Low mood at weekends

[Earlgrey19]

Feeling a bit exhausted by family life at weekends, with DC’s age 2 & 4 & anxious husband. I manage the week ok, which is easier with DC1 now in school & DH at work but I wish I found the weekends easier. By Sunday I’m feeling really low mood and drained. DC’s are up at 6am so at weekends it’s a long morning with no one going anywhere until we manage to get at least some of us out by 10am or so. There are lots of sibling fights before then and DC1 is a bit hyperactive and can get very restless and not settle to playing with anything for long. He’s also quite bored by TV, after 5-10 mins, alas, or I’d cope with some early morning CBeebies! DH can be quite stressy around the kids, is very hypervigilant, but absolutely doesn’t see it and gets very angry if I point it out or suggest he may benefit from support) and also he contributes to making the house a huge mess at weekends (have tried talking to him about trying to keep a bit tidier but it makes no difference). I hate the state of the house by Sunday. Have been suffering low mood on and off over the last year. We’ve had quite a lot of family trauma over the last few years, with bereavement and illness, though better now. I’ve had a lot of psychotherapy (ongoing) & am trying to work on self-care, but any life-hacks for the weekends greatly appreciated. Also how to cope when the kids are just really shouty (with each other and with classic 2 year old meltdowns on repeat) when you’re feeling tired and fed up with it. I don’t want to be impatient with them.

They’ll be picking up on the mood in the house. If you and dh are both overwhelmed and stressed then they’ll be picking up on that.
You’ll have to accept that they’re up early and don’t want to watch tv so make another plan.
Make a plan to get out as early as possible. Go to the park, feed the ducks, kick a ball around, play catch, take the kids bikes and just play.
A bit of fresh air and exercise will do all of you some good and can help things be calmer after.
The mess seems to be sapping your energy to so it’s important to address that.
Find a way for you all to muck in and do little clear ups through out the day so. Make it a bit of a game so say ‘we need to get out in 15 mins, let’s see if we can tidy up before we leave’ and put the radio on and everyone do things as quickly as possible. Do the same before lunch and dinner.

Sounds like your DH is the problem or at least a major factor.

Is he getting treatment (medication and/or therapy) for his anxiety?

The anger when challenged is not a good sign and I would be angry myself about that.

Yes, I forgot to add. Your dh really needs to deal with this. It sounds like an unpleasant household because of him.

I can totally relate to this - though I spend all week looking forward to the weekend and then just feeling frustrated when it’s finally here! It’s worse if we have no plans - a weekend spent at home “relaxing” is the worst because it’s hard to actually relax with a 4 and 2 year old and yes the house is a complete bomb site by the end of it. So something I find helpful is having a plan (complete with time deadline to get out the house as otherwise we don’t make it out til 3 when it’s practically dark by this time of year!).

We’ve just had a 3rd baby so things are even more crazy than usual, but for us a plan usually involves a parkrun (with girls in double buggy!) and/or swimming on Saturday morning - that way we’ve all had an outing, seen friends, the house hasn’t got as messy etc. It’s going to be tricky with 3 kids though! Then on Sunday we have church (at the moment we’re always late for it!) which is great sense of community and purpose (even if just getting us at the house!). Don’t know if that’s helpful at all as obviously Parkrun and church and swimming aren’t everyone’s bag but for us having these weekly family activities that crucially have a start time, get us out the house, exercising and being part of a community has been crucial to making weekends work.

Does your DH accept that he's anxious and if so would he go and see the GP and discuss how he can manage this? If your answer is 'no' then would your DH go with you to marriage counselling where this could be raised with a counsellor present so hopefully it wouldn't escalate and he might then agree to go and see the GP?

As for your two DC, you may just have to bite your tongue until they grow up a bit. The one good thing about hard work young DC is that they do grow up and things do improve - not overnight - but certainly within a year or two you should see some improvement. Can you perhaps set them up with some crafts first thing in the morning while it's still dark and cold and too early to go out? Would they do some colouring, jigsaws, etc, while you sit there with them and have a cup of coffee? I feel for you, because when I had early risers they would at least sit in front of CBeebies for an hour or so.

I think get up and out early we often go to the park for 9.30ish and it's full of parents with young children, feed the ducks, go to country park, travel to a park further away , go the free museum ect

Thanks all, yes getting out is essential, though it’s sometimes the 6.30am-8.30am slot that does my head in. Sometimes crafts is a winner for DC1, then DC2 calms down if her brother is occupied.

DH won’t recognise anxiety, no, and certainly wouldn’t ever be willing to go to individual counselling. Couples’ counselling may be more possible; he’s not keen on going but if I really insisted he might.

Today was a row because while he was sleeping for a couple of hours this morning (to be fair he has got up with my daughter most days this week: we take it in turns), I finally got the kids playing nicely together in their bedroom (after ages of them being initially scrappy). I took the moment to take a quick shower (bathroom is next to their room). DH came down and said it’s not ok to leave them ‘unattended’... He treated me like I was being a bad mum, despite me having worked hard with them all morning. He was a bit obsessed with health and safety issues when DC1 was age 0-3, then started to relax and then we had DC2, who is 2, so I’m hoping he will relax more when she gets older. Finding him exhausting...

No more lie ins for him then. Next weekend, when you want a shower, wake him up so he can supervise the children.

Twat.

I agree - if he's going to be an arse when you need to take a shower then he can bloody well get up and watch his kids - no more lying in bed!

Do you have some Mega Blocks OP? They were very popular with my DC at the age that yours are and kept them occupied for quite long periods of time building forts for their teddies, etc. Get the big bag and a couple of flat Lego bases to attach the blocks to:

www.amazon.co.uk/Mega-Bloks-FVJ49-Learning-Multi-Colour/dp/B079KKFGH1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1T75PENR5XF7I&keywords=megablocks+first+builders&sprefix=megablo%2Caps%2C133&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1574676076&sr=8-4

I’m a SAHM and have a 4 and 2 year old too. I find weekends difficult when everyone is on top of each other. The boys won’t leave each other alone. They’re either playing together really wildly or fighting. So hard work. No advice but plenty of sympathy. Glad to see comments that it will get easier!!!

Well, your last update makes your dh sound like a prick.

The two of you need to sit down and come up with a plan. When my youngest was two, he still wasn't sleeping, so the aim of the game was sleep for the adults.

After that it was to wear the kids out. We often went on massive hill walks. The youngest would have a backpack carrier for if they got tired. When we got back home, the adults would set the kids up with an activity and then we'd have a mad half hour getting some household jobs done. And repeat. So, new activity for the kids, spend 15 minutes with them setti g up the toys or whatever and another mad half an hour doing more home stuff.

The house was never quite perfect, but at least we'd all had some sleep, fresh air, the kids had played and we'd done some of the stuff we needed to do. As they got older it got easier. Much easier.

I also used to go out with friends every so often on the night before my lie in. Sometimes I'd get drunk, sometimes I'd see a film, or eat all of the food, or just hang out with my pals. That helped me feel more normal too.

He does sound like hard work. I have a 3 year and a 1.5 year old and I find weekends hard as well. The game changer for us was structured activity: they both do dance lessons (well mainly running around in a church hall!) and futsal. Having some structure helps so much.

How are you doing now @Earlgrey19? Have things improved at all?

My DP doesn't suffer from anxiety but he can be such an unreasonable arse at the weekends!! Our DTs are 4 now and like most of the DC on this thread, they're up early and then it's a matter of trying to keep them calm or at least not kill each other for a couple of hours. I try to think of things to do in advance to get us out of the house at a reasonable time but sometimes struggle to not spend £££, especially when the weather is so terrible.

I feel like my DP expects the DC to know it's the weekend and 'relax' accordingly - he seems to have no understanding that they don't really know what the weekend is and that they are 100% from the moment of waking up, regardless of the day!! He would just stick them in front of screens for hours if he could

Sounds exactly like my house.
We find it easier to split the kids of a Sunday, they both do a different group and we swap round who does what. Although oldest usually wants dad to take him.
I know a lot of groups don’t start in till around 9am but we walk and let our toddler walk (neither of us can afford our car at the moment anyway, so are not using them) to so it puts him in a much better mood by the time we arrive at playgroup.
Oldest does MMA and youngest does messy play. We all meet back him around 11 for lunch and the day just flows a lot better than it used to trying to do ‘everything together and enjoy family time’

Then depending on both kids moods we may do swimming or the park in the afternoon.

Same, split them up it sounds like your H could do with brushing up on the realities of parenting! I gave up years ago on family weekends being fun, I let the house go to wreck and ruin and then sort it al out when the kids are back at school and H at work. Our weekends tend to be the three of us now (they are a little older) his loss, we have great fun without him fussing and trying to get him off the sofa / off his laptop and put the door!!

@stoptherideiwanttogetoff I think our weekends will go the same way!! DP doesn't want to get up, then he wants an enormous breakfast which no-one else is remotely interested in having so spends ages doing that, then he faffs around for ages before finally saying he 'only' needs to do xyz before we can finally leave the house. In the meantime of course the DC are bouncing off the walls...!

Oh and DP relies on me to investigate, organise and book everything for our weekends. If he doesn't fancy it he then moans. I just ignore him now and arrange things anyway, it's easier to have plans and get out of the house for something than to let him faff around for hours on end...

Same here with the weekend breakfast.. we are up and out by 9/10 these days. I used to let it really stress me out but as soon as I took control and planned things regardless it's much better! If he chooses to come along he needs to get his finger out and be ready to go when we are or we leave him behind. 🙌

If there is a choice of activity time @stoptherideiwanttogetoff then I always make sure we choose a nice early morning slot for whatever I'm planning

Honestly I just can't stand the breakfast faffing - no-one else in the house wants a full English - and then he wants to spend hours washing up, drying, putting away etc when WE HAVE A DISHWASHER

He's supposed to be going on a stag do for a weekend this month. I'm actually quite looking forward to him being away!