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?

You said you had no time and suggested it was to do with the long school days. It really isn’t. Lots of posters have made good suggestions about how to speed up tasks for your DD, but you also need to accept there is plenty of space in your schedule - you aren’t over committed.

You could try doing dinner earlier. I find it really hard to sleep if I eat late so maybe your DD is having that problem?
Also, switch the after school clubs and swimming so they’re on different nights. Don’t worry so much about the instrument, I never used to practise when I was young and it didn’t really matter. If she enjoys it then encourage her / remind her that she could practise during her free time, but don’t force it.
I also think that lie ins on the weekends make weekday mornings much harder. Ideally stick to the same schedule every day for wake up time, meal times and bed times.
I hope things improve for you all x

Give the kids their dinner earlier between 5 - 5:30

pack school bags at night so they are ready to pick up in the morning with no faffing and not being able to find stuff.

I used to eat incredibly slowly as a child, always had my head in a book and daydreamed constantly. (I read about maladaptive daydreaming recently and am very sure I have it!)

Going against the grain, I found playing an instrument as a teenager a great emotional outlet. I also struggled to practise as a younger child, but kept going to lessons and once i reached a certain level I wanted to play all the time. It had/has a lot of value for me.
It might not be the same for your daughter but you never know - i wouldn't force her to practise, she might gravitate towards it of her own accord.

I think you've got some great advice from PP about the schedule. I'd personally reduce playdates slightly and try not to feel pressure to do anything on the weekend.

My DD is ND and the primary years are tough.

Re eating - I batch cooked the 4/5 meal that DD eats. I don't expect her to eat what me and DH eat, there is just no point. DD now likes the familiarity of the few meals she does eat, and it has improved a lot. When eating was at its worst (around Year 5) we fed DD what and when she wanted just to get the calories in. It does get easier.

I had to smile at the time spent on the loo - DD is the same.

Also agree with PP about the importance of down time - don't underestimate how important it is for you all. We used to schedule in a lot of weekend down time, and time completely alone so that we all recharge our social batteries!

Knowing all timetables to 12 is a target for the end of year 4, so don't worry about that.

Spelling is a big issue in year 4's across the country. They missed a huge chunk of their Reception year due to Covid, so missed out on the basic building blocks around spelling. I have a year 1 and a year 4. Year 1 child is much better at phonetically spelling than my year 4 child despite 3.5 year age gap, because she got really solid foundations. So again, try not to focus too much on this

That sounds exactly like dd!!!!!

I don’t always sit in the room with him now unless it’s something he’s struggling with. I was just thinking back to when he was 8 like OP’s dd.

Bed earlier, dinner earlier, swimming on a separate day to other activities as it’s tiring, drop some activities that aren’t needed. Keep one day at a weekend for less rushing and more down time. If change doesn’t work take her to the gp for a check could be blood sugar levels etc??

She is supposed to know all her timetables till 12 and she definitely doesn't and her spelling needs working on.

https://www.themathsfactor.com/ - be around in room when she does it but unlikely to need you doing 1:1 and if it works for her she may look forward to doing it. They do summer and winter schools - so you could try when there may be more time.

Spelling - if they are giving out spelling lists these aren't helpful - we had to look at programs - apple and pear - but that was 20 minutes a day and not something you'd want to add as already struggling - https://www.nessy.com/en-gb might help.

Not all homework mine were given were actually useful as you'd hope it would be.

Have you considered your daughter might be autistic
I'm autistic and my children are to ,
The struggles you mentioned are ones we have to

I just got that sense of her from your OP.

It’s tough but you have to do what works for you and your children, and not listen to anyone who calls that lazy!

All of this.

And do the school app/homework thing in the car on the way to school.

I have three kids. All bags are packed the night before, all clothes are laid out on the sofa (or I sometimes do the hated on MN thing of bathing them in the evening and putting them to bed in clean clothes to be worn the next day). I could not cope with morning after morning of chaos.

Light alarm clocks helped for a while with two of my kids who struggled with mornings.

They may be over committed in relation to their capacity, if they are ND.

I often think people with ADHD just need more house in the day and night than 24 😂

I've not read every post op but it all seems focused on your daughter.

Worth thinking about yourself too. A 20 minute walk a day, yoga stretching at lunch etc can help you feel calmer when the pressure is on.

Lots of people are replying who don’t have or know anything about ND, that’s the problem.

Any posts with “just get up earlier” or “just get her to bed earlier” are falling foul of this.

Could she do homework in the car, as it's app-based? If you're spending an hour on the travel to and from school she might as well make us of it!

I wouldn't stress about the reading. I read loads as a kid and I'm fine. I didn't feel I was missing out at all. It's a leisure activity.

Food sounds like it's causing a lot of stress. If you could make any progress in this it might help.

And yes, get organised.

I used to play a few instruments and keep wanting to get back to it and one if the reasons why I'm.so.keen for dd to learn is that playing the piano has given me some of the most blissful and happy moments in my life. Just to be able to lose yourself in playing and forget about the world and everything else. When I was a child I used to play without prompting most day's for half an hour and sometimes for longer.

But then as I said before I had the whole afternoon to myself so I could easily fit in a half hour practice or anything else I wanted to do.

I told dd that just 10 minutes three times a week would make a massive difference but somehow it never happens. When I remind her she isn't that keen. Her instrument does require a bit of prep and cleaning after playing but I do think she needs to clean it as otherwise it just won't sound good. Maybe I should clean it for her.

She wants to play and she wants to be good but she isn't that motivated to practise when she's tired or wanting to do other stuff and I can understand that. However, I don't know if things will ever get better. Every year she will have less time and not more. That's what makes me so sad. An 8 year old child (or a 5 year old one) shouldn't have to choose between playing or learning an instrument. They should have enough time to do both.

There’s no diagnosis of ND, and it’s not raised as a possible issue in the OP. Anyone saying there’s ND is guessing based on what’s been said (I agree that it sounds a possibility, incidentally). You’re quite wrong about me knowing nothing about ND, by the way - and could well be about other posters. You seem to think you can know everyone from a few posts -including to the point of diagnosing the OP’s DD.

Op has a diagnosis of ADHD.

I was just saying in general people were commenting without any experience having read the thread but not memorised who said what.

I don’t “seem to think” anything of the kind - I worded my posts very carefully to avoid in any way diagnosing anyone, or presuming to know the full situation- I simply told Op what my DS is like.

Oh gosh im sorry. That sounds very difficult. I don't think dd is at that stage. She's below the 2nd centile in terms of weight. Mostly around the 0.4th. She's quite short (around the 25th centile for height) as well but I think she's short because she hasn't been getting enough calories as dh and me are quite tall. She definitely has less stamina and energy than other kids and it's impossible to find clothes for her that fit. She was born on the 75th centile but has gradually been slipping down the centiles since birth. She's been hovering around the 1st centile for a few years now.

Activities help her with eating. In particular, swimming. I don't think it's so bad that we need to stop them.
.

The long-winded and messy writing style would be the heads-up that you are neurodivergent. Please don't think of it as "wrong", it's just different. You can use Grammarly to help organise your writing into a more structured form.

I seem to have all the symptoms but maybe I am just lazy, crazy and stupid.

False positives for ADHD are rare. If you've been professionally diagnosed, it's almost certainly correct.

Re you not wanting to pursue an assessment for your DD because you didn't like the meds:

1. Pursuing an assessment for your DD doesn't compel her to take medication if she's found to have ADHD.
2. The medication is very dosage-dependent in its effects and it can take a while to find the right dose. You may never have found it for yourself.
3. Simply having a diagnosis as an explanation for why you aren't like other people goes a long way towards protecting your mental health. Otherwise you spend your life feeling inferior and inadequate for something that is in no way your fault, trying ever harder to meet behavioural and attainment standards that are unachievable and being destroyed daily by what you, and others around you, perceive as "failure".

Just to say re the instrument. No primary school child (or none I know!) will pick it up and practise unprompted. I played instruments and my kids do as I really value it's worth but my kids only practise when Im there helping them. It's worth it for me. But pick your battles!

My kids are 13, 10 and 6 and we all eat at 5. The eldest could easily eat later but they are hungry when they get in and I'd rather get them fed with decent food then rather than just snacking.

My middle one is autistic and takes a LOT of prompting to get dressed. But we manage to all be ready on time. I can't bear being late. Are you an on time person yourself?