Each morning I have a very quick shower and approximately ten minutes to get dressed, dry my hair and put some make-up on. In those ten minutes, my son can shout me several times, mainly just to check I’m not far away. The parenting exhaustion is real. And in those same ten minutes, I try to have a conversation with my husband about what’s happening that day. I always ask:

“What’s your plan for today?”

We are both very busy people, but like most marriages, I like to think I’m the busiest. And the most tired. And the one who works the hardest. Men….you know I am right!!

I joke about it but seriously my husband is a very busy person. On this particular morning, my husband did have a busy day and said so.

Then it was my turn. And I didn’t embellish it or make it sound more dramatic than it was. I simply said:

“I have four school runs to do morning, 12pm, 12:30pm and after school. I have 7.5 hours of work to fit in around that. Then I have another five or six hours of play and entertainment afterwards.”

That didn’t include the food shop arriving or the washing that needed doing. And we laughed, because honestly, I don’t know how I’m doing it all.

The issues school presents are not going away. They are here to stay. I know that. I accept that.

Reception and Year 1 were horrific.
Year 2, my son barely went.
Year 3, he goes — but comes home for dinner every single day.

And while I accept this reality, I honestly don’t know what I can do to change it.

Yes, I could change his school to see if that made a difference. But from everything I know, the school he is at currently probably has the best SEN provision around us. We may have got off to a shaky start, but since the change of SENCO at the end of Year 1, things have improved massively.

The school have offered support. The problem is my son will not accept most of it. He doesn’t want to be singled out. He doesn’t want to feel different. He doesn’t want to be included with “the children who need extra support.” So the only support he will currently accept is me picking him up every lunchtime.

When we first started this school journey, after a couple of years I came to the conclusion that eventually I would probably have to give up work. And now, more than ever, I think that may happen one day. But right now, I am clinging on for dear life. And actually, I think I’m clinging on pretty well.

The question is just: how much longer can I keep juggling everything that needs to be juggled?

On this particular day, I did the four school runs and the seven-ish hours of work. (I make my time up wherever I can.) Then my son came home from school like a coiled spring. School doesn’t agree with him. We know this. Sitting still. Being told what to do. The noise. The people. Not being in control of whether he can leave.

He is making it work for himself but it costs him. So when he comes home after holding all of that in all day, he is agitated, distressed, and his body needs working. And that means after four school runs and a full day of work, I have to somehow find enough left in me to help reset him.

And I do.

But as he gets older, and I get older, and work gets busier… it’s getting harder. That evening we bounced on his trampoline, played with his giant gym ball, and played football. And I know what people might think:

“If he has all this energy, why not take him to football training or gymnastics?”

And I wish it were that simple. But after spending all day at school with people who, in his words, he “absolutely hates,” he doesn’t want more people. He wants home. He wants safety. He wants the place where his nervous system can finally exhale. So it falls on me.

And it used to be that after a couple of hours of movement and play, I could get him into bed around 7:30pm so he could chill while I ate my tea, and then he’d be asleep around 8:30 or 9. But he’s getting older. And now his body needs regulating right up until 8pm at least, and bedtime itself has become another struggle. It’s now often 9:30pm before he’s finally ready to sleep.

And only then do I get a little bit of time to myself.

Do you remember watching the Brownlee brothers during the triathlon, when one of the brothers stumbled towards the finish line and the other caught him and helped pull him across?

This is me every single night. Stumbling into my bedroom while my husband catches me. And honestly, it makes me laugh because that genuinely is what I look and feel like. And if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.

But the strange thing is that after doing all of that, I still can’t settle. I’m restless. Fidgety. Wired. Because I’ve spent the entire day powering through, and my own body needs resetting too. Every night I should go to sleep at a reasonable time. But if I go to sleep, the next day starts again. And so I sit there, exhausted but unable to stop.

The morning after this particular day, my son woke up and immediately I knew he wasn’t right. He said he was bored. That word “bored” is his distress signal. I actually wrote a poem about it once and talk about it quite a lot in this post because it appears so often in our lives.

What he really means is “I need help regulating”. So I suggested football in the kitchen. We used to do this before school ten minutes here and there. Ten minutes I can cope with. But on this particular morning, he jumped out of bed at 7:30am, unheard of, and we played football in the kitchen for forty minutes. 40 minutes!

Then I got him dressed and took him to school. And when I got back to the car, I was done. Completely done. But the problem was… I still had another three school runs to do, another 7.5 hours of work, and another five or six hours of regulating and play to get through that evening.

I rang my husband and he said:

“This needs to change. You can’t continue like this. It’s getting longer and harder.”

And i said:

“Tell me the alternative.”

And there was nothing.

My son cannot change who he is. Right now, I cannot change school. The only thing I can change is work. But realistically, can I?

Financially…absolutely not. Emotionally…I don’t think so either. I have a good job. I like the people I work with. It’s flexible. It allows me to survive this version of motherhood or at least helps. But this is where I’m at.

And so, when I finally do get to sleep at night, I pray. I pray for a miracle.

Because right now, when people say, “Something has to change,” my answer is simple:

Tell me the alternative.

And if you have one… genuinely, let me know.