One Of Those Days

I love my children. I love the fact that we home educate. But some days? Some days, I really, honest to goodness, cannot be bothered. With anything. Sometimes that works fine and the kids are happy to take themselves off and play and amuse themselves. Others, like today, they are also feeling in a funk and then it's a whole different ball game. It's been a manic couple of weeks; birthdays, visitors, other people's birthdays, dance rehearsals etc etc. It's all been fab, but today we are all exhausted and grumpy and counting down the hours until bed time.

This doesn't mean that home educating is bad, or that we've made the wrong decision, or that we're raising a pair of monsters. (though by goodness, there may have been times today when the thought has crossed my mind!) It just means we're having one of those days that everyone has, where you just have to work together, get through it as best you can and pat yourselves on the back when you all get to the end of it in one piece.

So what helps in those times when your kids want constant interaction and you don't? As the adult of the piece, it falls to me to get us through this with as few tears as possible, however much I feel like curling up in bed and leaving them to it.

The first thing I have to resign myself to is that the day will be one of doing the bare minimum. Housework for a start has been abandoned. I got some washing out on the line, and I washed the breakfast dishes up. But that's it. I could try getting the hoover out or dusting the dining room, but that would be a certain recipe for kids arguing, me shouting and everyone ending up more grumpy than we started.

Leaving the house (always something of a battle at the best of times due to everything being so Shiny and Pretty and Distracting) is also off the cards. Yes, it's a brilliantly sunny and beautiful day, but that won't matter a jot if we're too busy arguing with each other to enjoy it.

Realising that there are only a finite number of hours in the day and that chances are tomorrow we'll all be back to normal again is a huge bonus. Days like this are the exception rather than the norm, and just knowing that is that little extra push to keep on going.

Staying calm. Being shouted at by an irate six year old for the fiftieth time because I couldn't read her mind can be intensely frustrating at the best of times, and is, quite frankly, annoying as hell when you're tired and grumpy yourself. Hugging rather than shouting back seems to be doing the trick,; she stomps off, I leave her to it, and she comes back a short while later for a cuddle and we start again. Rinse and repeat. Today is about coping, back to basics.

With lowered/non-existent expectations, , it's actually turned out to be an okay day. We've done bubbles in the garden (courtesy of some fab little bubble packets from a party bag yesterday), played Planes, Space Race and Pirates of the Caribbean Top Trumps, (great for getting to grips with numbers and good reading practice) experimented with pavement chalks, (writing and art all in one!) played noughts and crosses (drawing and writing and strategy rolled into one) and hangman (writing, spelling and reading). Oh and we made really cool goop with cornflour and water that is both solid and liquid, but that will be another post on its own.

They are now running around upstairs shrieking and coming up with ways to torment Rapunzel. She's a doll, it's okay, and much better than tormenting each other. And I'm taking a moment to have a drink and a sit and write this blog post. Later, I might even get to do a Zumba DVD workout while the kids have some tablet time, but I'm not going to count on it. We'll have tea, read, books, they'll go to bed, and Mummy will have a glass of wine and recharge ready for whatever comes tomorrow.

(I've also learnt that even on Days That Need To End there is room for fun – when you can spend ten minutes with your six year old nearly wetting themselves laughing because they've guessed “Butterxly” (say it out loud) as a word in Hangman, it can't be all bad.)

(That one was MONKEY - it was BUTTERFLY that caused the giggles!)