To be absolutely depressed by parenting

[checktheoil]

I don’t know if it’s just me. It often feels like it but I am absolutely depressed by parenting mine. It feels like there’s nothing good; every day longing for them to go to bed and then the same shitshow starts again the next day!

Well I wouldn't. Cherish every moment and all that but also: in a few years things will get noticeably better. In 10 years they'll be loads better. I can remember being at the park or playground freezing my arse off at stupid o'clock because it was the least worst option to get them OUT of the house to run around. Now I have teenage DC they sort themselves out in a morning and I get as much weekend sleep time as I want, around the endless giving them lifts, that is 😄 It will get better!

@Roselilly36 I think it depends on what you find hard. I have friends who didn't have life long health problems because of pregnancy, had babies/toddlers who slept well or coped with lack of sleep as they didn't need to work full time to support their families. Their experience of small children is vastly different to someone who has bad sleepers and/or needs to work 60 hours a week.

The problem with toddlers/small children is that the parenting is very physical. Yes, the worries are more basic and all you need to do is keep them fed and safe. But it's the relentlessnessly physical side of it that I find torture.

I just couldn’t disagree any more strongly with this statement. I think what you mean is, it got better for you. For me, not the case at all.

The arguing, the noise, the shouting, the fighting, the challenging every decision. Mine are 12 and 9 and it hasn’t got better, despite my best efforts. I’ve done parenting courses, I’ve read the books. I’ve tried keeping them apart, forcing them together. Going out. Staying in. Punishing them. Praising them. Literally nothing works or makes a difference. I’ve developed some sort of tic/stimming reaction to them, which I’m aware of but can’t seem to stop (I’m not autistic). I’m wishing my life away waiting for this to get better but it never does.

before I had kids, I actually thought I'd be quite good at it. For some reason cardboard eggboxes figured in my thinking. I'd sit at a table with them and craft.

It was bloody awful in reality.

They are lovely adults now.

I feel for you.
You are in the trenches and 90% of the problem is that you are tired. If you could solve the lack of sleep you might enjoy your children.

Mine were the same age gap and poor sleepers but DH was great with the early mornings. They were also like yours very giddy together.
It got better for me. From age 5 onwards was just a joy. The baby stage was my worst nightmare and 1 to 4 was very hard work.
Lots of good tips on here but maybe your DD needs to be a little bit older for you to see much difference.

Thing is with the ‘I am not available to you right now’ - you are, I mean, I’m guessing you wouldn’t ignore a request for a drink or breakfast or the toilet or whatever.

We kept a potty in every toilet and they were well able to use it independently at 3. Obviously every child is different though. And no, they don't get breakfast until after 7.30 and there is a bottle of water and a banana / satsuma / apple / wrapped pain au chocolat / put out the night before which is available to them. (In the 90s my parents used the tin of biscuits - "how many biscuits are we allowed?" - "how many have you had?" and the answer was always one more than we'd had)

Totally get what you are saying about consequences though. That part of parenting can feel hard, frustrating and unfair. I often lament that never in my life has anyone given any thought to my 'emotional wellbeing'. One of our children is autistic nd I have actually had therapy to deal with my feelings on having to be so fucking attuned to their emotions so fucking much of the time. As I said, it is totally ok to find this hard. It is bloody hard.

How has your day been OP?

I just lost it at my kids and really screeched at dinner time.

Firstly DS kicked DD (she had been poking him) so both in tears as they sat up. Then they both started pissing around with their foot and picking it up with their hands (can tolerate this from the 3 year old but surely the 6-nearly-7 year old should be able to use her bloody fork by now). Lots of dropped food on the floor. Then they started teasing each other and trying to kick each other under the table. Then DD picked up the melon from the fruit bowl and was spinning it around, causing it to fall on the floor and almost break. I took it off her, turned my back for a second and she was bloody licking it. Fucking why??? I really screeched then.

Mealtimes are a real trigger for me, I’ve spent ages slaving away to make a decent meal and it’s usually the first time I’ve really sat down all day after work. To have them pissing around, screaming, fighting and throwing food is just fucking awful and grates on my every last nerve.

I WANT to enjoy time with them. But we have had this type of dinner time every sodding night for about 700 nights now. I’m so drained

I just want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Yesterday was REALLY tough. We had a day out Saturday and had one today; stupidly I thought we could have a ‘chill day in the house and garden’ yesterday. We can’t.

DD woke very early and had a danger nap on the way back but I’m hoping late bedtime will mean longer in bed tomorrow 🙏🏻

Mine are similar at mealtimes, it’s that time of the day. I really have to force myself to stay patient. But I properly yelled at mine yesterday as well. They just wouldn’t leave one another alone and neither was enjoying it; lots of shoving and pushing and general meanness like hair pulling but wouldn’t come away.

Today they’ve been for the most part nice, well behaved children. The occasional moment (dd had a little tantrum because I packed the wrong water bottle and ds cried when he dropped the flake from his ice cream) but they were moments and nothing like the prolonged misery of yesterday.

Really glad to hear you had a better day! Fingers crossed tomorrow is more of the same.

DH currently doing bedtime after I lost it and all I can hear is them screaming mummy.

I’ve actually got a stomach ache in the location I always get when I’m really stressed.

Oh that’s it … DH did actually take them this morning but they still run in and out and scream and I couldn’t face the ‘you have a DH problem, he should be at the park with them at 6 in the morning so you can sleep’ type comments!

When is your youngest four? DD is three and a half in January and I’m really hoping 2027 will be a good year.

To be far nothing comes close to the utter relentless misery of a three year old and a one year old; I really don’t know if I could do that again.

OP, I am sorry you are having a tough time. I have no right to offer advice because I don't have kids. I am a besotted auntie (two mid twenties nieces) and a proud great auntie to a 4 year old. I had nieces x2 from a young age for a weekend regularly and have been privileged to be trusted to look after great niece for a night. Do you have any such family support? Even to take one of them. I salute all of you. I was able to 'give them back' but it was relentless, hilarious, rewarding all at once. I have to say that I have the best relationship with the Dear Nieces now. Great Niece hurled herself at me when she saw me recently and I consider that a win. My poor mother had DB and I who were less than 14 months apart and fought like cat and dog! We are supportive of each other now. Courage and props to all of you mamas.

I am a qualified educator in ages 0-11, and I was a youth worker before kids. I had the idea it would be similar to working with children, all sat around a table doing fun crafts, able to keep them still and calm.

It’s not that way at all. DD always tells me I’m doing it wrong, she doesn’t like it, she’s bored, she wants the telly, she spills the paint water and mixes all the colours so they’re all a horrible brown shade (despite me strictly telling her NOT to mix them because they will turn said horrible brown shade). It’s fucking shit.

This is of no help to you but this has really cheered me up. Mine are 5 and 2 and I’m finding it really relentless at the moment… so glad it’s not just me. It’s reassuring that I’m not the only one who finds it really hard work.

When they are tired they get so hyper and run around giggling and pushing each other, totally ignore me and there’s two of them and so speedy and they’re everywhere so I just don’t know which one to tackle first.

The small window DH and I have to ourselves we’re so tired we end up just sitting on the sofa doomscrolling.

So you’re not on your own at least OP. I’ve often thought of starting a thread asking if having a 5yo and 2yo still classed as “in the trenches” of parenting in mumsnet terminology.

Anyone with a child below primary school age is definitely 'in the trenches' in my book.

God this thread has made me feel much better that is isn't just me that feels like this. It is fucking relentless isn't it?

@NorthFacingGardener its the two of them, its so much nicer with just one. Rightly or wrongly i do feel those with just one child don’t understand this because the dynamics are so different. It’s not just your child + another child like when they have a play date, they become both allies and competitors. They round up on you but also demand you because if they don’t the other does.

I do have a day with just ds on Thursday. Normally DDs nursery days are Monday and Thursday but of course we are hit by bank holidays. It feels like a holiday; had anyone told me that would be the case three years ago I’d have fallen around laughing so I’m hoping I also get to this point with dd.@

Yesterday was a good day and I was braced for it to be awful. The only thing was they both fell asleep on the way back and I normally don’t mess with the routine but it was one of those things; I had no way of knowing they’d both randomly wake so early. So they both fell asleep on the way back; very late bedtime (dd asleep 915; ds gone half ten.) I’m not too fussed about ds as he is asleep still and will hopefully stay so for a long time, but dd was up at 550. Whhhhhy. It makes the day so long.

And I’m so glad it’s been a ‘real’ thread where two year olds don’t meekly go back to bed with the gro clock after firm and consistent boundaries are put in place and five year olds become calm and sensible after their feelings are empathised with!

Mine are 12 and 17. I think parenting has got more demanding now, or I was a massive slacker!

If they woke up early they’d be in front of the telly. Not good parenting obvs but it works. You need that time out.

When I was a small child I was out unsupervised doing god knows what. Boomer parenting was even easier!

School and nursery are your friends. Otherwise parenting is absolutely relentless.

It's tricky, I don't condone smacking or think that we should go back to it but I can't help but notice that we seem to find parenting harder than the generations who saw it as normal. I feel similarly about children being allowed out unsupervised at younger ages.

I have been quite blunt with the pestering and questioning. I'll tell mine, no more questions, off you go, find something to do.

Honestly @checktheoil do things to make your life that little bit easier so that when they are testing you can face it with a little more patience.

Leave them their iPads outside their bedrooms doors and have a rule that if they do wake up before their clock is ready they can come out for a wee if needed and they must stay in their rooms watching iPads until it changes.

I saw this video yesterday and it made me feel a lot better about feeling burnt out by parenting. It’s about babies but it resonates with the demands of all children IMO. We were never meant to do it all alone.

I have been quite blunt with the pestering and questioning. I'll tell mine, no more questions, off you go, find something to do

Well fine if they say ‘okay mummy!’ and skip off to do something else. Mine don’t; there’s an interlude of maybe thirty seconds if I’m lucky

@DaisyChain505 they can’t work an iPad alone. Even if they could that’s a road I don’t want to go down. I’m not anti screentime but a two year old unsupervised on an iPad for hours at a time is just storing up problems for the future.

Can you believe , you'll actually miss these days, when they're grown up lol🤣 ,then it's a whole different set of parenting problems.

10yo has been waking recently at 5.20am. It's driving us insane. We are utterly f*cked. You have my sympathies. 8 yo is fine sleep wise but still up after 6am.

You can never tell or predict what will happen in the future but I’m not generally one for ‘missing’ things as life just moves on, doesn’t it?

I mean, I don’t get this. Does anybody actually want to be stuck with very small children who never age indefinitely, trapped in a world of parks and soft plays and toddler groups and so on? Waking before 6 and getting no down time and reading picture books for the rest of your life?

Admittedly mine are older. Nothing works on say a 2 year old. I remember when I had a baby and a 2 year old someone telling me I can just get the 2 year old to be quiet during naps by asking them.

I do think that in some cases the parent has been conditioned to believe that they have to respond to everything child asks of them. This is great for babies, not so much for a toddlers verbal diarrhoea. You just burn out with the constant demands.