u/Trick_Article5823

I work full-time, married and have 2 small children ages 4 and 1.5.

I manage a small business. Heavy on responsibility and also have the heavy responsibility that comes with motherhood. I have diagnosed ADHD and when I'm medicated I am much better and my productivity is great.

I solo parent most weekends after working all week due to my husband's work schedule. He starts around 6:30am and isn't home until 3:30pm. Weekends are a slog. I am exhausted from the work week, my kids don't sleep past 6am and one still wakes in the night. Even medicated, I'm finding it difficult to combat the tiredness and the desire to just couch rot and switch off.

I am the world's worst doom scroller. I have no idea what it is I seek from it. The need to disconnect from what's around me or to find excitement through other people. I have no clue but I hate how much I'm addicted. I need Instagram for work purposes otherwise I'd delete it. Facebook Messenger is my highest form of communication through friends and family so I need it. I don't have tick tock or any other social media platform. I basically just switch from Facebook to insta, to googling things, to Reddit and back to insta again. I can't focus, since becoming a mum I cannot turn my brain off, I forgot how to watch a movie. I can't watch TV on my own, I don't watch TV or Netflix shows or sit in front of the TV at all. But I can sit and scroll on my phone and waste hours. I used to read books and I can't even do that. My attention span is absolutely shocking.

On weekends I feel it can take me away from my kids. Sure I do everything all day for them like cook, clean, get them dressed, teeth brushed, take them to the parks, I even play with them but I hate the idea that they may think my phone is more important than them. I don't know how to break the habit. My husband and I are usually keeping in contact all day, sometimes I'm not even scrolling but I'm talking to him via text.

I miss the feeling of being present and I really miss whatever the hell I was doing or who I was before phones came along. Monday to Fridays I have no time to waste on my phone. I have both kids and myself to get ready for school, daycare and work. I then work all day, drive home and by that time it's straight into dinner bath and bedtime for the kids, I usually haven't even taken my phone out of my work bag until the kids are in bed. So there's no issue for the week. Weekends though are hard. I've tried not being on my phone for the first hour of the day. I try to get up before the kids (before 6am) for a hot shower, get dressed and have a hot cuppa before they get up, I'm pretty consistent with this. I have a morning snuggle with them, but as the day progresses and my exhaustion and tiredness gets worse, I lose all motivation and switch off and end up on my phone. We have no family around for any help so everything is managed and juggled by us alone. What is everyone doing for a screen detox? Do you put your phone in a locked box?

I'd also love to know if anyone else is in the same boat and did life feel much better after detoxing from the phone screen?

I can't say if my child is "gifted" or not and frankly that doesn't really mean much to me at all.

My son turns 4 in two weeks. I don't have an entire group of kids around his age around me and I don't like to make comparisons but what I have noticed is my child seems "different" from the range of kids I have been exposed too.

We've always been told how incredibly smart he is and we know this. His speech from 2.5+ has been incredibly advanced. His comprehension is amazing. What's even more impressive to people than that, is his memory retention. This kid asks 1 million questions a day and when you give him an answer. He'll remember that forever, often he'll even challenge you on that answer.

He's been able to do puzzles from the age of 2.5/3 and sometimes without even following the picture guide. My husband and I just look at each other like wow okay. He's obsessed with books and his imagination and creativity is endless. He's not someone that will sit and play with cars, trucks or build duplo and Lego. He's a kid who will use what he's got and tell stories. The daycare educators and owners constantly tell me that all the other kids sit and listen to him tell imaginative stories and how amazing his imagination is.

Now...the other side and what makes parenting challenging. I treat him like a typical 4 year old, I try to parent him as if he's a 4 year old because developmentally that's where he is. But he's intelligence for his age doesn't seem to match that sometimes and I've struggled knowing what to do. Particularly with discipline and boundaries.

He can and will manipulate, he understands exactly what he's doing and sometimes it works. He's not a boisterous loud and a tantrum throwing child, he's smart, sneaky and will find a loophole in things you try to say. He'll debate. He's extremely strong willed. My mother in law says he reminds her so much of my husband. My husband is incredibly intelligent and eloquent with his words. She found that challenging when he was a child and would often say that with him, it was all mind games. I see this in my son.

He does what he wants to do. Even at school, his teacher has struggled with his strong willed defiant character and has constantly made mention of that to us. She asked me if he does puzzles at home because the class glued a picture that was cut up into puzzle pieces of a bear onto a paper and my son's was all over the place. I know for a fact he can do puzzles and I know for a fact he could have glued it back together properly but he just played dumb and didn't doq it because he didn't want too. I told her yes he's got heaps of puzzles at home and he enjoys them. She said "good because I was very worried" and I'm thinking the only worrying thing is how difficult it is for him to be pushed into any kind of submission. He knows better. He just chose not too. He's not into arts and crafts, he probably found it boring.

My husband and I both have diagnosed ADHD. We've been able to see signs of this in our son early. I am hyperactive and my husband is inattentive and it's clear my son has both. He has a few sensory issues that come out through food so he basically will only eat a range of 10 things. We have started OT therapy for this and she sees signs of ADHD as well.

He's not a wild child. He's very polite, sweet, the most perfect big brother. He's such a beautiful boy but I find it difficult figuring out the right guidance and parenting that works for him.

I'm curious if anyone else is in a similar situation. Kids play together at the park. My child prefers the company of 1 or 2 people and not a whole class and the other day he asked me why this girl at the park kept coming up to him, I said "because she wants to play with you" and he said "I don't want her to keep coming up to me"

He refuses to make effort with "friends" is perfectly content in his own company unless it's his cousins. People will say "morning!' and he outright refuses to respond.

His behaviour sometimes doesn't match up to his Intellect. He's such an endearing, particular little human that even me (his own mother) finds difficulty in understanding him.

My little one is almost 14 months. It's ironic because as a baby from about 0-5 months he'd put himself to sleep independently anywhere, anytime. I always made an effort to put him down in his bassinet when he fell asleep as well as to not cause sleep habits. Everything was looking positive, he woke every 2-3 hours to feed but that was age appropriate.

Even now it's age appropriate that he wakes in the night and I'm okay with that.

What I'm struggling with is since about 6 months old, he's unable to fall asleep independently any more. He needed to be rocked, shushed and patted all the way to dream land before we transferred him to his cot. My back can no longer handle it, he's older, he's aware and if he even so much as sniffs the fact I'm putting him to bed he'll absolutely lose his shit. Thrashing about so hard in my arms that I can't even physically contain him without the risk of dropping him. So I put him into his cot to thrash instead.

This is my second child and so none of its my first rodeo however my first had one might of ferber method training at 6 months old and never needed help getting to sleep again. This one....nothing is working.

Co-sleeping doesn't even get him to sleep and staying asleep. Overtired, under tired, normal tired. Earlier bedtime, later bedtime. Longer wake windows, shorter wake windows. White noise, no white noise, black out, we've offered like 3 different loveys in which he just throws out of the cot and doesn't want. Bottle of milk, no bottle, too hot too cold. We've tried the Ferber method for two weeks straight, we've tried a gentler approach from an expensive sleep consultant. We even tried CIO.

Nothing has even remotely worked unless I pick him up and rock him all the way to sleep. The endless hours I've sat on the nursery floor in pitch black with my head melted into the cot slates bum patting not knowing how long I'm going to be sitting there for. Crawling out on all fours in hopes he doesn't sense me leave the room. I'm exhausted. For those wondering about the sleep training methods used...we had to stop because he'll just cry until he vomits. We tried 3 different versions to no avail.

I don't even care if he wakes in the night (last night he was awake from 2:30am-4am straight with a split night). He's on one nap now because two naps meant he was up all night long. He's currently waking an average of twice a night which I can deal with. It's much better than it used to be. It's the bedtime battles. I'm currently sitting here writing this with earbuds in to drown out the protesting cries while my husband tries to get him down for bed. So far it's been going for 20mins now.

I'm genuinely over this stage now. He's not hungry he's had a full day of food, he's just SO DAMN ATTACHED to me that he literally cannot sleep without me rocking him. Even then he'll protest because of his HUGE fomo issue and not wanting to sleep.

I don't know what else to do, it feels like there's no end in sight.