Our life feels chaotic to me, but particularly in term time our weeks are VERY consistent, DH travels a bit, but the kids have consistent sleep/wake, exact same morning routine every day (down to the same food), exact same chore / work expectations. School is predictable... We have after school activities mon-wed, but they are extremely consistent and generally only the child with the lesson goes out, the others play at home. They have more screen time than ideal. Could we be more perfect at discipline? Yep, sure could, I know I was spectacularly good at thinking before I spoke, carefully formulating consequences and absolute follow through when I had only one child and no health problems of my own. But still we have higher expectations and enforcement than much of what I see around us. And still we have a child with AS and one with ADHD.... Our biggest variability is endless Dr/psych/OT appts. And our chaos and struggles are almost always about just how hard it is to keep these kids organised and on time and looking "functional/normal" in their interactions with the world.
Oh and all the kids are on different, needs based, strictly controlled diets that help them enormously.
My youngest has the most variability in her days (two preschools, a nanny one day and ballet one day, every morning she asks "What am I doing today?"), she's my most NT child and LOVES this, she's always happy to be going somewhere (painfully extroverted) and is generally a happy easy child, she's well behaved, socially/emotionally delightful, gifted & funny - daycare and preschool LOVE her... And really she's received our "worst" parenting and most chaotic start to life. Despite my being less "on" as a parent she's my first child to make it to 3 without needing minor surgery for a facial injury, never has accident reports from daycare, doesn't throw herself into 6 feet of water for fun, or climb inappropriate things, break things, etc...it's astonishing how often you get those looks for being such a crap parent to a difficult-to-parent-child when in fact you work SO much harder for that child than the easy child... Noone blames my bad parenting and chaotic life for how friendly, happy, easy and delightful my third child is...
