University as a single mum of 4

[Leanne1191]

Hi,

Is there any other mums on here who have gone to university and done a degree while being a single parent and I don't mean just 1 or 2 kids I mean 3 or 4? If soo how did you do it? I want to do my mental health nursing degree BAD! But I'm weighing up the pros and cons to this because of being on my own with 4 children and having to rely solely on a childminder as I don't have family or friends that can help.

How old are your children? How would you cope with placements that require night shifts?

My children are 13,11,8 and 1 and this is what I was thinking 😞 I've been wanting to be a nurse since I was 25! I'm now 33

Honestly, I wouldn’t. We had a single mum of 4 in our cohort (healthcare course). She left after a couple of weeks and decided to do an OU course instead. My kids are teens but these courses are quite intensive, it’s very, very demanding and I struggled a lot.
Missing lessons for dentist/ortho appointments, they weren’t even sick, it’s a constant rush, quite stressful.

Can you drive? If not I'd focus on that first to make getting to uni and placements easier.

Do you have prerequisite qualifications like maths and English?

When was the last time you studied? It might be worth doing some shorter / lower level courses to get you back in the swing of it. Perhaps A level or GCSE psychology or a Btec in a related field. Or look at the freelearn courses on the OU they may have something relevant to get you started.

Will you be working at the same time?

Do you have experience in the sector?

I would take a lower level role in the sector first, get some experience under my belt then when your youngest is older pursue the degree.

A woman I did voluntary work with just dropped out of a general nursing degree because the placement she was given and the time meant she had no childcare available. Nurserieswere not open when she needed care and she didn’t have the money to pay a nanny or enough family support as her parents both worked.

I worked in higher education for many years and the single parents in the dept that made it tended to have a lot of family support. We didn’t have many single parents or parents if I’m honest. The University I worked at was dreadful at giving a lot of notice of timetable requirements. This was bad for anyone who had a job to fund themselves but almost impossible for parents.

I do drive, I have an NVQ level 3 I have my maths and English, I worked for the nhs for two years in mental health with children in picu's soo have experience I also 2 years ago was accepted into university and due to start October 2022 I ended up pregnant but was still wanting to go ahead with it all and contacted the uni about it all too to see if I could still, but I had issues with my eldest son as he has adhd and additional needs and was in a main stream school and that needed to be sorted before I could start really which is why I postponed but then I suffered from post natal depression for months after having my daughter and finally had to with draw which I'm soo gutted about.

That's what I don't want to do and end up with debt because of uni loans etc

I'm not saying you can't do it, but for the best chance of success I think you need to bide your time.

I did an OU degree, whilst working full time with one very well behaved but autistic DD and fantastic childcare, I have no mental health problems and it was awful, some nights I got very little sleep and that didn't include a placement.

Life is long, if it's what you want to do I'd go back to work like you did before for a few years and once your children are older then go for it. I'd aim for your youngest to be 7 as then at least they can be left fairly unsupervised and can play independently. And your older two will be able to babysit if necessary if you have later / night placements (I have no idea if night placements are a thing for uni students but they would be a nightmare for you).

But use this time wisely, read up on related topics, read journals etc and just building knowledge and experience for when you do do it.

You really want the Mature Study and Retraining board, @Leanne1191! Here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mature_students

You’ll find countless threads addressing the challenges of study in similar circumstances.

(You could even ask MNHQ to move your thread there.)