Number 2 Thread When You Are Fed Up With The Solitary Burden Of Single Parentdom

[Solo]

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread to all the single parents looking for a place to rant, rave, moan, share the highs and the lows and chat with people that know! It is the second thread and probably a slow one if the first is anything to go by, but it's here when we need it.

LINK TO THE FIRST THREAD

Hi Skye. I hear ya on the weekends. I have given up asking whether people would like to do anything with us.... Thing is, we do quite fun things (I think) - tomorrow we're going to a roller disco on the South Bank, sometimes we drive to English Heritage places, etc... But everyone always has their own busy lives (if they're child-free) or are doing stuff with their DH and kids (if they're married with kids) and I'm so tired of asking and being turned down. Before I had kids (but at the point when I desperately wanted them, e.g. early 30s) I would have loved to have done something fun with someone else's kids, but never had the chance as everyone I knew fled from London the moment they had babies. But nobody ever wants to do anything with us. Hmmmm...maybe it's me....

no73 I am nodding my head in agreement re: drudgery and this not being anything like I pictured the future. Jealous of your skiing holiday though... I'm sure you'll have a chance to feel more like your old self while you're away.

It worries me that the only time I feel like myself is when I'm not with the children. It's like I haven't been able to come up with an identity that encompasses them somehow.

Hello everyone, I think I posted early on on the first thread but have just seen this pop up in active.

warm your last paragraph is SO true for me, I really struggle to feel / know who I am anymore - coping with being a mother is so encompassing that I struggle to have any personality left over beyond that. I'm just too knackered to have an identity other than functioning - it's utterly depressing when I think about it too much (so I wont, La, la, la!!!)

I have been self employed for the last year but am going back to work next week "properly" and am so excited to work with colleagues again, to have a salary, to have a proper life outside of just being Ds mum. The financial relief alone is huge, but emotionally, I can't wait to start having another dinension to my life.

Anyway, sorry for waffling, I think that's all been up in my head for a while!

Hello No73 :) welcome! You sound very positive you know! And I know how hard being positive can be in our situation. Good luck with losing weight. I've lost 2st and feel so much better. Would like to lose another stone now.

Warm and Twirly (great to see you again ), I say exactly the same... "Who am I besides Mum?" :( it's so sad.

I'm on the verge of a relapse with my ME/CFS and when I was chatting with 17yo Ds last night and told him, he actually looked worried; he's seen it happen before on many occasions so knows what can happen. Dd has not seen it in it's worst form.

Oh Solo, sorry to hear your health isn't great. Is there anything that can be done or that can make it less severe?

I have made an appointment with a solicitor on Wednesday. DH and I have 2 properties and I want to ensure I dont come out of our marriage (which I worked at for 16 years) the loser. There is a thread in relationships where the H has offered 1% of the house value. What a knob.

Isabella no, not really. If I stop completely, it'll hit me hardest, but I know it's here anyway; I've just got to try to manage it.

1% ??? what a joke! I lost out twice to 2 exh's which makes me more determined than ever not to lose out to another man. Please do ensure you gewt the best advice 1%!!! sheesh!

no73 the daily battles are just awful aren't they. I swear that even if we were going to Disney (not likely) and I'd got all their clothes out they'd still find time to dick around and have screaming tantrums before we left the house. I gave up on reward charts ages ago because they couldn't care less.

Can I join you too? I am in the process of divorcing my H but he is an alcoholic so I am already looking after 3 DCs single handedly most of the time, taking them on holiday on my own etc. I so understand the comments about the drudgery of it all.....it feels like it's never ending and like I'm some kind of hamster on one of those wheels. I also echo the thoughts of only feeling yourself when you're away from the DCs. Sometimes I feel like I am myself with them e.g if we're watching a film or dancing round the kitchen but most of the time I feel like I'm some kind of sergeant major from a completely different planet to them - one where being somewhere on time is actually important for example.

Has anyone looked into local groups for lone parents? There is a pretty active one in the city I live in. I have joined so get all the invites to Meetups but haven't managed to get to one yet. The weekends are definitely the hardest! I have 1 local single mum friend (the rest of my local friends are all married) but her ex has the kids every Sunday and that's the day I find the hardest really.

Anyway it's been great to find this thread. Nice to know I'm not the only one with these thoughts!

Hi anj . Another sergeant major here too. It would be great to be fun parent wouldn't it, but I doubt we'd ever get to school / work / activities on time.

We don't have any lp groups around here (medium size town). Let us know how you get on when you make it to yours.

Hi Meglet. Any time I try and be "fun mum" everything just seems to fall apart and chaos ensues. I will report back on the LP meet ups if I ever make it to one. I can't do the adult only ones in the evening without having to pay for a babysitter (and I try and restrict those times to things I really want to go to). There are plenty of weekend meet ups with kids but they tend to be on Saturdays when we have sporting commitments.

Hi Anjelika :) welcome we are glad to have you join us.

I live on the borders of London and Kent, so there probably are LP meet ups somewhere, but I don't really bother; not sure why really, but my energy is very limited at times, so I guess I reserve what energy I do have for things I have to do...
I'm also a sergeant major ~ very shouty Mum most of the time, but I am often exasperated by the fact that my kids don't listen to me, do as they're asked/told and talk to me like I'm dirt. I wouldn't have dared talk to my parent's the way mine do to me :(

Dd has a swimming club awards night coming up. I have to try to get her to understand why we aren't going...I feel a bit mean, but I haven't really made any friends at the club, and whilst Dd will be having fun, running around with her swimming friends, I'll be sitting there like a prized plum on my own and I just can't do it. She didn't win anything btw, it'll just be a certificate. I'm horrible aren't I? :(

Solo you aren't horrid! There is only so much energy to go around - you DD will get over it and forget about it in no time, and the things thst really matter are the times you will pull out all the stops to get there.

Oh, and I too am shouty mum. It is one of the things that pisses me off the most about my situation actually. I always dreamed of having a family, I used to be a nanny and loved having fun with the kids I looked after, but I don't manage to be "fun mum" because I just don't have the energy, and because I sm too busy / stressed after wrangling Ds to do every other bloody thing first!

I'm struggling with chikdcare at the moment. Ds is in nursery 3 mornings a week, and my mum does the rest but keeps messing me around and being unreliable. I change jobs on Monday and I won't have the flexibility I have now and I am so nervous of it going wrong, but I don't want to change Ds chikdcsre now when he's so close to going full time at school. I just need to hold it together somehow until September! Gulp!

Yes childcare really is an issue when you're on your own isn't it? If anyone lets you down it can throw everything into disarray. My 3 are at school thankfully which makes it a whole lot easier to manage. At one point I had 1 at school and 2 at a childminder's then pre-school and that was hard. It's much easier having them in one place. My work is very flexible but it's not very secure and the thought of finding another part time and flexible job sends me into a blind panic.

I too hate being a shouty mum and wake up every day vowing not to but when the clock is ticking and the kids are just not listening it seems the only way to get them moving. One new thing I'm doing this week is a points chart for doing things before they are asked so, for example, if they go and clean their teeth and get their shoes and coats on before I tell them to, they get a point. We are only on Day 2 but it is really working! Yesterday my DD even swept the floor after tea. I am going to reward them with money at the end of the week - £3 for the winner and £2 & £1 for the other 2 so it will cost me but hopefully it will be worth it.

Having a real wobble the last few days, missing my H, who clearly doesn't miss me (he has told me so) worrying about finances and the move and the stress of the whole situation.

I have to be a sergeant major too, otherwise it all falls to pieces and nothing gets done. DS's school bus picks him up at 8.30 so we need to be out of the door by 8.20, so as lovely as it is DD wants to talk about small intestines or sing a song at the breakfast table rather than eating, there just isnt time :(.

And no solo, you are not horrible at all.

Hi Isabella. I can understand your worries about finances and moving. I am currently in limbo as I don't know if I'll be able to stay in the family home. If I am forced to sell then will have to move away from the area as won't be able to afford anything round here. It's the uncertainty that is doing my head in.

I wouldn't dare post this on the main board but 7yr old dd is still awake watching tiny pop . She doesn't asleep or read quietly and I can't bear any more battles . I was the Gina Ford queen when mine were little (and it worked back then), oh how the mighty have fallen.

solo you're not horrible. You can't do everything and wear yourself out. I feel bad that the dc's never took up football and dance, but realistically it would have killed me to fit in around work, school, beavers and swimming. We can only do so much.

meglet Ds has just started snoring beside me - he woke up before and I just can't be bothered to spend 2 hours going back and forward to his bedroom so I let him in my bed to watch tv. He isn't back at school till Thursday so I am hoping for a lie in tomorrow too

(But no, I wouldn't be going down in flames admitting that on the main board either! )

twirly yes I've had 1-2 hrs of rapid return when I've tried to get her to bed. I gave up after 2 weeks because it was impacting so badly on my evening. Even if she's tootling around and awake up and downstairs I can at still eat and organise a few things, whereas I can't eat or do anything else during rapid return.

A (single, childless) male friend came round last night and not for the first time made me want to have a real go at him but I bit my tongue.

He's not the first person to walk into my house, where I've been cleaning and tidying in the wake of my DD about once an hour all day, and make a comment about how the place could do with a bit of tidying/cleaning. I picked up a few of DD's toys in front of him and he made a comment along the lines of 'ah, your mum's trying to make it look like she picks stuff up now'. I wanted to scream at him that picking things up is in fact what I do all day, every day. Only to find them back on the floor less than 10 minutes later (which as it turns out is exactly what happened last night). That that is all I feel like I do with my life, that I haven't done anything resembling what he would call a life for a long long time, because this is what I do instead.

I haven't raised a child with a man, and I can't help wondering whether this, in fact, would be the attitude of a man if I did. Whether a man might go to work, come home, see the house that you have been cleaning and tidying repeatedly all day and make those sorts of comments as if to suggest you are a lazy bum who sits on her arse watching TV or something. In which case, I'm kind of glad that I've just gone ahead and done it on my own anyway, saves the hassle. And I'll be much better off just popping down to the sperm bank for the next one.

Bloody hell eternal how did you not rip him a new one?! How bloody dare he!

I've never had a man either, I have a sort of strange fascination with posts on here thst depict 'family' life - it's so alien to me. I feel like I'm pressing my nose up against the window glass most days

I can honestly say that my STBXH has never made comments along the lines of your friend eternal. Perhaps it's more to do with said friend being childless? You did very well not to say anything to him!! I'm sure many of us on here are with you in feeling that we spend all day every day (or all the time we are at home anyway) tidying up only for the place to be trashed again almost immediately. It is a thankless task. I am constantly telling my 3 DCs that I cannot wait until they have homes of their own so that I can go round and make a mess in every room and turn my nose up (with accompanying loud protests of "yuk") at any meals they are kind enough to cook for me.

My XP made a few comments like that. He did finally twig when I nipped out for a couple of hours to an nct sale when dd was a few weeks old and ds was a toddler. I came back to carnage . He was very sheepish (unlike him).

eternal I could pick up stuff all day long too, and it would never look tidy. Mine have form for fighting and making another mess while I tidy up the previous one. It's soul destroying.

Well, I didn't say anything because he's childless and just doesn't seem to have a clue, but then wished I had said something because if women in general just shut up about this kind of thing then I feel like I'm allowing it to be ok for thing like this to be said.

This is a guy who pops by about 2-3 times a year in the evening and occasionally messages, saying he wants to sleep with me.. I don't know if he wants anything more, maybe not, but things aren't going anywhere with him unless he has a serious attitude change, my life has changed and I'm the single, childless person I was - I have so many responsibilities and I have to work so hard now, I can't bring someone on board who doesn't get that, or try to.