Friday 15 January 2016

January Blues


This week has been hard.
The Boys have hit a point this week where they are less motivated than normal to do their school work. I could possibly understand if it was something a little tedious and boring but it isn’t.
The topics this term have started off brilliantly and the boys were really excited and engaged about them last week.
However, this week it has been a fight to get them to sit still or even hold a pencil.
Excluding the difficulties in home school the boys have also been clashing with each other.
Usually they are thick as thieves and are a troublesome twosome side by side; the ultimate tag team, brothers and best friends against the world. Instead they had literally been tearing chunks out of each other.
They haven’t been able to even sit next to each other before I hear the high pitched whining voice come out of their mouths!
Although the boys are always good for me when it comes to a bedtime routine and are tucked in bed by 7 with no fuss. This week however I have seen sheer tiredness hit them by 6pm.
The difficulty then to keep them awake just that little bit longer has also been a real battle, knowing full well that if I let them go to bed earlier they would be up and awake at 5am, if not earlier. They just seem truly exhausted!
This got me thinking that there must be a reason behind it.


The only conclusion I can think of is that they are in a post-Christmas and back to school slump.
Realistically this isn’t surprising, are we, as adults, not a little depressed for the same reasons?
We are only a few days away from Blue Monday where apparently the world feels slightly more depressed than at other times of the year.
We have spent over a month preparing for Christmas, shopping, facing the maddening crowds and then the panic to make sure that our family time is perfect.
We have had time off work and broke our normal routine with family enjoyment, late nights and over indulging in food and drink. Just over a week later and we are back to work, back to early mornings, school runs, making lunches and the true concept of adult and parent life continues. Blue Monday seems to then be the hit of all of this.
We has a week to forcefully wake ourselves up and get our children ready and organised. We dragged ourselves back into a routine that I know a lot of people were dreading; especially when there were hundreds of Facebook status’ and Tweets saying exactly that.
A week on and we are just about used to a routine again. The weather is still dreadful and we still have dark morning and coming come in the dark despite it being around 5pm. Who wouldn’t feel slightly depressed, grumpy and tired?

So why should it be any different for our children?

I am hoping therefore that this is the reason for it and they are just over-tired, stressed and grumpy that the idea of sitting watching T.V and snacking on delicious goodies are now over.

What do you think?

Have you noticed a change in your child’s behaviour this week? Is it just the back to school depression?

3 comments:

Kim Carberry said...

The last couple of weeks has been hard....Getting back into a routine has been difficult and very tiring...I don't think the weather has helped at all. So grey and depressing. I will be glad when the summer is hear. x

Louise (Little Hearts, Big Love) said...

I think January is always a hard month - it's a bit dreary after all the excitement of Christmas and with gloomy days and dark mornings and evenings, I think it's no wonder that a lot of us (children included) are a bit grumpy. Hope this week will be a better one.

Travey @ Mummyshire said...

I think children can feel it as well as adults. January is always a challenging month after the decadence of December and getting back into any routine is hard. But on the positive side we are already half way through the month!