Struggling with 3 kids.

[Hereigo89]

I've got a 3 week old a 7 year old and an almost 10 year old. I'm really finding it hard to manage with all of them. My eldest two seem to argue all the time. I mean it's constant. And now I've turned into a shouty mum which I really don't want to be. All I seem to do is shout and snap at them. When my newborn is sleeping I try and catch up on housework and then I plan on entering my eldest two but then the babu wakes up. They've had much more screen time than I would usually allow and then the guilt creeps in. I'm not sure what I'm asking for really. Just finding it pretty tough.

Sounds very tough. I would say though, it's school holidays...five weeks to go till they're back then it will become a lot easier I'd imagine. Any holiday clubs near you that you could put the eldest two in? We have ones near us which operate from 9am-3pm and cost about £10 a day. They often have discounts if a sibling goes too. If you can afford it, I'd put them in one for a week to break up the holiday a bit and give them something to do.

Your older kids "bad" behaviour is almost 100% down to the arrival of the new baby - tense and jealous and anxious and also full of love and pride and happiness - such a confusing time for a kid! Are you able to hand the baby over to your DP for an hour or two at the same time every day to make sure you get some really good quality time with your big kids? Make it a routine? Talk to them about how strange it must be to have a new baby, reassure them that feeling weird about it is normal - you feel weird about it too!

I have the same age gaps. Forget the house work. While baby is sleeping, bake some cookies with the older two, play a board game, watch a movie with snacks together, go for a walk while baby naps in Pram even if to corner shop for a popsicle.

what’s do they like to do activity wise? I used to do time trials of running/biking to the letterbox/so many laps of the cul de sac to see how they could improve their time week to week.