Rush home, feed them and take them both to their activities. Saturday mornings are spent ferrying children around to and watching their activities. Afternoons are often birthday parties, more errands or a family day out at a national trust. Evenings start once the eldest has gone to bed - again about 10ish and DH will watch a movie. Sunday normally a family day out. Evenings the same as the others. Occasionally I will get out for a meal with friends. Maybe 1-2x in a normal month, but when there's a few occasional / Christmas etc it's more.

I seem to always be busy. But feel like I accomplish nothing. I still can't keep up with replying to texts and messages (sometimes I will take a week or more to get to them and sometimes I read them and forget to reply), I don't have the time to clean the house so we have to have a cleaner, I rarely check my emails or go on social media, I don't know what the latest books are (and read them), what the latest live shows and films are playing (everyone I know seems to know this, and manages to find the time to go to a film / theatre show every month or so), I can't keep up with trending topics that I should know about for work, while my team mates are reading up on / training on them and expanding their knowledge.

Whenever I bump into someone on the school run and they ask how I'm doing, I'm not quite sure how to reply. I'm frazzled. I think I scare them away when I tell them how busy I am and why, and have to apologise for never getting back to them.

I really don't understand how people accomplish so much and how they're so productive, when I feel like I'm constantly up to my eyeballs doing 'things' that everyone else seems to do as well.

So tell me ladies.... AIBU to ask how people do it all??

I think you sound pretty normal. I'm not sure why you are worried about not keeping up with books etc. There are some things I avoid doing and some things I get on with. You don't sound unusual to me.

You are coping extremely well. Stop being so hard on yourself! X

It sounds like you are keeping on top of things and the kids are getting everything they need. You're doing well.

You’re doing just fine x

Honestly the vast majority of people who have both children and jobs live like this.

People who appear to be managing it without a hitch are just putting on a more convincing front. Or have domestic servants.

The people I know who have loads of free time to read, watch loads of good TV, have hobbies or think about "trending topics" etc are all either childless women, gay (childless) men or straight men who have "facilitating" wives.

Don't be too hard on yourself. If you're coping, making ends meet, looking after your kids, you're doing better than a lot of people.

Because they're all things that I'd like to do I guess. I always just feel a bit daft if I'm stood amongst other mums at the school gates or with friends, or co-workers and I have to either pretend I know what they're talking about, or stay awkwardly silent because I am completely out of the loop, but wish I had time to do the things they were doing too.

And I'm just downright embarrassed that I struggle to reply to texts and messages for days / weeks. It gives me major anxiety trying to figure out how I'm meant to explain myself. They must think I'm the biggest flake. I also never even occurs to me to reach out to other mums from school to make a play date for my child because I've just got so much going on. But I feel like I'm doing nothing with my life

You sound pretty normal to me and with ADHD thrown in the mix you are doing brilliantly.
Catching up with books/ movies etc will all come when the dc are older. If you want to go to the cinema or out start getting a baby sitter maybe one Friday night a month for a grown up night. Also cook enough for yourself for 2 days as there is no way l could cook dinner twice in the evening and l don't have ADHD.
And maybe settle to sleep a bit earlier during the week to get more rest but cheer up you are managing fine. As dc grow it will be a bit easier. Try not to focus on being so busy..in your mind...just accept its this stage of your life. If you have a day off do something for yourself to fill your tank for the next onslaught..exercise works best for me but you might like the cinema by yourself or listening to an audio book.

my DC are 13 and 17 and I only read on holiday, rarely go to the cinema, don't sit down until 9 or 10pm, just about get enough sleep to go again the next day.

You are normal!

Try not to stress op! I think it’s pretty normal when you have school-aged dc who are doing extra curricular activities and you work 4/5 and your dh works ft, to feel like you are on a treadmill only just about keeping on top of everything. It just is like that when you are in the thick of it.

I think you need to try and build in some time for yourself so you can draw breath because no one will ever do that for you so you have to sort it yourself. Maybe an hour on a Friday if nothing else?

Also, I think you could (maybe?) focus more on meal planning to make your life easier as cooking twice maybe three times of an evening isn’t sustainable. You could post a thread on the recipes board here and ask for suggestions for easy dishes, that fulfil all of your different dietary requirements if that’s possible? Or ways to quickly adapt one central meal and turn it in to three different dishes without too much effort?

Good luck! If everyone is fed, dressed in clean clothes, attending school and after school activities, you and your dh are going to work, you have vaguely clean sheets on the bed and you have a cleaner then you are doing pretty well by my reckoning! 👍

So how does your DH spend his day?

You sound pretty normal. Except for the food situation. Can you make big batches of whatever you prepare and freeze extra portions so you're only ever cooking one proper meal an evening and just heating up pre-prepared stuff otherwise? Or cook something that can be adapted for all requirements.

Cut down on children’s activities or take turns on Saturday mornings to take them? Can you share lifts with another parent? Use Sunday as a rest day every single week. Everyone needs a day at home to just relax , garden , read , play, garden. Days out are overrated imo.

I have a colleague who is run off her feet ferrying her children to all their social activities. It’s self inflicted and she’s her own worst enemy. No child needs to be doing something after school every day of the week and at weekends.

Are you sure that your DH is doing his share? You don’t mention how he helps in the evening? I find it so much less stressful when we share the after school activities/ferrying around. Is he cooking for the kids? Doing any cleaning? Washing up? Etc.

He may well be and if so then you’re doing fine.

Also don’t say yes to every party and there’s no need to do family days out every Sunday. I’d never catch up on any housework/admin if we were out all weekend.

I think you are doing fine OP, I also work 4 days a week and my DC don't do any midweek activities (apart from ones at school) because I know it would just be too much for us.

I also have no idea what's new in films/books etc. I usually know what's going on in the news though as I like to put on BBC news for some background noise on my wfh days.

You sound like you are doing a lot of the meals and clearing up in the evening yourself, what about DH?

Also you seem to have busy weekends, we often have time at home at weekends where we catch up with things - our children play / entertain themselves.

Similar to you, except I don’t cook three dinners. We all eat the same and leftovers are the basis of the food pyramid here 😬

What does your DH really do?

Sack off all the different dinners. We have one tea time and that’s it.

Family days out are not business as usual - we spend Saturday am doing kid activities and the rest of the weekend doing house stuff or chilling. It gets easier as the children get older - mine are late primary and can have a friend over that requires no interaction and minimal involvement from me.

As someone else who is generally frazzled and diagnosed with ADHD, I can see that advice like this looks really sensible.

But my experience of trying to batch cook and freeze meals is classic ADHD enthusiastically producing a pile of stuff for the freezer but then simply forgetting to use it. I just won’t remember it’s there.

The having to defrost stuff part is a huge barrier - I will not remember to take something out to defrost in the morning so I can reheat it later.

Same with advice to concentrate more on meal planning. Sounds so obvious and sensible - but consistently meal planning, buying the right ingredients and then following through on that meal plan in the moment each evening just doesn’t happen. No matter how hard I try and the whole process makes me even more frazzled and feeling like a failure.

@HowDoesSheDo What I do is try to have a set of quick and easy dinners that I can throw together easily from ingredients that I am likely to have bought in the shop. And to be reasonably flexible about that.

I usually pick up some things like microwave bags of rice, shelf stable packets of gnocchi and such like that I can grab and quickly assemble a meal. I know that I’m not going to think at all about what’s for dinner until I’ve finished work so I try to ensure that a range of stuff will be available to improvise a dinner when I need one.

I just cook once whether DS2 is there or not. He heats up a portion when he gets in.

The bit that I find most challenging is actually the cleaning up after dinner/bedtime every day. I’m just shit at it. So you’re doing far better than me. I have delegated floor care to a robot vacuum cleaner and that does make a difference. I can just set it to go on my phone.

The only thing that leapt out at me was that you appear to be cooking various different meals at night. It might be worth thinking about how to streamline that.

I couldn’t cope with your late nights, starting a film at ten on a school night!? So actually you are packing much more in than many. I’m in bed by ten, sometimes even at the weekend.

I agree with many PPs in that you are normal and coping well. Only thing that strikes me is you seem to be going to bed late and maybe lacking sleep. When my kids were the same sort of age as you I generally went to bed about 10:30

Make one meal that you can all eat and that's easy to reheat, it'll cut time in the kitchen drastically.

I don’t have adhd so I can’t comment on that. But I cook one dinner, you cook 3-4 a night? There’s an hour to save there 😊
If the kids have activities and parties at the weekend we don’t need another family day out the other day. If we chill at home we get jobs done like meal prep or sort out cupboards, wash bedding. I listen to audiobooks or watch tv whilst I do other things. My dh pulls his weight and I have a cleaner, window washer etc.

maybe set an alarm on your phone called reply to messages and do it once a day when you often have a 5-10 minute gap.

at work either set time aside in your calendar to do training and stick to it or if you don’t have a culture where you can do that, do you have meetings where you are remote and just have to exist on them without contributing? You could do it then. Alternatively do you have something you could specialise in at work that is more generalist that you are personally interested in - well-being, inclusion, mentoring etc? You could then listen to audiobooks about these topics when you are doing something else.

if you can’t multitask more, then the only way to fit in more is to do less. Outsource what you can, cut out what you can and accept the rest. It’s hard to have kids, work and run a household and you have adhd as well - be kind to yourself 😊

Your day to day life sounds very normal. Some of the activities etc are optional in the sense that if it doesn’t work for you then they can go. I don’t hold any truck with parental martyrdom. If constant taxi driving means you don’t get the satisfaction of reading a newspaper or book then change things so you can do them.

Batch cooking is absolutely key. Look up The Batch Lady on Instagram/ website.

once you have a freezer full of nice meals - set an alarm on your phone for the same time every evening that says “take out tomorrows dinner from the freezer” and do that! Defrost in the fridge overnight so it’s waiting for you to heat up.