Three weeks off and I'm losing it...

amother

OP ↓

Tue, Sep 03 2024, 12:26 pm

My younger kids have off three weeks between camp and school. Older kids have 2-2.5 weeks off. I thought about sending at least the younger kids to post camp, but made the challenging decision not to, for three reasons: 1) One of my kids has SUCH a hard time with transitions, and she'll be in a big school for the first time this year. I was just envisioning her being miserable for a week or two at in-between camp, and then starting the school year already a wreck. 2) These post camps are expensive! I B"H have the luxury of taking off if I want to (I work from home and make my own hours) but I obviously won't get paid if I can't work. Normally, sending the kids to day camp makes financial sense, but the post camps cost so much that I'd be losing money by sending them out and working. 3) It is so stressful and time-consuming for me to find a good camp for each of my kids, arrange carpools for each of them (or not and spend my whole morning and afternoon dropping off and picking up multiple kids across town from each other), and then go through a week or two of trying to keep all the schedules straight.

There's also the fact that I feel that a lot of these post camps are not well run at all, that they're just kid-factories and money-making schemes. Not all of them, obviously, but some. I sent to one, once, when I was young and ignorant, and it sort of scared me off from sending again.

So I kept the kids home. It's almost three weeks in and I'm losing it. And this is with relatively easy kids, who I normally like spending time with. And it's not even their fault! I enjoy off days, or even long weekends off with them. It's just that three weeks with no structure FOR ME is awful. I try to structure things, but I have ADHD and it's really hard for me to create a structure from scratch.

I'm also having such sensory overload. I'll be dealing with my toddler and preschooler, then finally settle them down for a snack and decide that now I'm going to take a breath and relax for a bit. And then my high school boy comes home from shul and starts walking around the house playing music. It's not loud but it's too much for me right now! But he's finally out of his room (he's so bored when he's off, other than when he's davening/learning, and he refuses to get together with friends because "guys don't do that, Mommy") so I don't want to tell him to turn it lower. I put in earplugs instead. I can hear things with them in, but it's just muffled, which is great. But it means I don't hear the "I need the bathroom, Mommy" until it's too late, and then I have an accident to clean up. This kid hasn't had almost any accidents since she's been trained, but the last few weeks she's had several. (And yes, theoretically she can go by herself, we keep telling her she can, but she somehow needs me to say "Okay, so go to the bathroom" each time anyway.)

My grade schooler keeps asking me to do things that are messy or will take a lot of supervision/effort from me, and is getting frustrated that I keep on saying no. I'm just trying to save the little sanity I have left.

This is just a vent. Please no comments about the size of my family, we're normally fine, even over a long yom tov or a week off. I was really fine the first week. And the beginning of the second week. At this point, though, I just need a few minutes (ETA: YEARS!) to myself.

I'm writing this post from the bathroom and hoping that nothing is happening out there that I should be supervising. I can hear them where they are, but I obviously can't see them...I feel like such an awful mommy, keep on reminding myself only two days left...