Please help me figure out how to fix my kids ' childhood

[DrowningInChaos]

Theoretically, we are very privileged. Both dh and me have good jobs and the kids are relatively healthy. But our biggest issue (at least mine) is that there is just not enough time. Ever. The kids never have enough time to play, do craft, practice dd's instrument or do homework. We barely have enough time to talk and on top of that the kids are sleep deprived because there isn't enough time to sleep. And dd is late to school most days. I blame the long school days in the uk but other parents and kids seem to manage much better so it's obviously something we are doing wrong. I'm desperate. Please help me figure it out. Dd is 8 and in year 4. Ds is 3 and in pre school.

This is our schedule:

7.00 wake dd
7.20 dd slowly gets up (after lots of attempts to get her out of bed. Mostly still no shouting at this point)
7.20-8.00: dd gets ready (go to the toilet, get dressed, brush teeth and hair, pack school stuff, eat breakfast if there is time otherwise pack breakfast and eat in the car). More and more shouting and stress at this point for the kids to hurry up.
8.00 we have to leave at 8 to be at the school by 8.30. Most of the time we don't manage and are 5-10 minutes late. Most of the time we have forgotten something.

Ds gets up quite easily at 7 but needs help wothe very step of grtting ready. So he gets ready very quickly but then often delays everything by starting to play and refusing to leave the house.

8.30-3.30: school
4.00-4:15: back at home.
4.15-6.15 free time (but dd loses a lot of time by very slowly washing her hands and removing her shoes, etc). This is the time when theoretically she could do.any school related work or practice her instrument. Ds can just play.
6 -7.15 or 7.30: dinner. I know it's long but dd is severely underweight. No medical issues. Possibly arfid. She eats extremely slowly but we cannot cut down on this time and risk less calories going into her.
7.15 or 7.30 - 7.45: dance or play (so they don't go to bed feeling too full)
7.45 -8 or 8.15: get ready for bed (This is when I start getting stressed again)

8.30 - 8.45 lights out after reading for a while
Dd takes very long to fall asleep. Often an hour or so. It's not hecause she isn't tired. It's irrespective of when she goes to hed and she struggles so incredibly much waking up in the morning that she imo she needs more sleep. Ds is out like a light sometime between 8.15 and 8.30 whenever we manage to put him to bed. He is just turned 3, has just dropped his nap but we don't manage to put him to bed before that. He refuses to go upstairs without dd.

Once a week dd has a club at school followed by swimming so she only comes home by about 7pm and then everything is even more delayed. Once s week I need her to.atrend a club or after school club so I can finish work.

On Saturdays we have a slow start. Dd has an extra curricular activity at 11am but somehow we are also always late for this club. The biggest bottlenecks are getting ready and breakfast. She hates both. She is adamant that she wants to do this club. We try and keep Saturday afternoons and Sundays free for family outings, meet8ng friends, birthday parties, going to the park or play dates. Somehow they pass in a jiffy too. Sometimes her homework takes a couple of hours (or more).

Our biggest bottlenecks are getting ready and eating but I just don't know how to get dd to speeden up. I'm not sure she can. She is very absent minded and dreamy. And she is so tired in the morning, which slows her down too.

She loves doing craft but we have got a million craft projects lying around that she has started but doesn't get time to finish because she never gets a decent few hours or fald a day in one stretch to work on just one thing. There are the weekends but I also think it's important that she plays outdoors and with other kids so half a day goes at least in going to the park or on a playdate.

She loves reading but she reads so much that slowly I think it's doing more harm than good because of all the other things she is missing out on. She also loves talking which slows her down but then we need to have time to talk don't we? She often wants to talk to me at bedtime but we are usually so late already! I get some time to play with ds after school but at all times when dd is at home she talks non stop so there is very little opportunity to talk enough to ds. I thought his language skills were. underdeveloped for his age because of that but according to the health visitor his speech and comprehension are quite good. Still. I feel so bad for not talking to him enough m

Anyway, dd is also meant to do 20min of school work every day (app game based) but there is just no time. We just don't do it. She used to do very well academically but is noe starting to lag behind. She is learning an instrument but rarely practices.

Apologies for the length of this but I just don't know what to do. 1-2h of free time a day are just not enough to fit in anything of quality but I just don't know what to do. I wish she went to a different school that was closer to us and had a shorter day (and no homework) but that's a whole other thread. For now we are stuck with the school.

What am I doing wrong? What could i do betterI ?

I can feel my blood pressure rise every morning and evening when I need the kids to get ready either for school or for bed and I'm exhausted by the time it's done. I always used to be a calm and patient parent but now I'm starting to become more shouty and I hate it. It seems like there is no time for cheerfulness or playfulness let alone any proper playing. This isn't how childhood is supposed to be. Kids are meant to have loads of time. Enough time to get bored. My kids don't even have enough time to sleep. Please help me. What am I doing wrong?

A few other things to try:
She will be slow if she’s not eating much, tired and getting a lot of exercise. It may be worth flipping mealtimes on their head a bit and aim for a filling, protein rich breakfast. She’ll have more energy for eating first thing in the morning. If sausages are a safe food you could cook a pack at a time and have them in the fridge - microwave in the morning, put in a sandwich. You could also try some recipes for some breakfast wraps or breakfast pitta pockets with sausages, maybe egg too if she’ll eat those. You can cling film these, microwave from frozen in the morning and she can eat that first thing or while she’s in the car. Energy balls may be a good snack - high fat, sweet, small, quick, easy to eat.

I’m assuming you won’t like the idea of this but it may be worth trialling after school club/late care especially if this would help you with work. I’m just thinking this may be good because they usually serve tea and do homework there. So while she would have less time at home in the evening, it would all essentially be downtime as these things wouldn’t need doing. If dinner is taking over an hour at home anyway then you aren’t losing time - she could stay an extra hour then come home and done. You could always then do a snack/supper close to bedtime but it takes pressure off you in terms of having to cook a meal knowing she probably won’t eat it, no dinner battle. If your son has a substantial snack at nursery anyway then this would fix the issue - just serve a snack/picky bits to both. If this also meant you wouldn’t have to work after you’ve put them to bed you’d regain some down time for yourself. If you know you need to get them to sleep so you can crack on with work this is probably stressing you out and may be affecting how you act at bedtime - children can be very sensitive to our emotions.

If you do this it will also help you to break the current associations around mealtimes and screen time etc. At weekends you can have a family dinner, no screens, just chat and have fun - start dinner early at the weekend too so there isn’t a rush. I would try reintroducing the time limit for dinner without the screen. You don’t need to make her aware of it - after it goes off you can just say okay, we’re finished at the table now, and let her bring her plate to pick at while she crafts/reads etc. If she was having a good hot breakfast then there would be less pressure on you all to ram the calories in at dinner time.

FIL and cooking dinner for the kids - could you put him in charge of making the kids lunches for school for the next day? (With guidance on what DD will eat of course). He feels useful, gets another job off your hands.

I have a hanging clothes organiser for DD that has a big and small clear pocket for each day of the week labelled. It’s hung on the back of her door - when I put laundry away I just fill each pocket as I’m putting away. Buy enough uniform that you have one change for every school day. Then you don’t have to lay out clothes - pants/tights/vest go in the small pocket, full clean set of uniform in the other pocket. If things come home clean, just fold them and put them in the next empty pocket. Then she wakes up, gets clothes out of the pocket for that day, gets dressed. Cuts faffing and saves laying clothes out every night. Also means you can visually see if you need to put a wash on!

Nothing you can do about the long school day but focus on quality time not quantity of time. Is moving closer to school an option? This would cut down on the commute. Buy an Alexa and set a daily reminder for the same time each day, 15 minutes before you need to leave “leave for school”. When that goes off - coats on, shoes on, everyone gets in the car. This builds in buffer time. Set another alarm for 5 minutes before you need to go just in case you aren’t out by then. This will cue the kids and you. If you get to school 15 minutes early then great! Have the iPad in the car, she can do some homework then too/or you can do some timetable practice/she could eat a snack.

When you come in from school, bring everything in from the car straight away. Make two trips if you have to. Come inside, stand on the doormat, take your shoes off, kids do the same. Shoes go straight to wherever they live, same for coats etc. Check the bags for paperwork/dirty clothes/whatever else. Then if nothing needs to go back in the bag/its packed for the next day, put it straight back in the car ready for the morning.

Really think bedtime is too late and they are over tired so the daytime tasks seem more difficult as they are tired and irritable.

My DD age 3 has started preschool for full days now and is in bed by 6.30pm latest. We do have an early start though and she needs to up awake or woken up by 6.30am.

Also agree with comments about the dinner time and length and possible ND. I would try to get OT or dietician advice around this - a protein smoothie, ensure type drinks, high calorie but healthy snacks style food may be better. It will only cause anxiety and further food issues for there to be such a prolonged time spent on eating and dinner.

@DrowningInChaos sorry I haven't read the full thread so this may of been mentioned. Wanted to hop on and ask if your daughter has been assessed for visual stress? There is a fancy name for it but basically when reading black letters/numbers on white paper, the message becomes blurred, words jump around. Math numbers get muddled up and sums end up with the wrong answer.

How quickly one can read is also likely to be affected.

Different coloured paper and glasses which are tinted help correct the stress.

I wasn't diagnosed till 26. I thought it was normal to see letters and numbers that way. Couldn't believe it when I put my glasses on for the first time and read a sentence that didn't jump around the place.

Irlen Syndrome.

Some forms of dyslexia can manifest like that too.

It's unlikely though because the girl likes to read.

I enjoy reading and have visual stress. I have met a good few people with dyslexia and visual stress. Dyslexia may make reading more challenging but it does not stop people who have it from enjoying reading.

Could she do the homework app in the car on the way home from School?

Working and managing kids is hard work but given the adhd I think you have to be very regimented to get yourself into a routine. You actually have loads of time in the evening as you collect without that much wrap-around and aren’t doing that many clubs. I have one child who is efficient but disorganised (my y4 child) and another who is very organised but slow.

I have at times struggled to fit in the app based homework but we do tables now on the walk to school and it fits much better. 5 minutes every day feels easy and has made a massive difference- she’s really strong now in all of them but didn’t know lots of them in September. They will start ramping up pressure on this with the maths check in the summer.

My daughter’s schedule looks a bit like this and it is quite heavy going but we are hyper focused on using small pockets of time well.

Monday- wrap around care and then activity. She does her maths homework in wraparound and then does 2 games of spelling online, 10 mins of reading and 10 minutes of instrument 2. there’s no time really on this day for much down time. while she’s at this activity child 2 does reading and instrument practice with me.

Tuesday - wrap around care. 2 spelling shed games, instrument 1, 20 minutes reading. Child 2 does her reading plus instrument.

Wednesday - child 1 has instrument lessons after school then one spelling shed and reading Child 2 does reading with me during that time.

Thursday - both do activity after wrap around. Homework free and instrument free night.

friday - no wrap around. Both do one instrument practice plus reading but tend to stay up later, maybe day for play dates.

The schedule is written up and we tick things off as we go. I do the same for cleaning so tasks that need to happen each day that are 15-20 minutes so something is always getting done and I don’t have to think about it.

I also think neurodivergence but I appreciate you don't want the thread to get derailed by that. As for practical solutions-

• prepare as much as possible the night before.
• visual schedules for mornings and bedtimes and possibly a visual weekly timetable too.
• use the mundane parts of the day to connect, listen to music together if you drive to school, play some kind of game on the walk etc.

I have a child with AuDHD and another awaiting diagnosis. I probably also have ADHD as a minimum.

What you are describing seems to be more about your own anxiety. It's a bit extreme to think your kids childhood needs fixed. Perhaps you would benefit from extra mental heath support?

Having dinner for 1.5hrs to make sure dd eats what you feel is 'enough' is likely counterproductive and making things worse. It is usually recommended to have more smaller meals in these situations. Otherwise the stress of forcing long mealtimes can increase eating issues over time. I'd have snack after school in the car, dinner earlier and snack before bed.

If you need more structure you could do a visual timetable. But I think it's perfectly fine for kids to have unstructured time after school. I do homework based around how my kids are feeling on any particular day. A set time for homework wouldn't work for us.

The car journeys you could chat, play games, have audiobooks, breakfast on the go etc.

I would add in outdoors time every day as it doesn't sound like they get much fresh air or exercise. Park, bikes, scooter etc will likely help sleep and eating.

The other thing we make a lot of use out of is timers. So we’ll set 10 minutes and try and get room tidying done in that time or 15 minutes practice or say you can have free time to faff until the timber goes off but at that point we have to start doing x or y. It also removes some arguing.

Also - I dont think you can seperate any of the issues from neurodevelopmental concerns. ADHD and autism are very strongly genetic. What will work for a typical child won't necessary work for ND children.

My AuDHD child sleeps best when he has stimulating music playing. Not calm relaxing sleep music. He needs sensory input to be able to get to sleep quickly. Apparently this is common for kids with ADHD. Perhaps looking up parenting techniques for ND children would help.

My AuDHD child sleeps best when he has stimulating music playing. Not calm relaxing sleep music. He needs sensory input to be able to get to sleep quickly. Apparently this is common for kids with ADHD.

Yeah my DS has discovered that high energy electronic dance music helps him relax so now listens to it while reading :) He puts comedy or science podcasts on to help him go to sleep!

@Tryingtoread has mentioned an interesting point @DrowningInChaos - as you need to work in the evenings (because you are employed full-time but are only working school hours), this is probably putting extra pressure on bedtime.

You have made it very clear that you’re not keen on long school days (and I wonder how your parents manage your short school days - was one of them a SAHP?), but most people who work full-time would accept that they need to use after-school care for some of the week. Even a couple of days would reduce the pressure of working every evening, and if the children get a snack there, they’d only need another snack when they get home, not a full dinner.

It also seems that you’re the only one comprising your working hours now that you’ve gone full-time. You’ve mentioned that your DH works long hours and usually doesn’t finish until dinner time (does he wfh?), but could he do the drop-offs so you can start work earlier, for example?

I'm aware that you're getting lots of comments on here with similar themes.

I wanted to add a suggestion to take the pressure off yourself a bit and think about which of the things you are worried about do really matter...
You have a lot of 'shoulds' in there about what you think your children should be doing? It might we worth thinking about where they come from - messages from your childhood or from what you think the children need to develop to succeed? Is it putting too much pressure on you all?
Things that I noticed were play dates / being outside, practicing regularly (what does that mean quickly play one piece when she feels like it or full practice for 20 mins?), reading fast, finishing craft projects, getting up fast etc.

If she has a bit of the inattention/adhd
Difficulties with organisation she's probably exhausted by school and needs things to be a bit chilled at home.

I would suggest taking the pressure off a bit, allowing free time to play or read slowly as something very developmentally appropriate at 8, and helping her find a gentle routine without stress and pressure.

I wonder whether it is you that's getting really stressed about things and feeling a pressure to give them a lot of opportunities when they are actually really little and play/not finishing craft/chilling out etc are what they need?

Dinner at 5? Most people are still at work then.

@garlictwist but the OP is not.

I have inattentive ADHD. There are some great books and podcasts about executive functions. All that you are missing is the implementation of some of these skills.

I would add in my experience structuring the day around mealtimes works really well. Food gives you energy and energy along with structure helps with regulating Adhd symptoms. After school snack and earlier dinner.

Keep changing and improving the routine until it works for you.

Now as an adult I have some fruit as soon as I wake up so I have some energy for the morning routine.

We had a very similar slow eater. Timers were a disaster as they just caused so much stress. What worked (much better than videos, in my opinion, because they don’t get distracted and forget to eat) is telling stories over dinner. So the children were told a story - made up from mum’s or dad’s head - as long as they were eating. If DC1 stopped eating, the story would stop too and the next sentence wouldn’t be forthcoming, until the fork was being reloaded and put into the mouth!

DC2 wasn’t a slow eater but used to enjoy the stories just as much, and both children used to put in requests like “can we have a dragon in it?” etc. In the end it because like a serial, of which we had the next instalment each mealtime. At some point we grew out of needing to do it, but while DC1 was between 5 and 10 we did it every day and it worked like nothing else for getting food to go in in a reasonable time frame.

Yes this is a good idea.
My Dad always used to tell me stories to speed up the going to bed process, teeth cleaning, washing, pyjamas on etc.
He told stories of his school days in a boarding school. I loved them. Especially the ones about the boys getting up to all kind of tricks. He later confessed he made most of them up!

It sounds like ADD to me. Go see your GP

@DrowningInChaos everything you've said about your DD sounds like she is ASD/ADHD. Please get her referred and assessed. In the mean time look up how to manage executive dysfunction and ASD management in general. You say you're diagnosed and medicated for ADHD, it runs in families, and if you don't have the right support and management in place it makes life very stressful.

You are not doing anything wrong, you are just struggling to manage an undiagnosed ASD child.

I think you need to lower expectations a bit I have never had time for homework or clubs in the week , the kids go to school come home watch telly have tea mess about bed , don’t do anything else ? The food duration sounds stressful and sounds like you have to travel a long distance to school which will add stress

She needs to eat earlier and go to bed earlier so that she’s less tired. Kids love to chat at bedtime. Build in 30 mins of chat/homework time into your evening routine. Feed them at 5pm.

Agree with others, something is a little unusual about how long everything takes for her. Get support for this.

Can you get a nanny to do the mornings for you? Write yourself a list of what you need each day and pin it to the front door to stop you forgetting things. Make ‘pack school things’ part of your evening routine.

Has she had a coeliac test re her weight? I know you say she doesn’t eat much and she forgets/isn’t hungry but it could be that food makes her uncomfortable and it could also have depleted nutrients that can cause her to feel less hungry.

Earlier to bed and earlier up !!

I would think about winding back bedtime. This time of year is perfect as it's dark earlier. Children aged 3-5 need 10-13 hours and aged 6-12 need 9-12 hours.