Summer hols and losing the plot

It’s kind of sobering when someone points out that actually, your child is not the he-devil you portray him as, but is actually suffering from an acute case of stressed-out-mother-neglect. Even more sobering when it’s true.

This is how things are at the moment.

I am insanely busy with work.

I have no childcare.

I have two children on school holidays who are incapable of being left unsupervised unless it’s in front of the TV.

I have a severe case of guilt about how much TV is being watched.

I find myself trying to fill up their days with fun stuff – cinema, river paddling, swimming, park – because I feel guilty.

Then it gets to 6pm and I feel guilty about the work I have neglected. I throw myself headlong into it, and then feel guilty about saddling Ian with bathtime/cooking/washing up when he has been working all day.

I keep ploughing on. Tom comes downstairs again and again and again. I ask him nicely to go away because I’m working. I ask him forcefully. I shout at him and throw in a swearword or two. The guilt multiplies.

Tom finally goes to bed. Not to sleep, but that is a battle I can’t be bothered to fight just now. I carry on working. I reach my limit; my eyes are tired, my brain is tired. I decide to go for a bath, or read a bit in the garden.

I feel guilty that I’m not using that time to work, or if not to work, to sort out the bombsite that is our house.

The guilt makes me do silly things that I regret as soon as I’ve done them.

Before the holidays, I felt like I was just beginning to get a hold of myself again, to accept that I am human with human limits, to cut myself a bit of slack.

Now I feel like I am getting everything so badly wrong.