Dad accurately describes the chaotic school schedules of kids with hilarious doodle

Parenting is possibly the hardest unpaid job out there and once your kids get enrolled in schools and various other activity classes, parents can hardly catch a break. Juggling everything from running errands of the household and prepping meals for the kids to dropping and picking them up from school seemingly consumes your whole life. At certain points, parents might feel like giving up.

Well, comedian and dad Dustin Nickerson (@dustinnickersoncomedy) is explaining the struggles of having multiple kids and keeping up with their chaotic schedules with the help of some funny stick-figure drawings.

Nickerson decided to explain the frustrations of driving his kids back and forth between school and other extracurricular classes with a rough doodle and a pinch of comedy. "I have three children that go to three different schools," Nickerson says during an episode of his parenting podcast "Don’t Make Me Come Back There." Along with Melissa, his co-host and wife, Nickerson shares how his three kids are in elementary, middle and high school, respectively.

On a whiteboard, Nickerson draws three stick figures to represent his three kids. "Look, they each get progressively less happy as they get older," he jokes. "That was Melissa's artistic choice." He draws a few lines between the stick figures and their respective schools drawn on the other end of the whiteboard to show the mundane routine of dropping each kid at their school and then picking them up. He draws more lines back and forth to show that as a parent, he has to drive his kids to after-school activities as well.

"Each one of these kids also has an after-school activity in a different location than the school. At a bare minimum, that is 24 one-way trips," he continues. "Five times a week," Melissa quips. "You are an Amazon driver, but the package hates you," Nickerson jokes at the end as his wife giggles.

Some people wondered why the Nickerson family is not sending their kids in school buses but other netizens explained that a lack of availability of drivers doesn't help the situation. On top of that, the jumbled schedules of each kid make it more difficult for parents to find an effective solution for sending their kids to school on school buses.

Countless parents on the platform could resonate with Nickerson's dilemma behind the wheel and some netizens even shared their woes in the comment section. @jesssandpnw wrote, "Me cruising down the same stretch of road no less than eight times a day, and the kids have the audacity to complain about the music I’m playing." @nopee037 commented, "I enjoy you explaining the consequences of life choices so simply." @jmiles03 wondered, "It always surprises me how many people have kids without thinking about things like this." @brittanyalaena shared, "Parenting hack. Become a teacher for the hours and then realize you’re never seeing your kids in other seasons than summer."

Nickerson might be sprinkling a dash of humor while describing the hardship of driving kids around but he isn't entirely far away from the reality either. According to a report published by StudyFinds in 2023, it was revealed that almost 65% of parents spend at least 30 minutes driving every day, with 12% spending more than three hours each day behind the wheel.