I gave up the school run and I feel Amazing but MIL thinks I’m lazy

[Feelsomuchbetter]

I have ASD and ADHD . I struggle a lot. The school run has been hell for me. Dh drives past the school on his way to work so 3 months ago I asked him to please take the dc instead of me doing it. He was previously leaving 10 mins before we had to now he drops dc at breakfast club a bit earlier.

I feel SO much better. I’ve been able to wean myself off AD and I’m not mentally ruined by 9 am . MIL has been saying it’s not fair on dh !!!! That he should have a calm drive to work not stopping off at all ?? Dh is fine to do it he doesn’t mind, hasn’t complained .

They're on benefits because she's disabled and being disabled costs more money - for reasons exactly like this, because sometimes you have to do things differently to the norm. It is not a "luxury".

But to be honest - this is all irrelevant. It's the OP's marriage and if she and her DH are happy with the arrangement then it's fuck all to do with you, her MIL or anyone else.

I think in all honesty that it was having an impact on dh and the dc when I was having side effects from AD and having so much anxiety and being so overwhelmed and distracted every day. I feel much more calm and present now and I feel the atmosphere in the house is just so much better . The dc adore breakfast club and after school club they do really nice activities and play it’s much better for them to be active and socialising

I think as well for me it was the mental equivalent of not aggravating an injury you know when people say if you’re exercising and something hurts - that’s the sign to stop so you don’t cause permanent damage? I really feel like the school run was making me so unwell, the planning and obsessing was getting worse and the stress at the time was taking longer to recover from and I could tell that mentally I was reaching breaking point so I had to stop doing it. I wanted to put in place things though eg wraparound care that meant it wasn’t dealt with in a negative way (eg dc off school on my bad days as that’s not ok) so I planned a lot to make sure they were the priority

OP is literally doing this BECAUSE it helps her regulate and avoid getting into meltdown/crisis territory. She has learnt that doing this non-compulsory thing in her adult life causes her a massive issue - so she doesn't do it any more. What on earth is the problem with that? If there was a non-compulsory element of school that routinely caused my autistic DC to go into meltdown and made their mental health bad then I'd discuss with school re them not doing it. In both cases, it's better for everyone, surely?

That makes absolute sense, to me, @SapphireOpal.

Exactly!

Not kicking off in the classroom is compulsory because the other children have the right to be free from violence and the right to an appropriate learning environment. A child kicking off in the classroom infringes upon the rights of the other children, so that child needs not to kick off or else be taught in different provision.

Given that thousands of children in the UK attend wraparound care and thousands of working parents do the school run, whose rights are infringed upon by the OP delegating the school run to her DH? No one's! So the OP is not compelled to do the school run.

It seems she DOES want to say she can't change and do a school run/ parents evening/ party.

She no more has to do those things than she has to run a marathon.

If it was the father refusing the school run, when any if you even bat an eyelid? My dad never did the school run, even after the divorce with 50-50 residence. I walked to school from his house unsupervised at age 10 with my six yo sister and we waited unsupervised in the playground in all weathers for school to open, because we had to leave the house when he did and breakfast clubs didn't exist back then. No one said a thing about him ducking the school run like this, not one word. Yet if there was anything wrong with our uniforms, it was mum who got the blame even if it was his week.

I find myself wondering how much of your opinion is founded in sexist double standards.

fuck all to do with you, her MIL or anyone else.

thats a lot of energy wasted for a random on the internet, calm down, have a cookie or something.

OP made it everyone’s business when she asked for opinions on the internet babe.

Honestly I think you'd do well to think of the OP as more than just "a random on the internet".

What on earth do you get out of going on the internet and telling a disabled woman the adaptation she's found that works for her is "unnecessary" and that she's "lazy and low resilience"?

If the dad was unemployed and meant to be the sahd but refused to do school runs so the workimg mum had to leave early, the kids had to go to breakfast and after school club, yes I'd bath an eye lid.
It sounds as though your dad was working so had somewhere to be, not just sitting at home.

Also you have a responsibility to your children to take them to school and care for them, no-one has to sign up for a marathon.

You have a shared responsibility with their other parent to get them to school. You don't both have to do it.

Really? Even if the dad was disabled?

And she's not "refusing...so the working [parent] "has to"...". It's an arrangement they're reached together that they're both happy with.

I can't believe the ableism and nastiness on this thread is still going. This is a disabled woman who has found a way to make life work for her and her family. There is no way she would face this judgement if she were a man. How the hell can people not get it into their heads that invisible disabilities need adjustments just like any other disability. Shame on the people that are judging the OP.

And if the dad was disabled in such a way that doing the school run made his disability worse, made him less able to be a SAHP, and risked him having a meltdown and losing the ability to speak or make safety judgements whilst supervising the children in the presence of vehicular traffic? Whilst the mum literally drives past the school on her office days?

Pull the other one, it has bells on.

My mum managed the morning school run and she also worked full-time. Funny how my dad is given a pass on that.

When my mum was a SAHP she wasn't "sitting at home". The cooking, cleaning, clothes mending, etc didn't do itself and my dad was useless on that front.

And if the dad was disabled in such a way that doing the school run made his disability worse, made him less able to be a SAHP, and risked him having a meltdown and losing the ability to speak or make safety judgements whilst supervising the children in the presence of vehicular traffic?

None of this is what OP has actually said... so you seem to be making up a scenario and catastrophizing to make a point, when none of that has come from OP? She said it stressed her out, gave her anxiety, it felt like too much, and she is happier to not have to do it now, end of.

But if OP can get to her volunteering role (without panicking about being late, or writing things down 5 times, and without being distant and stressed out with DH and the kids every morning and afternoon), navigating public transport, volunteering inside a busy hospital, volunteer in foodbank, navigate crowded places and busy transport systems and it doesn't bother her in the slightest, I wonder how much of the school run issue is actually effected by OPs disability and how much of it is OPs fear of school which goes back to her childhood and is a known trigger point for her anxiety?

I don't disbelieve her in the slightest, and can fully understand why the thought of doing it twice a day every day would have her spiralling, but imo it seems implausible that OP can do everything that she does outside of the school run without batting an eyelid, and actually says she really enjoys it and it doesn't stress her in the slightest, yet leaves the kids in afterschool club for 2 hours twice a week because she can't cope with picking them up.

I do actually get anxious / stressed at other points it’s not that I find other activities stress free. I go to a maths class which i find very hard some weeks . I find these things mostly manageable though not as bad as the school run at all. You’re probably very right about longstanding issues with school environments as it is unbearable for me and it’s a very specific type of sensory overload I think I mentioned already the only thing I’ve experience that was similar was Xmas eve shopping one year in a very very busy shopping centre . I’m just trying to manage as best I can and I’m very conscious that I need to get back to work at some point so it’s become very important to me.

You don’t need to keep defending yourself to this random person on the internet OP. I think you got your answer- some people get it, some people will refuse to get it.

Where did you pick up that the OP isn't caring for her children????

Listen, you do not have to keep justifying yourself to these people - they are nobodies and have no impact on your life!

I'm NT (AFAIK! though my kids keep telling me different!!) and I will be honest, I don't understand what you go through on a daily basis, but I respect it and I accept it.

I think most of us have something in our lives that we struggle with and would prefer to avoid if we could. I too hated the school run, not in the way you do, but I hated it. DH always managed to be working too far away to do it so it always fell on me, and I had to pick them all up as well. Although I was working 9-5, I was so fortunate in those years that my then employer wasn't a clockwatcher, and so long as your work was done, it was fine. I'd have been in trouble more or less anywhere else! I had 11 years of drop offs in two different locations as well.

I think maybe as a school refuser in your young life maybe you have a specific trigger with school in general? Do you have anyone you can talk to about that?

Good for you doing the Maths class too. I failed my (then!) O level several times. I had a really shit teacher and I just didn't get it. I went to night class the year after I graduated, and I got a B. So good luck with that.

Please don't let people here tie you up in knots. You do what works for you and your family and fuck the detractors.

*Listen, you do not have to keep justifying yourself to these people - they are nobodies and have no impact on your life!

Please don't let people here tie you up in knots. You do what works for you and your family and fuck the detractors.*

Amen!

OP, if you'd said you were having cancer treatment that was knocking the stuffing out of you so DH stepped in for school runs not a single person would've agreed with your MIL's criticism. None.

It's really depressing to see posters so dismissive of MH and ND issues - they'll never understand. 500+ posts later and they're still harping on about just trying harder (!) They don't get it....and bizarrely seem really invested (and het up) about your school run arrangements. Humans are weird aren't they?

You've found a solution that works for your family, balls to everyone else - none of them matter.

1. Anxiety makes sensory overload harder to cope with. Anxiety and stress generally makes the symptoms of autism worse. To give an example from my own life, when I'm under stress, I forget words. Then I start to babble as I try to describe the object or concept that the missing word refers to. Then I completely forget how to speak mid-sentence. Yes, job interviews go about as well for me as you think they do.
2. A parent in shutdown or meltdown can't supervise children, just as I can't do my shopping if I shutdown at Tesco. So shutdown in an outdoor environment with traffic around does endanger her kids.
3. Some environments cause more anxiety than others. That's why I have a technical lab and office job instead of working in retail.

Precisely one person has mentioned 'euphoria' and 'utopia'. You. Why the ridiculous paraphrasing? Is it really so triggering for you that a family is pulling together in a way that works for them?