u/jazzeriah

I’m a stay-at-home dad to three girls, and we’re moving this week. I think I finally hit my limit tonight.
I’ve been running on 4–5 hours of sleep, staying up late every night packing, cleaning, and trying to get everything ready after the kids go to bed, then up again early the next morning.

Tonight we had a nice rooftop dinner with friends, but the kids barely ate. By the time we got home around 10:30, everyone was hungry again. I knew this would happen. So predictable.

I ended up in the kitchen making different quick meals for everyone—pasta for one, ramen for the younger two, then another plate of pasta for my wife. The kids picked at their food, complained a little, and didn’t really finish anything. After that, my wife asked for a kiwi, so I cut one up. She asked for a fork, and when I brought it, she said it felt sticky from the fruit. It wasn’t dirty—just a little juice, but in that moment it felt like one more thing going wrong.

By then it was close to 11:30, and I was completely drained. I was still trying to get the kids through brushing their teeth because if I don’t stay on top of it, it just doesn’t happen. I’m the only brush teeth enforcer. My wife just doesn’t do it. That’s when I was told I “ruined the evening” because of my tone. That really got to me. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t yelling. I was just exhausted. I was telling them all they had to brush their teeth at this point.

It feels like I spend all day trying to keep everyone fed, organized, taken care of, and by the end of the night I’m so worn down that even small things start to feel like failures. I know I’m not perfect, and I’m sure I could have handled parts of tonight better. I could “always” brush their teeth ten minutes earlier, but that would have been met with resistance as well.

I’m running on empty and tonight I just feel completely defeatfed. It’s beyond exhausting to be telling my kids they have to brush their teeth and my wife doesn’t even verbally back me up, she’s just now complaining how hearing me enforce this is bothering her. It makes me just feel that half the time I’m fighting an uphill battle. Ugh.

Any neighborhood.

I honestly think the hardest part about being a dad is being the one who keeps everyone else grounded while there’s no one keeping you grounded. You stay strong for your kids. You stay strong for your wife. You try your best to keep everyone calm when things fall apart. This is what dad’s do. But at the end of the day we’re only human. Who keeps us grounded? If no one then what keeps us grounded? What do you do?

Dads, how would you have reacted here and could you have paused yourself between stimulus and reaction?

I’m on a ferry today with my three kids, 10/8/5. They all want cup of noodles. I get them each one. We sit down at a table.

Then 10 decides to get up and move to a completely different spot on the ferry even though I told her not to. I said the same thing to 8, told her that the cup of noodles would spill and she needed to stay at the table. She immediately got up to follow 10 and spilled all the noodles.

Here’s where I should have paused, but I didn’t. I said some things I shouldn’t have. I swore. I was beyond frustrated and I was in fact angry, especially since neither 10 nor 8 listen to me and then the spill happens anyway. Also, half of the liquid was all over my clothes, but my main issue is them not listening to a single thing I’m saying.

I then helped her pick up the noodles off the tray, put them back in the container, and I made myself sit and calm down then. It was just noodles, but this trigger of my 10 and 8 year old 1) not listening to me and 2) my 8 year old listening to my 10 year old’s directive OVER me, it just absolutely infuriated me to no end. When this happens it’s like 10 is the be all and end all and I, their dad, do not exist.

Anyway, how would you have responded?

Hey Dads. We have an upcoming move. An hour away. We currently have both places. I have moved stuff on my own and will continue to do so. We also have professional movers at the end of the month.

My overall strategy is to just move stuff to the new place. My wife’s strategy is to sort, purge, and be very judicious about what we bring. However we ultimately have to empty out our apartment completely. We have three kids and a lot of stuff.

I realize these are two different strategies. However we have been away for two weeks and my wife has full time work when we get back and my kids are in different day camps with pickups and drop offs and I just don’t see how I can sort, purge, organize, and move stuff and set it up in the new house when it’s not like I have 12-hour days of uninterrupted time to do all of this.

What’s your best moving advice for a family of five?

It’s complete spillover from work into home. Crisis at work means suddenly the weather isn’t right, the kids didn’t do their reading (it’s only 3 pm though), basically everything you’ve done is also somehow wrong. It’s exhausting being the buffer for this…

Mine is somehow standing in my kitchen, cooking dinner for my family while my wife and kids are happily preoccupied nearby, pouring myself a glass of wine and having a little snack, maybe throwing on some quiet music in the background all while getting dinner ready for my family.

I had a realization while making dinner tonight.
I don’t think I have an identity outside of keeping our family running.

Somewhere along the way I became the person who remembers everything. The grocery list. The camp forms. The appointments. The lunches. The laundry. The bills. The toothpaste before we run out. The birthday gifts. The next Amazon order. The permission slips. The thing that needs fixing. Dinner.
The list never really ends.

None of those things are who I am. But together they’ve become what I do all day, every day.
I love my wife. I love my kids. I genuinely love being their dad. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
But sometimes I wonder who I am when nobody needs anything from me.

It’s easy to picture parenting as reading books, drawing pictures, playing outside, and making memories. Those moments are wonderful.
But those moments only happen because someone is quietly keeping everything else from falling apart.

What if you’re the person doing all of that invisible work? Does anyone else ever feel like they slowly became the infrastructure instead of a person?

My time as a SAHD has evolved to this. My wife has me do everything. I get I am the homefront. But I didn't check when report cards are issued electronically from our kids' school and alert my wife the day it happened? That's on me. It’s the end of the school year. The report cards get issued then.

House isn't in a basically professional clean state? That's on me. I have not been able to keep up with the entire house for some time, although dishes are always done, kitchen always clean, laundry always done, floors, surfaces, etc., but things like the kids' socks aren't always sorted, the toys are a mess in the little kids' room, etc., apparently *all* of that is on me. It’s unmanageable for one single person. I wouldn’t also get the grocery shopping, food prep, random errands, returns, etc., done.

We’re also moving. I’ve been managing two households for months. Driving an hour plus each way there to deal with things and get back in time for school pickup.

I'm also the sole driver. The only logistics coordinator. The only timekeeper. The only chef. The food parent. 98% of the time the only grocery store / errand runner. I could literally run a small hotel at this point.

We had a very stressful day today; my wife was MAD at me all day because a 2 1/2 hour round trip drive to where we're moving in a month wasn't possible by the time she was ready to leave after a work call and what she wanted to do in the house AND make it back in time for the last day of school pick up where there's a celebration for the 5th graders (my oldest) since they are graduating from elementary school.

I told my wife point blank once we set off for this journey we wouldn't make it back in time. She was livid.

Later tonight, she said I never got a job! Anything! I didn't do anything to get a job outside the home. I told her I barely ever even went to the gym and all my time was spent either helping her or our kids or taking care of all household tasks and any free time was literally spent grocery store runs, bringing a forgotten item to my wife at work (her work ID, happened multiple times), making an extra trip to the kids' school for something, doing all tasks and errands and basically acting as my wife's personal assistant (helping with expense reports, making lunch reservations, etc.) These are all manageable tasks, but my God, if I literally went and got any job, some other person would have had to take over my multiple "jobs" here at home.

How do you even begin to deal with it?

ETA: Kids are 5/8/10.

My time as a SAHP has evolved to this. My wife has me do everything. I get I am the homefront. But I didn't check when report cards are issued electronically from our kids' school? That's on me. House isn't in a basically professional clean state? That's on me. I have not been able to keep up with the entire house for sometime, although dishes are always done, kitchen always clean, laundry always done, floors, surfaces, etc., but things like the kids' socks aren't sorted, the toys are a mess in the little kids' room, etc., apparently *all* of that is on me.

I'm also the sole driver. The only logistics coordinator. The only timekeeper. The only chef. The food parent. 98% of the time the only grocery store runner. I could literally run a small hotel at this point.

We had a very stressful day today; my wife was MAD at me all day because a 2 1/2 hour round trip drive to where we're moving in a month wasn't possible by the time she was ready to leave after a work call and what she wanted to do in the house AND make it back in time for the last day of school pick up where there's a celebration for the 5th graders (my oldest) since they are graduating from elementary school.

I told my wife point blank once we set off for this journey we wouldn't make it back in time. She was livid.

Later tonight, she said I never got a job! Anything! I didn't do anything to get a job outside the home. I told her I barely ever even went to the gym and all my time was spent either helping her or our kids or taking care of all household tasks and any free time was literally spent grocery store runs, bringing a forgotten item to my wife at work (her work ID, happened multiple times), making an extra trip to the kids' school for something, doing all tasks and errands and basically acting as my wife's personal assistant (helping with expense reports, making lunch reservations, etc.) These are all manageable tasks, but my God, if I literally went and got any job, some other person would have had to take over my multiple "jobs" here at home.

How do you even begin to deal with it?

How would you go about resetting meal times given this situation?

My kids (8 & 10) barely eat breakfast. Something small. Fine. I pack them lunch for school and a snack. They frequently don’t eat that much at school and thus are starving when I pick them up in the afternoon.

I then have hot food for them in the late afternoon because they absolutely need it at this point.

Because of this, dinner is later, not 6:00 pm. Not 6:30 pm. My kids are then hungry for dinner later at like 8:00 pm or whatever.

I am convinced this is all because of lunch being non-existent at school.

This week is the last week of school. After this, I am absolutely resetting this horrible pattern. Then their dinner will be earlier and bedtime will be earlier.

What is the best way to do this? Any and all suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

I know, the parents set the bedtime, have her in her room lights low, quiet, etc. But what do you do when your child literally doesn’t go to sleep at night?

Dads, I could really use some advice.

I have three kids: 10, 8, and 5. My 10 year old has become incredibly hard to get to bed. It feels like she has no ability to shift into quiet mode at night, especially if she has had screen time earlier in the day. Roblox/YouTube seem to completely wire her brain.

The pattern lately is getting worse. We’ll do a full day — school, activities, dinner, bath/hair/teeth, younger kids to bed — and then my 10 year old will still be awake at 11, sometimes midnight.

It didn’t help my kids just had a four-day weekend from school (two admin days tacked on to a regular weekend).

She roams the apartment, turns lights on, looks for devices, asks for music, wants food, tries to get into her sisters’ rooms, and sometimes wakes them up after they’re finally asleep.

Last night I had taken all the screens away and hidden them. No movie, no YouTube, no Roblox, no late night food. I calmly held the line.

I got my younger two down. Then my 10 year old came into the room where my 8 year old was basically asleep, got into bed with her, woke her up, and wanted to play.

When I removed her from the room and told her she couldn’t wake her sister, she screamed and slammed the door. Extremely hard. A small bit of wood chipped off the top of the door. What the actual fuck.

Another night she was still up after midnight with almost every light on in the apartment, searching closets, probably looking for a device. I kept waking up to shut lights off and tell her she had to go to bed. Eventually she brushed her teeth and went to sleep, but by then my sleep was destroyed too.

I’m not trying to make this sound like she’s “bad.” I know she’s 10. I know kids struggle with transitions. But this is becoming unsustainable. It feels like she keeps “restarting the house” after everyone else is trying to shut down.

We have her pediatrician well visit coming up and I’m planning to bring this up: sleep drift, screen dysregulation, possible anxiety/ADHD/executive function stuff, and how to actually reset this.

For dads who have dealt with this: what worked?

Hard screen cutoff?
No Roblox on school nights?
Devices physically locked away?
Bedroom rules?
Earlier wake time/morning light?
Melatonin only with doctor guidance?
Behavior chart/consequences?
Something else?

I’m exhausted and I need a real plan, not just “be more consistent,” because I’m trying to be consistent and the house is still getting hijacked at night.

Between the towing, the fencing, the barricades, the police presence, and the road closures, the neighborhood currently resembles a prison yard designed by urban planners. Just trying to walk four blocks without feeling like I’m attempting a border crossing…

My wife is with the kids (10/8/5) on Sunday morning in the other room. She says she’s going to get a coffee. Kids are playing. Then she asks me to make her a coffee. She told the kids we’re going to get muffins and bagels. Now I’m making her the coffee. Kids are getting ready. Wife has asked 10 to read so 10 is first reading and then abandons that. Next thing that happens is my wife is in the bedroom, on her work laptop, now getting something done for work. Now she has said not to let the kids go near her while she gets the work done.

I am convinced there is no possible way other parents function like this. Wouldn’t most parents either be on as a parent or say, I need 30 minutes this morning while other parent does X with the kids so I can get a work task done?

Now wife is working, kids are playing but we’re all basically in limbo.

It’s just mind boggling.

Honestly are any other parents like this?