To think some people try really hard to appear 'chaotic' ?

[AmandaPleaseDotCom]

Sounds nuts but I swear this is a thing around my area.

Examples include making a big deal about how late/disheveled their kid is at pre school (when they are 4 mins past start time and the kid looks fine).

Saying how they never clean their house, don't have time for housework etc but the house always seems clean and tidy.

Trying to appear disorganised with things like school tours (all our kids will start school next year) and booking events, yet we always see them at these things lol.

I'm naturally quite disorganised and messy but I try quite hard to disguise this, despite always feeling like the flustered flappy mum. Luckily my DH is Mr Organised so as a family we don't miss out but I just find it so odd how many people seem to almost 'gloat' that their lives are chaotic when they totally aren't?! Am I mad?!

It’s not that deep, OP. When I was an undergraduate, there were some people who would leave their light on all night to make it look like they were pulling regular all-nighters before Finals, while they actually wore an airline eye mask and slept all night like a baby. However, there were other people who hid in other colleges’ libraries or obscure parts of the university library to conceal their own efforts and make it look as if they were taking things terribly easily before exams.

Some people like to boast about how organised and efficient they are. Other people like to boast about how ditzy and chaotic they are.

And I do think you are right to just accept yourself that way. Some people are.

I would be if I still could but am recently finding I’d have to give up on the Halloween costume at midnight as I’d get too tired!

Also I think having children forces you to change a bit. It may be that I work well under pressure, but it’s not fair to small people who might not and who might prefer to have that extra five minutes calm between getting their shoes on and walking out the door. ( That said I did the other day find myself saying to a Dc fussing over sock positioning: “just shove your shoe over it and get in the car. You can adjust it on the way!” )

I am like this too. I do mostly pull it off, but with a lot of stress and flapping. I have adhd and really struggle with basic things that others seem to just do. I wish I could be better at it, but I am rubbish at organising.

When I was a teacher I had a colleague who was like this. She'd regale us with tales of how she left her kids in the supermarket or tried to get into a car that wasn't hers, or forget where she parked she had to get the bus home, etc. All total nonsense.

Once, she said she'd forgotten that reports were due in at the end of the week. 'Oh silly me, I'm such a flake...' Head was in the staffroom at the time (she was unaware) and he said, 'But the reports you emailed me at half term, were all fine, what are you talking about?'

Sorry; you get offended when people compliment you for being organised, for presenting a nice looking cake, or because they enjoyed a meal you made them?
Talk about being determined to take offence!

But maybe she was just trying to make the rest of us feel better...!

I think it is a mixed bag some people are (but they would often not want to broadcast the fact), for some it may be a way of making conversation when you have nothing really else to say and some people like others to think they are because it makes them seem more I don't know interesting or something. I find it the same with people at work they like to go on about how busy they are as if to justify their worth or something.

😳
Obviously there are some genuine fakes then! 😂

Yes, she was really nice actually! One of the most organised teachers there.

OP you made me laugh nervously because you are describing me to a T!
I'm a full time working mum so maybe it does come off patronising when I say the morning was chaos, so busy etc. But the reality is I was disorganised on my lengthy maternity leaves too. It's a personality trait. I have some lovely school mum friends (some working some not) who are just logical organised people, and I do comment on it in a way I felt was complimentary to them- I like to compliment people I like. I guess I need to consider whether they feel undermined by this.

I am also quite "type A" as the Americans would say, so while I feel disorganised and chaotic, my kids aren't neglected, underfed, unclothed etc. So I really feel like the person you're describing!

If they are perfectionists they will always fall short of perfection so feel that things are chaotic. When to others they appear perfect. So they aren't necessarily being untruthful as that's how it feels to them.

I thought all parents lived in perpetual chaos!

Wow - there are people who manage kids, dogs, work, housework etc.. really well and then fake the chaos? .... nah, not sure I buy that! Really?

Maybe just everyone's experience of chaos is different, and the end result looks different.

I have a very chaotic life. Very very!! But ... I do usually manage to get everything I need to do, done. I do manage to get to the events on time-ish, respond to important emails just in time, I do manage to get everything booked in the diary etc..

I'd hate to think people think I fake the chaos because I managed to pull things off last minute! I just assumed that's what we all do!

You have heard of the beautiful swan madly flapping its legs under the water right? I thought that was most parents! (appearing to have it together, but underneath/at home, it's a shit show!!)

Oh I find it’s the opposite! Like they know they’re not actually chaotic, but they think they aren’t as put together as they should be so they worry they’ll be judged for falling short of that, therefore pretend things are worse so that people don’t think too badly of them.

I think maybe some of it can be a form of honesty, namely, as a pp above mentioned, accepting yourself and trying not to feel ashamed.

It is the sort of behaviour that is frowned on in the early years of school, which I guess makes it a little harder for people who work that way to accept themselves and come to terms with that being their modus operandi. Every reception teacher loves the child with tidy pigtails and neat handwriting who hasn’t forgotten her reading book. Other styles of children ( and adults) probably have to have a bit more resilience on the self-acceptance front and perhaps the verbalising of it is part of that process.

Yes these people!!
Overly complaining/making fun of themselves on the class WhatsApp about how not bothered/not organised they are about their kids homework and you know they did it the first night they got it 😆

I remember with exams at school, no-one would ever admit to doing any revision or having worked for them.

Well they will need to sharpen up their act up when their kid starts school they have no truck with that.

Despite dd2 aged about 9 reminding me I didn’t get round to signing her up for a particular after school activity and when I did it was fully booked so she didn’t get a place. She had to come home with me while her mates went off to play in a wood for a term. Never made that mistake again.

Oh that’s quite an interesting take. There could be some of that. “ It’s not as if I even tried.”

I think the truth is people probably all do it for different reasons. Figuring out which is half the fun!

Same. In adulthood I found out that I have ADHD but a very high IQ. This meant that I always did well at school (though not as well as I could have if my executive function difficulties had been addressed) but was always completely disorganised, frazzled and last-minute. I fucking loved exams because I could coast along all year, daydreaming though classes, then rely on a last minute adrenaline-fuelled hyper-focus state to pass.

I completely flailed about at university, when I had to organise my own time and the overwhelm of motherhood sent me half-psychotic.

Im probably one of those mums the OP is referencing. The one that does manage their kids to places on time and does manage to get to all the school events etc but does it while making a terrible fuss about how chaotic I am etc. The part that isn’t seen is just how chaotic the day has been to enable me to get somewhere on time and the level of stress I have put myself through so that my ADHD only impacts on myself and not my kids.

You haven’t clocked the fact that I have to be up at 5 to get somewhere on time at 9 because I will inevitably space-out and lose my car keys/socks/phone/glasses ten times that morning and have built in time to look for them. I have forgotten to dry someone’s uniform. I have, at some point, thought to myself ‘we are running far too early, I had better slow down’ and then spaced out, lost track of time and almost made us late. That I have forgotten to give everyone their medication or looked at my diary and realised I have managed to double book myself in two places at once and had to sort that out. Getting somewhere four minutes late isn’t that chaotic in itself but all of the background flailing and stress that goes into getting somewhere and only being four minutes late can FEEL very, very chaotic.

How does she work that into a sentence?

Oh yeah, I discovered that was all bullshit a bit late!! I genuinely never did any work and thought I'd be fine because no-one else was doing any work either! Turns out everyone else was working their arse off and just pretending they weren't! Meanwhile, I was chilling with a can of cider in the park thinking everything would turn out ok! (I mean, in the long run it did!! But GCSEs definitely do require some effort to pass well!) Oops!

I used to work with someone like this, relished in being the chaotic mum, she did genuinely seem to make life very hard for herself in the process. Another colleague (who didn't have kids) often made remarks to me about how she couldn't understand how calm and organised I was with 2 kids and myself a young mum 10 years younger the the other mum in question, it did feed into my belief some people do manage to make life harder than it needs to be.

“ We are running far too early!” 😂

That made me laugh @Icannoteven.

That was my thought exactly! I settled on “ I’m such a legend!” followed by a slightly ( but not entirely) self-deprecating giggle.