Worried about my small life

[Costell9]

I'm really worried about how small my life has become.
I'm 50. DH. 2 DC 12 & 14.
Through my 20s and 30s, I was so sociable. I had lots of friends and was always socialising. I was young, full of life, endlessly smiling. I went travelling independently all over the world. I simultaneously did really well in my career and progressed to a senior position really quickly. My life was filled with social invites, doing fun things with groups of friends, city breaks to Barcelona, Venice, Florence. Weekends spent in London at the theatre and in bars/restaurants, staying in beautiful hotels.
Fast forward to now.
My entire life has shrunk. I no longer see any of those friends. I've lost touch with them all.
My whole life now is working during school hours and parenting every other minute of the day. DH works insanely long hours but is earning a very average salary, which means I do everything at home - child caring, homework, taking DC to/from clubs, housework, cleaning, tidying, laundry, endlessly seeing to DC's needs. DH doesn't get home till 8:30pm every night. So every day is get up, DH leaves for work at 8am, get DC ready for school, this takes phenomenal work because DS has adhd with time blindness and poor working memory and poor executive function so trying to get him ready for school and out of the house on time is a struggle every day, if it was left to him he'd eventually get to school around midday, and DD will invariably have an emotional meltdown because she isn't coping with school due to her SEN so she requires a counselling session every morning just to get her in to school. Then I take them to school, go straight to work, work in a really demanding, draining job, rush home from work just in time for DC to get in from school, make them food, tidy the kitchen from the mess it was left in earlier, tidy up generally, put clothes away etc, take them both to their clubs, bring them home, cook dinner, clear up after dinner, support DS who needs to offload on to me every day about struggling at school, struggling in lessons, struggling with friendship dynamics, struggling with anxiety, so he talks and talks to me about his feelings and emotions and non stop friendship difficulties and constantly asks for my advice about various different situations - he needs so much emotional support. And then DD starts talking to me about all her struggles at school and her friendship dramas. I'm emailing school regularly to engage with them about both DC struggling and that feels like an uphill battle trying to get school to listen to me. I get the feeling they're deluged with struggling children. But because my 2 are quiet and well behaved and polite they're not getting prioritised by school which is making the burden greater for me as I'm constantly having to email them, go in for meetings, and then chase up all the actions they said they'd put in place but which never materialise. And then the homework battle begins and because of DDs severe SEN she cannot do homework independently, but gets detention if it isn't completed, so I have to sit and teach her homework to her and it takes soooo long to get through (year 7). Often results in her crying because she just doesn't understand the work and ultimately I am not a teacher. Homework is swallowing up every evening. I'm talking 2 hours of teaching her homework which would take 30 mins for another kid to complete. Then I'm getting them into bed. DS takes continuous prompting because he veers off task at every turn "Get your bag and books ready for the morning" "Ok" 30 minutes later find him in a world of his own daydreaming out of the window or looking at a book but no bag packed. "Pick your uniform up off the floor" "Oh yeah sorry I was in a rush, ok I will" but it never gets picked up so needs constant reminding. His intention is there but he cannot stay on task. And then DD's bedtime anxiety starts. Every single evening. Tears, upset, cuddles needed, calming strategies, relaxation techniques, takes me about 2 hours to settle her.
I collapse on my bed mentally drained and exhausted.
This is my life every single day.
My DC are both genuinely wonderful, they both have such gorgeous characters, they are worth every second of investment, but the level of time and input and support they both require is on another level.
And my job is manically busy and mentally demanding. And that's another thing - I've gone backwards in terms of career progression since becoming a mum instead of forwards. I was flying in my career in my 20s, more senior then than I am now!! Because I couldn't handle both. I couldn't fulfill a senior position, plus look after 2 high need DC, plus be stuck at home doing everything by myself every day whilst DH works till 8:30pm daily.
I don't go anywhere. I don't see anyone. I've lost countless long standing friends because I simply don't have any time to give to friendships. That hurts a bit; I've been dropped by what I thought were good friends because of my low level contact when I've explained to them why. I've reached out recently with explanations as to why I've been off the radar and have been ignored. But I have to accept that if friends don't hear from me and then don't respond when I do reach out then that's my fault. But I'm sad about it.
I've lost all my self confidence. It's vanished.
I've become so withdrawn and unsure of myself.

At least when DC were at primary school I used to enjoy the daily school run chit chat with other mums and often at pick up that would turn into spontaneous play dates where I'd have coffee with the mums. I enjoyed that. But since my youngest started secondary in September, that's all gone now and I don't even see school parents anymore. DC too old now for playdates whilst mums chat over coffee! Those mums still have younger DC still at primary so they all still see each other after school runs and I'm now out of the loop.
Been awake since 3am and made the mistake of looking on Facebook at old friends. Blimey. What a world I'm missing out on. Exotic holidays. Cruise ship trips to celebrate 50th birthdays. Groups of friends away together in France, London, Cornwall to celebrate various things. Endless party pictures all dressed up in beautiful dresses. Helicopter rides. Horseriding. Posts about their brilliant career progression. Pictures of massive beautiful houses. Friends glowing with happiness and prosperity in every picture.
Meanwhile we're just about managing to cover the food bill, camping for our annual holiday, live in a ridiculously tiny house too small for our needs, can't afford to pay for a cleaner to help me out, and I keep having visual images flashing into my mind where I'm upright in a deep pool of water and my head submerges below the water surface and I'm sinking down under the water with my eyes squeezed tightly closed. I'm trying to get up to the surface but I cant. The water is too heavy. I'm seeing this image multiple times a day.
How did my life become so small?

You are doing really well, but if you want to shake things up, start by carving out some time for you. Can your husband be back earlier one night a week, so you can go out? If not, still go and do something when he is back.

What do weekends look like? Can you get half a day then to meet a friend or just go and do something that is wholly for you? If not, are you able to get out and about as a family? Are the kids able to tidy up and do or help with cooking or clearing? Everything they learn to do and you embed as doing together will free you up.

Even a few minutes of you time that isn't scrolling or watching tv will make a difference. Also once you start getting used to grabbing that it will start to expand.

this all sounds incredibly hard on you OP

i think first thing is to insist on a school meeting, advise your child’s needs and that 2 hrs a night isn’t manageable, they should be putting different provisions in place and removing the mandatory detention

also if your husband gets back at 8:30 can he do homework then?

also how do your weekends look? Does your husband take the kids to activities while you get a bath/ read/ relax for the afternoon? Or even have a few nights away by yourself?

can he not also do the mornings before he leaves , makes sure the kids have bags etc.?

Is your earning potential better than your husband's? I mean should he take on being SAHD or find part time work so you could properly get back on the career ladder? Would that take the pressure off you and give you a better social life albeit a work based one?

I may be repeating something someone else has said, but stop doing homework for hours every night. See what she can do, and if she can’t complete it with help stick a post it note on it and say ‘this is what she completed independently’. Email the school or speak to her HOY and explain what you’ve said here- that you are helping for hours and it’s not feasible, and if she gets a detention for not completing homework, complain. This happened with my daughter, and in the end she got her EHCP because I stopped helping/teaching and they could see how much she was struggling. Homework is not worth the battle every night, for everyone’s mental health!

Honestly, where is your husband in all of this? Where's his sacrifice. Honestly, its time for him to step up - serious chat time. He has to be more present at home. But yeah, painful though it might be for the kids I think I'd start by going away for a week and leaving them all to it. Noone will die, there will be tears and tantrums and some of them might be yours but something has to break the cycle, you sound worn out and ready to do things differently.

Yes, to checking on HRT and all those things that are necessary but you don't sound unwell or not 100% fit, you sound at the end of your rope and wanting something different. You can have something different.

This sounds like my life. I work from home so I have the work as well. It does get better as they approach teens but my daughter has ADHD so there is the worry that she will make silly choices out with mates.

I have found that HRT is amazing, I also make sure I pop off once a month to buy something that lifts me like a new top or lippy!
I also volunteer with a youth group and that is my 'me' time!

Show your post to your husband.

Tackle this together.

I don't think HRT should be used to encourage women to put up with shit men and shit lives.

You are doing everything. Serious chat with husband needed. Lots of good advice on hear but the crux of it is you are doing too much and it cannot continue.

1. Husband needs to step up. I would bet money he is hiding away and not actually needing to work that long.
2. School need to be involved/ told that homework help cannot continue. Possibly seek ECHP.
3. Sit down for serious chat with the kids and explain to them that you cannot be doing so much any more and you need their help. They are old enough to understand. It may actually help them if you can reframe things as giving them responsibility to help mum with her mental health. In a very subtle, gentle way. But you never know, shifting the focus a little from them to you may actually work well for them.
4. Is there anything that can be done to improve finances? Dh getting new qualifications? You being freed up to go for a promotion? Or even move house? Again, serious chat with DH needed.
5. It's not easy to change the whole system and I know these steps are all biggies. But it will really pay off in the long term. The key thing is that you need to get all your family involved through lots of discussion, and make it clear things are not continuing as they are. As long as you continue to do all this, no one is going to step in and help you. No one is going to take the load off you. Only you can do that.

This

I'm so sorry OP, I can see how much you have on your plate, that all sounds impossible! I agree with others that your real issue is DH's lack of input into your life either financial or being there. Are you sure he actually needs to work such long hours?

Aside from the full DH issue, you need to carve out some small bits of time for yourself. A few suggestions that may not be possible but might spark some thoughts...

A talk to DH. He needs to be back at a decent hour ONE night a week to allow you the evening off. Plus a half day at the weekend he takes over DC?

Can you drop the rope on the homework? It sounds like you're masking the issues a bit with teaching DD for 2 hours per night. I'd have a talk with her teachers (maybe with support of the SEN lead?) and explain the situation and that 2 hours of homework per night is pushing back bedtime which has knock on effects on DD's anxiety. Say you'll monitor her to do, say, 1 hour per evening ( although I actually think half an hour would be enough).

The long bedtimes. Sometimes, in the past, I have found I'm trying to help DS so much and trying to cajole him to get to sleep or discuss his worries that it actually delays even more as he can feel MY anxiety. Can you lie with her and read a book or kindle with low light and get her to do the same? Or listen to music together so that you get a bit of calm too? It's not actually "allowed" so take this under advisement will but I buy DS melatonin online and give a very low dose each night. It has enabled him to get to sleep where before he was up thinking till 2 am some nights. I find that him feeling fairly rested helps the rest of his life go much more calmly.

Reduce clubs at all if possible? My DS is 13 and does one club per week plus cricket in the summer. It's enough tbh at secondary level imo unless you have a boundless energy or desperately sporty type of child (which yours may be!).

@Costell9 you are flying solo that’s why.
Time to talk to your husband. .you both get the kids up early and get them ready before he leaves for work.
What happens at weekends? I’d be out the door all weekend making myself a life .

You have a husband problem.

He is not contributing enough, he needs to cut down his hours or find a job that means he can do half the parenting and household management.

Voila, you will have time back for yourself

I’m so sorry OP. This isn’t fair on you. Your husband needs to help more. And other changes should be made

What do you do on the weekend? Many working parents will have a Mon-Fri of school, chores, taxiing kids to hobbies.

You're the same age my mum was when she became a grandparent. When I'm 50 my kids will be in their 20s. It's not a competition, I just did that smaller life a decade younger.

Your career slowed? Same! But in my 20s so it's taken me so much longer to build it back up and I'm still tens of thousands a year lower than my friends. Your career looks crap compared to others? Same but when I was younger and none of my friends had kids. They were earning way more than me, travelling more, going exciting places.

Did I miss a hen do or drop out of a group chat or disengage? No. Have they missed out on every social invitation I put out now that they have children? Yes! Do they message less?! Yes! I don't know if it's because I had stronger FOMO as a younger mum but these older mums in my friendships groups really cannot be arsed with keeping in touch.

Do you poo? Guessing yes. Send a whatsapp message then.

My kids are all teens so also don't have that primary school pick up chat but they do play team sports. Rugby is super social. The friends I see the most are those parents, we socialise at the club on weekends and our children do to in the same club with their friends.

At work, do you get a lunch break? I know when I've been in offices this soon becomes just eating over the laptop but if you are able to use a half hour in the middle of the day to meet someone for a cuppa or to go on a walk with a friend who works or lives nearby or a workmate. When I worked somewhere with a shower I'd go for a 20-30 min run a couple of times a week at lunch. Even as a teenager, my boyfriend would meet me for a sandwich in the park for my lunchbreak at my Saturday job.

Get micro-dosing on the friendships.

Will I be going on a holiday with my friends when we turn 50? Yes. Because we started saving monthly when we turned 40.

You've given great detail about your Mon-Fri but what about your weekends? When you say you've lost touch, have you stopped messaging? Have they? Friendships have to go both ways. Were the primary school friends people you ever saw outside of that connection? Would they have though of you as a friend or as so-and-so's mum? There were other mums I'd smile at in the street but then there are other mums who I could message to say "miss you! fancy meeting up..."

You have 2 children with additional needs, I have 2 children who are younger but only 1 has additional needs (sounds very like your son) and while my kids were a baby and a toddler my life felt a lot like yours.

What changed? I realised I have 2 kids, but so does my husband! Yet here he was progressing in his career and managing a time consuming hobby while I was on my a**e daily. It took a lot of communication to fix because our sons needs were frankly terrifying for my husband who also needs a lot of structure to cope (likely ASD) so we spent a lot of time rejigging things.

We now have a situation where 3 days a week he WFH and drop offs and pick ups are on him. The other 2 days I work short days while he does long days at the office and pick up and drop are on me. Eldest does 3 days after school and youngest is in nursery full days those days and will also go to a free school when she starts.

We now have a situation where I have joined a gym 2-3 days a week and he is able to get out cycling 2&3 days a week. Wereyeach able to take an evening off here and there and go out. We try to keep it balanced where before all the free time was his and the additional labour was mine.
.you have a husband problem a d he either needs to sort out his working life or get a new job. Both of us have the odd day where we're out 7.3-8,aybe once a week when work is hardcore but there is no job where that is needed daily. We've been together 20 years so we joke we're having an affair with a coworker when we're out until 8, but id start to wonder if something more was genuinely going on if it's as everyday.

Friendships, I have a good friend left from school, 1 from uni and otherwise it's friends from mum life, a group from baby times who persist, a group of school mum friends who have been around since nursery times and some ASN mum friends who know the challenges. I put myself out there and I chat and I accept the friendships that don't progress and absorb the sting of rejection when someone doesn't like me. It's not easy as I have a strong socially awkward side and have always been rubbish at friendships and felt bullied at school etc. I'm 43 now though so I've learnt to accept myself a bit.

One thing that stands out to me is that both children are spending a lot of time ruminating on problems and anxieties at school and this is bringing you all down.

Is it possible you could redirect this behaviour with some more structured time just having fun the three of you? Do an audit with them of the activities everyone does at the moment. Do they enjoy their clubs? Is there anything that is too much that should be stopped? What would they like to do to distract them from school worries? (Eg Cinema, milkshake in a cafe, walk by the river, learn a new craft, go swimming, restore furniture together).

Your DH needs to find a way to support you in this with time, money or preferably both. At least one weekend a month should be family downtime

Absolutely this. There's so many excuses from women who have husbands who seemingly can't work less hours, can't be flexible and just completely unavailable to help out with parenting at all. Yet somehow women are able to meet these changes, change hours in their job and pick up all the parenting slack and which results in them burned out.

Your children have two parents and with such high levels of needs, this can't just fall to one parent. Being out the house 12 hours a day until 8.30pm every week night isn't sustainable for family life, especially in a house where you have a burnt out mum and two children with such levels of SEN. Your husband needs to do more than just provide for the family, he needs to take an active role in parenting his kids too.

IT'S NOT THAT EASY!!!

I could have written the OP except I'm on my own with SEN children.

They really, really need us after school. If the OP has explained that her husband isn't home until 8.30pm and (by then) she is beyond exhausted already, do you really think she's in the right frame of mind to go out? No. She isn't.

"Get a babysitter!"
"You need to go out more!"
"You need to put yourself first!"

Boring. So boring and so soul destroying to hear, over and over, by people who either don't have children, don't have a job or do have an extremely flexible and supportive partner and/or grandparents or nannies available.

OP, I hear you. People with NT children do not understand the level of scaffolding and support our ND children need (almost) every single day. They just don't get it.

Please don't use social media as a barometer - as we all know, people tend to only share the positives. I have many, many friends who look like they are living the dream on social media - they are not immune to marriage trouble, work stress, illness etc.

Things will get easier as your children get older, but please do go back to school (again) and ask for a face to face meeting with your childrens form tutor, head of year, SENCO and head of pastoral care. It is not ok to be spending 2 hours an evening on a 30 minutes homework and no school should think this is acceptable. Clearly some key changes need to be made to properly support your children and to support you as well.

You sound like you're doing a phenomenal job. Your children are obviously so well loved. You need to really press school to work with you so between you you can work out a better way forward for both children.

Pick one friend who you really like and who you think you would enjoy seeing and ask if you can have lunch or a day out somewhere soon - with or without your children. I'm a huge fan of a day out and take my children out every weekend somewhere. Often somewhere very low cost or free, but at 12 and 14 they're not too old and it's not too late to have a joint day out with another family. You sound lonely and I really resonate with so much of what you said.

WEEKENDS!

Children also exist at weekends! They have clubs, homework etc. Yes, there are weekends but READ THE OP with some emotional sensitivity - she's utterly burnt out. I have also suggested trying to get out at weekends but leaving your children is NOT always easy (even with another parent) and sometimes it creates more hassles than it's worth. But again, read the OP.

I can go out whenever I like at weekends - with my children. Going out without them is a whole other beast. I do it sometimes, but it's not easy for a myriad of reasons.

You’re in a particularly difficult phase of parenting with 2 high need kids. On top of this, you’re in a difficult phase of life at 50 with hormones etc, And the world is in a very difficult place with cost of living/doesn’t meet the needs of so many kids, people having to work, ridiculously long hours and not having enough money , rising inequality (not to mention the really serious stuff that’s going in around us with cliemage change, threats from AI and the rise of the far right, the list of threats is long)… for many reasons this is simply not the period which was your 20s, and I think bringing some acceptance to that rather than thinking it shouldn’t be that way would be a good start

it sounds like you are a bit of a perfectionist which is a hard one to stop as it feel’s rewarding but it is punishing and will make you burn out.

Definitely drop the rope on the homework and push back with the school. Considering you are in a difficult phase, you need to start developing boundaries to protect yourself, whether that is simply going out to something lovely a week (book club/choir/whatever you can find) or lowering housework standards or putting boundaries around how long you chat with kids about their anxiety (actually focusing on it can make it worse, as well as better, there is a sweet spot, ) If you don’t do this for yourself, your anxiety will impact your kids anyway ans probably already is

I was in a very similar situation to you for years and ended up being a single parent, my kid has high needs/SEN. Then I got an aggressive form of cancer just over a year ago and have still had to keep everything together. But it has forced me to ask for help and stop being such a perfectionist, it’s hard having to tell him sometimes that I can’t talk because I have to go to sleep, but it’s healthy and I think it’s been good for him to see me practice self-care like that and make time for him at other times of day. I’ve had to accept our home will be a muddle, there will be cat fluff everywhere, and that this is simply a hard time and will (hopefully) pass, and to find moments of joy as equally this might be all there is.

I do have acquaintances who live a far more privileged life than me, but also feel so much for the people who have less; there are mothers like you and me living in Gaza right now, there is unimaginable suffering and pain and I am so lucky in so many ways. Perspective makes a huge difference to your mental health. You are comparing yourself with those more lucky than you, that’s always going to make you feel shit but it’s a choice.

The dad can't take over for 2 hours?
I have read the post. And also read all the suggestions to do everything but get husband to step up.This is a DH problem.

Nothing will change unless he helps.