I was chatting with another mother about Squeezing It All In. We agreed that it was hard to do.
‘Still,’ I said, ‘It’s been much better since Middlest started nursery, so I’m sure things will get easier.’
Mother-of-Older-Children said ‘Oh, it doesn’t get easier.’
‘Your children are 10 and 8,’ I said trying not to sound too incredulous. ‘That must be very different from having children of 5, 3 and 1.’
‘Oh, there’s all their activities, all the drop-offs, all the homework. I spend hours every week just sitting around in the car waiting for them. Really, I think you’ve probably got it easiest just now.’
‘Really?’ I said, as a polite alternative to picking up the heavily-buttered scone she was eating and ramming it down her throat.
Now, I am can quite understand that different challenges occur as children grow up, BUT:
- older children can help out – a bit
- older children can be reasoned with – a bit
- older children can occupy themselves – a bit – probably for more than a minute
- older children are unlikely to pull out the entire contents of the laundry cupboard several times a day or put all your sanitary supplies in the lavatory while you do the tiniest little edit to a blog post
Right now, hanging around in the car with my notepad and pen for 45 WHOLE MINUTES (that’s three-quarters of a flaming hour!) ALONE while one of the Little Darlings have a tennis or violin lesson sounds like heaven to me.
Hurrumph.
END NOTE
There are only a few things in life which make me grumpy; and it is going to give me no end of pleasure some small satisfaction to devote the occasional post to these topics.
Hi Cat,
This rings true to me. I remember struggling through Ikea with a toddler and twin babies in a double buggy when I glanced up and saw a Mum with the same but a good 3 years older. Mums of twins always connect even at a glance, so I smiled and asked her if it got any easier. I was so disappointed when she said it doesn’t get any easier, it just gets different… but she didn’t tell me any more. I’ve made a promise to myself to tell mums that it does get easier, because in my experience it does. I’m no longer tied to a four hour feeding regime and have 3 babies in my bed at night. It’s still tough (as you say pulling clean laundry out from two fronts is never easy) but with each progressive year it does get better.
Ali