To feel like I never have a ‘nice time’ with my children

[Pleasehelpimexhausted]

Just wondering if this is a normal thing in families with small children or whether it’s me/us.

I feel like I never have a nice time with them. Everything we do is ruined by screaming, crying, demands for things and constant requests for food/toilet/drinks. I plan nice things for us to do and it’s all just so much hassle, I always end up thinking why did I bother? I would just stay home but it’s even worse then, the same whinging but stuck inside

Just feeling really down in the dumps. Maybe I’m just a shit mum

You are making life harder for yourself.

Snacks would not be the hill I would choose to die on. My children eat constantly and have decent meals. They run around constantly too.

When they were your kids age I had a backpack of healthy snacks, it never bothered me.

My mum used to make me a pack lunch and send me off to play on the field behind our house for the day with the neighbours kids. Parenting has changed.

I'm getting a lot of comfort too from this thread!! I go out of my mind with my lo , constant moaning, crying and spoilt days out. Asking for food, drinks and toilet non stop!! Time inside is a nightmare. I dread weekends and school holidays, by the end of summer holidays i have genuinly lost my mind. I always think I'm a shit mum. A lot of us seem to be experiencing the same!

have you tried letting them be bored. its not your job to entertain. mine got a chore to do if they said they were bored. can you let them out in back garden or take to local park? at park you do not play with them. let them lead. 1st person to say they are col or hungry or bored, you go home. every. single. time. this is learnt behaviour. maybe im a dragon parent but this worked when mine were wee and we had great days out and still do

I mentioned upthread that we used to do 1-to-1 days, which really helped a lot. We found with both sons that giving them the option of 2 or 3 things (of which they can choice one) worked best, as it helped to manage their expectations, and reduces the stress of decision making (my DS2 has always struggled with decision making). It wasn’t always fancy days out either (and was most usually an afternoon, with either lunch out or tea out).. one time my eldest DS (prob aged about 8-9 at the time) said what he really wanted to do with me was stay at home together for the afternoon (without the others around) and bake a Victoria sponge cake together (his favourite cake!). I really used to get the feeling that the reason these 1-to-1 times worked so well was because you were (in a way) handing over a bit of control to the DC, by them getting to choose where you go and where you eat, as I think a lot of the really bad behaviour that we used to get was probably a lot around frustration that they don’t have any control over their lives at all - and maybe they get less attention, with the arrival of new siblings. I think having loving, undivided attention is also key for these 1-1 sessions, which stops the narrative being all about ‘I can’t do that now as I have to feed the baby’ or ‘I have to do the washing’ etc. But the actual day ‘out’ (or in) can be whatever suits you and the dc, with the dc making the making the final decision. Doing lunch out or tea out at a cafe can also really help, as it can be a completely different experience than if there are multiple dc there! Hopefully they will behave better (as they are not competing for your attention), and it gives them practice for how to behave. I have to admit, we went for many years of not being able to go out for a family meal, with all of us together - it was just too difficult, and also I ended up doing mealtimes at home at staggered times so they weren’t all sitting together (as it was a nightmare). But doing it with just one, when out and about, can be much much nicer.

Snacks is a difficult one. Whilst I agree that it can undermine mealtimes / appetite etc, we found (especially with my sons) that there was a correlation between meltdowns and hunger; ie they always happened when they hadn’t eaten for a long time. If you can get your dc to enjoy carrot sticks and cucumber sticks, that can really help, to give them a planned snack at a key time (you need to work out for yourself when the optimum time is, but maybe no later than an hour before their meal? I used to collect my eldest from pre-school, and he would be incredibly hungry, so I used to take a packed lunch so I could feed him sitting in a common area at the nursery, before we set off home. If I tried to get him home before he ate, tempers would massively flare up. I think some dc may be more susceptible to this - my youngest doesn’t seem too affected tbh. But my DH gets a massive headache if he is late eating, so I think it may be something physiological, maybe around blood sugar. Sorry for long post!!

OP, I haven't read this thread to the end (will be coming back later), but just to say, I feel your pain. I have a 9 year old, 7 and 4 year old. It's very hard to enjoy time with them which makes me feel sad and a terrible mother. I think for me the key is to do less, but then I feel bad anyway. Will read this thread for tips but I'm glad it's not just me who feels this way.

So not just me it seems! I’m not a short tempered person, I go into every day with the frame of mind that today will be different and we will all enjoy our time together. But we hardly ever do. Part of it is the sheer amount of drudgery that goes with taking small children anywhere - constant toilet/snacks/drinks/falling over, loading up the pram, putting on coats and shoes (that DD kicks off when in the car seat so need putting on again when we arrive; while she screams as she doesn’t like us putting her shoes on and wants to do it painstakingly slowly herself), stopping for feeds and nappy changes while DD whines about waiting, making sure the baby can nap when he needs to and so on. There’s hardly any small block of time to just ‘be’ before something else has to be done. It’s endless.

Totally understand this, it's constant. I'm the same from the minute we get up until asleep it's non stop, every minute of the day there is something . I wake up exactly like this with the frame of mind, right today will be different, within 2 mins though I'm thinking today is going to be hellish and it usually is. No matter what I do to make it better, I just hear moaning, whinging, demands for lots of things and the pure drudgery that comes with it. We do lots of nice things together though but I constantly feel I'm a shit mum.

That sounds so hard - school/ nursery holidays are really difficult. I had two at primary school when my third was a baby, and I remember being sick with dread at the start of the summer holidays, with two boisterous boys and a 6 week old baby, and no family help (DH was working). Fortunately, I was able to put the boys into holiday clubs, and I alternated this, so each week I would have a day with just the baby, a day with one of them and the baby, a day with the other and the baby, then two days with all of them. It was a really really hard time though! We were very very fortunate in that where we live there are a lot of reasonably priced holiday activities. Definitely reducing the number of kids you have where possible (using holiday clubs or after school, or family, or swaps with friends) can really help. When my youngest two overlapped at primary school, I arranged after school sessions for both so that I could have a couple of hours with each, individually, on a different school day in the week (so my daughter was in drama on a Monday, and I would spend that time with my son), and vice versa on Friday.

This was me this morning. We had a lazy day yesterday so decided to take DC (2 & 5) to the park this morning. 5yo cried before we'd even left because he didn't want to go out. Both asked for a sausage roll from the cafe the second we arrived and neither ate it. 2yo cried the whole time we were there and refused to be put down. 5yo threw an alrighty tantrum because he didn't want to leave. Ended up walking back to the car with both of them crying. 5yo told me he hadn't enjoyed it even a little bit. 2yo screamed the entire way home and then turned into the worlds happiest child the second we got inside. I am fed up, cold and have a headache. Seriously wish I hadn't bothered.

Sounds like a New Year's Eve party - lots of expectation for greatness but actually a bit dull.

Go with the flow, say you don't think there are unicorns but you could look for them at the local park? Make a game out of it. Kids can be really hard to please. The amount of times I've clenched my steering wheel and internally screamed because I thought I was creating a fabulous day and they were bored the whole time or what I did wasn't enough and they just wanted more. And more. And more. Argh.

You're not a shit mum.

It might get easier, in my experience it's easier in a way (she is super happy with Primark and Starbucks) but it's still so so difficult. Kids are worth it but it won't always feel that way.

We've just had a difficult day out and I'm feeling really down about it. I even had a short cry while we waited for the train home. Just came back to this thread to cheer myself up a bit. Everyday is a new day, tomorrow might be easier!

We lost dd's favourite scarf (maybe on the train, although she's convinced it was in the cafe but we combed the cafe and annoyed the baristas by asking repeatedly)
The cafe was crowded and loud and messy
Dd accidentally smeared mud from her boots onto a stranger's coat, when climbing onto the bench seating - she was pretty nice about it under the circumstances but obviously unimpressed
I got frozen while breastfeeding on a park bench in the winter wind, while dh and dd played football (that's how she got muddy)
Baby ds pooed a bazillion times and there were long queues for the loo
Dd was briefly inconsolable about the scarf. Sold out online (multiple retailers) and at all the local outlets, I called 3. Submitted a lost property form online to the train operator.
We missed a train home and they're every 30 mins on a Sunday. We sat in the waiting room and I cried

Now I'm in bed BFing the baby while dh and dd play downstairs and I just feel so miserable like I always ruin every day out these days with my postpartum gloominess and they have more fun without me!

I'll cheer up in a bit though, tomorrow's a new day eh!

Infuriating behaviour re kicking off the shoes. I had 3 under 4 at 1 point and got good at:

• waiting it out, if dd wants to put on their own shoes while you gently move away so be it, it will cause a huge row but you can talk about it later. Problem solved.
• lowering standards (obv)
• following through on sanctions and punishments

@Mumoftwo1312 we've all had days like that you poor thing💐 you sound line a hero! Tomorrow it might even be (whisper it)...funny...?

Thank you! Yes I'm sure I'll see the funny side eventually! It's so hard when you're in the middle of all the chaos and everyone seems to be upset and you can't fix it. Whew...!

It's very cheering that many on this thread say it gets easier as they get older!

@OwlWeiwei

yeah, and then you’d end up buying a toy from Harrods! Expensive, and only enjoyable for the child rather than OP too

You aren’t a shit mum at all! It’s hard and sometimes children don’t realise how important the times are to parents too and they don’t realise they’re being ungrateful or anything like that - they’re just being children.

Mine are older now and my youngest is 10 . Last week I took them on a few days out . One day he ended up crying because he wanted me to give him an “advance” on his pocket money so he could buy 2 giant teddies … he had money for one of them and I had spent loads - then he couldn’t decide which one to buy and ended up crying about that and I just felt so disappointed after trying to give them a nice day ( and I work a lot too so I was really trying to fill my time with them with really good things ) . I ended up snapping at him , he ended up walking out in a sulk alongside me and I felt so upset about it. 5 mins later we were having a cuddle and it was all forgotten and he said he had had the best school holidays ever !