I may sound awful but does she try really? She surely does the bare minimum by keeping them alive
I don’t see her as the type to have a proper routine, I don’t see her as the type to be feeding her kids healthy meals and cooking the same times everyday. Amber is a very extremely lazy parent I think and that’s why everything is in chaos. That isn’t even digging her out it’s just fact. Whether it’s mental health related or not or her being overwhelmed it is true that she does the bare minimum. It’s not even as if she has a fulltime job and is working all the time she’s home all day when they’re both in fulltime school. She has all the tools to make her life better. Yes all well and good her going on some mountain walks but focusing on getting her home straight and everyday routine with her kids will do all of them a world of good. I just think she needs to be surrounded by better people or someone to give her a reality check in the right way. Even if she hired someone to straighten her house out or started fresh by moving somewhere new. Last season she was so focused on dating etc when it would be more positive for the show to encourage her to sort her house out
While I agree with most of what you said the meal times I don’t think is as much as issue personally as my child is await assessment for autism and adhd I kind of leave it up to my kiddo decide when she’s ready for dinner like now she had at 4:30 tomorrow she might have it at 5 due to how school do snack times morning snack, lunch afternoon snack at about 1:30-2:30 . But i think she just yells way too much and if either of the boys have autism I know they’re currently only looking at adhd currently but autistic children tend to hate loud sounds and struggle regulating their emotions. I have to put a weighted blanket around my little one to calm her down.
Routine is definitely key for adhd kids though and I feel she’d deal a lot better if she had routine for herself. My house isn’t spotless but it’s tidied every day even if my kiddo walking into a tidy house she tends to come in calmer. It’s also better for my mental health I like the saying tidy area tidy mind. I think if amber had a routine and even just a small to do list she’d handle things a lot better.
My routine is get kiddo up, have some cuddles, let her have some tablet time while I make breakfast and her lunch, breakfast, brush teeth, wash face, get dressed, do hair and she has a bit more tablet time while I get dressed. Drop her at school and then start my to do list which I have a set list of jobs that I do every single day, so make beds and hoover upstairs, empty/fill dishwasher, wipe sides down, clean cat mess, hoover, mop. Living room straighten up, hoover this massively helps keep on top of everything in the house then I have set days for peoples washing so Monday is bedding and towels, Tuesdays is my partners washing, Wednesday is little ones and Thursday is mine and Friday my partner finishes early so it’s coffee date and my partner does the folding on Saturday and we do a house reset together on Sunday which really it’s just same as I do in the week but he works on the living. Room while I do the kitchen. It was hard to get in a routine but it’s doable. You have to brute force it even on days when you don’t want to.
I feel her feelings and frustrations and stress leak on to the boys because look how they were for ste he was chilled and relaxed.