Time. Such a simple word for something that feels impossible to hold onto. Lately, it feels like time has been slipping away from me. Not gradually. Not gently. Just… gone. I spend most, if not all, of my time doing what I have to do, what other people need and not what I want to do. And it’s leading to a level of parenting exhaustion I didn’t expect.

I’m angry.
At the world.
At how things have turned out.
At the constant, relentless pressure of it all.

Because this isn’t how it’s meant to go. As your children get older, you’re told you get some time back. They become more independent. They don’t need you in the same way. Little pockets of time start to reappear…time for jobs, time for yourself, time to just be. I didn’t want much.

Read a chapter of a book, uninterrupted.
Watch an hour of TV without being called.
Potter around the house or garden.

That would be the dream. The actual dream. But it’s just not happening.

The other weekend my son was with me. He arrived at 4pm on Friday. I don’t work Fridays, so my entire day had been spent preparing for him. Because when he’s here, he has my full, undivided attention. That means everything else has to be done beforehand. Washing. Shopping. Stocking up. That’s how I ended up with over 30 pots of custard, 12 pints of milk, two loaves of bread in the freezer, and enough toilet rolls to last weeks.

It sounds excessive.
It isn’t.
It’s survival.

Because I can’t just “nip out” when he’s here. And I definitely can’t rely on doing things once he’s asleep. Because sleep… isn’t simple anymore. That night, after football training and dinner and games, he went to bed at 9pm. He didn’t fall asleep until 10:30pm. Calling me in. Over and over again. Needing me there. And this isn’t a one-off. This is every night.

The next morning, he was up at 7:30am. Bright. Ready. And I was already running on empty. Another full day together. Another late night…10:45pm this time. Too late for a 7-year-old. But he’s struggling. And I know why. Sleep doesn’t come easily for many autistic children. Melatonin, the hormone that helps you fall asleep, doesn’t always work the way it should. There’s support out there. But only after diagnosis. So for now, we keep going. Night after night.

And what that means, in reality, is this: When my son is with me, I get no time to myself at all. By the time he’s asleep, I have nothing left to give.
Not to the house. Not to a book. Not even to myself. Just bed.

And when he’s not with me I’m playing catch up. Catching up on work, catching up with my daughter, catching up with jobs in the house. And trying and failing at catching up with myself.

And then there’s school. He’s going…but he’s coming home at lunchtime. Some days that means four school runs. At a minimum, two.  On workdays, it looks like this:

School drop-off.
Home. Work.
Back to school. Pick him up.
Home. He eats while I work.
Back to school again.
Home. Work.
Pick him up.
Home. More work.
Repeat.

It’s doable, thanks to the fact I work from home. But for how long? And what really is starting to bother me is this: He’s seven years old…and he can’t get through a school day without coming home to reset.

Is anyone noticing that?
Is anyone asking why?
Is anyone asking how we are?
No.

Where’s the education welfare officer now? Absolutely nowhere to be seen at all…except in my nightmares!! Because he’s attending. And apparently, that’s enough.

One lunchtime, driving home, he asked me…

“Have the clocks ever been normal?”

Ahhhh we love a question about time in our house. Time has been a recurring theme in my son’s life. He lives and breathes time. And so I knew exactly what he meant when he asked this question. But I asked him to explain anyway. He was trying to understand time, Daylight Saving. British Summer Time. Which one is real? Which one is right? Or have we never actually been living in the “real” time at all? What is the real time? So we spoke about how this was determined by the sun and we spoke about sundials and how they used to measure time a long long time ago. which then turned into clocks.

And then following discussion about changing the time as we do he asked…

“What would you do with an extra hour?”

I think he believes we do get an extra hour when we change the time forward. Literal thinking at its best.

What would I do with an extra hour? People might think I’d catch up. Get organised. Do something productive. But the truth is…I wouldn’t. Because right now, I’m so depleted, so stretched, so constantly needed…that if someone handed me an extra hour, I’d probably just sit there. And stare into space.

But after that conversation, I kept thinking about time. About how we measure it. How we move it. How we try to control something that doesn’t belong to us. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Clocks on walls. Timetables. Routines. All of it trying to pin something down that just… keeps moving. Time is the greatest gift you can give anyone. Everything else is just irrelevant. And it made me wonder…maybe time felt different once. Before we adjusted it. Before we named it. Before we tried to make it fit around our lives.

So I’ve decided I’m going to buy a sundial for the garden. Not because it will give me more time. It won’t. But maybe it will remind me of a slower version of it. One that isn’t counted in school runs and bedtimes and minutes lost, but in light… and shadow… and presence. Something simpler. Something steadier. Something closer to “normal”.