The thing we don’t say out loud about the school holidays

It’s the half term holiday in the UK, and this can look very different in families like ours.

I know there’ll be parents reading this who have spent the last few days barely leaving the house. Because everywhere is too busy. Too loud. Too unpredictable. And for a child whose nervous system is already at capacity, that isn’t a break – it’s just a different kind of hard.

I remember when my child was much younger – still in the thick of daily battles around school attendance, multiple meltdowns, a level of volatility I barely had words for at the time. We had some semblance of a routine around the school run – whether we made it in or not, that structure existed and I misguidedly clung to it. And when the holidays came, it went.

What I didn’t understand then was that my child’s nervous system needed time to decompress. That one week probably wasn’t long enough for this little person who was so utterly overwhelmed by the world around them. That once the demands reduced, things might eventually begin to settle. I hadn’t quite grasped that yet. I was still learning. Still feeling the pressure of social conditioning I hadn’t fully unpicked. Still trying to figure out whether I was Plan A, B or C (if you don’t know what I’m referring to look up The Explosive Child by Dr Ross Greene, a truly life changing read).

So instead of understanding the holidays as potential decompression time, I experienced them as the loss of the one bit of structure we had. I was glued to my child 24/7. I had very real safeguarding concerns about their sibling. I was isolated. Exhausted in a way that went beyond tired.

And underneath all of that was something I didn’t say out loud for a very long time.

I dreaded the holidays.

Not because I didn’t love my child. I loved them desperately. But because I didn’t have the understanding yet, and I didn’t have the support, and I was managing something most people around me couldn’t begin to comprehend.

We don’t say this. We can’t. Because people who don’t live this life would judge us, and we can’t bear for our children to be painted in a bad light, and so we mask, and we muddle through, and we tell people we’re fine.

If any of this is where you are this week – I want you to know that I see it. That this is one of the things we don’t say out loud, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real, or valid, or desperately hard.

You are not a bad parent. You are a tired one, living a life that most people genuinely cannot imagine.

So here’s what I’m going to ask of you before this week is done.

Find one micro moment – just one – that is yours. Not a long soak in the bath. Not a spa day. Not anything that requires time you don’t have. Step outside for thirty seconds. Look at the sky. Breathe in, and breathe out – longer on the exhale. Do it three times.

And then tell yourself – out loud if you can: I am doing the best I can. And it is good enough.

Because it is. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. Even on the hardest days of this hardest week.

Take care of yourself. Even badly. Even imperfectly.