Interested to know if this is just normal and expected. I’ve got twin boys (preschool) and an older one at school. Day starts at 6am or before thanks to one early riser. There might be small
pockets of calm but from then on it’s generally a constant stream of arguing, injuries, chasing each other round the house, making a mess. The younger two are still quite clingy to me so there’s lots of competition for my attention. Every attempt for some one-on-one time is thwarted by the other one.
Me and DH manage it by trying to be out of the house as much as possible and running around somewhere else to get plenty of exercise in, but that has its on drawbacks - we both work full time so need to be able to get a lot of household chores done at the weekend, so it piles stress on in other areas of family life. We have a decent garden with play equipment, but sending them outside usually ends up with someone in tears in a short space of time.
I tell my self “kids are kids” and that it’ll get better when a bit older (maybe) but the truth is the constant conflict is draining. My job is full-on at times, as is DH’s and we need some time to decompress that just doesn’t happen. No part of the weekend is ours any more, and it’s a bit rubbish - we end up more frazzled when we return to work than when we left on Friday afternoon.
We tried to manage it by taking turns to take them out somewhere, but that has the knock on effect on the parent who is single handedly managing all three. We don’t have a lot in the tank to support each other.
I’ll add that the children are fine individually or in pairs, and the one at school has good friendships and doing well, so there are no individual behaviour issues that I see.
Anyone had similar, or has come out the other side?