In Northern Ireland our summer holidays are 9 weeks long! Most parents work and can’t just take that length of time off so letting them play and entertain themselves isn’t really an option for most people depending on what age they are. I do agree with the other poster re camps, I love sending mine to camps even though they are extortionately priced they love it and learn lots of good life skills and make friends.
Keeping kids cool is essential. And keeping them busy and entertained in the school holidays is essential for my sanity
Yeah I totally get camps etc that's an experience for kids, not talking about that but most people I know with kids it's at least weekly, but usually more frequent, activity, cinema, bowling, outing to Mcdonalds, trampoline park etc for the kids and their friends. Where I'm from summer holidays are 9-10 weeks as well but I guess it is different culture here with people working a lot more and not having family close by to help. Still though, surely it's possible to entertain kids without everything being a paid for exciting activity.
Yea I agree! My boys definitely prefer going to the forest for free getting mucked up to their eyeballs over going to the cinema
I hope they stay like this forever. They were actually complaining about the older boys at their camp today saying all they do is sit on their phones - ps the older boys are only 10!! Kinda sad really.I don’t think I did many exciting things at all! If I did it was a waste of money cos I don’t remember them
I think there’s a lot more pressure on parents these days than there was when I was a kid (I was in born 1990). They’re absolutely terrified their precious little darling is going to miss out on some life affirming experience if they’re not at 200 different activities. Unfortunately leaving kids to entertain themselves isn’t the “in” thing anymore. Everything has to be an experience (see birthday parties a disco and stale sausage roll in the church hall don’t cut it these days) I actually think this mindset is why so many teens and young adults are so messed up.
Yea I agree. I think this whole culture of social media makes it harder too because they all make tik toks and reels of their experiences at extravagant birthday dos or day trips and they all feel if they can’t compete with that then they aren’t cool or whatever. It’s really sad. Kids should be kids!
Yeah it does remind me a lot of the whole Easter egg displays things, tons of Christmas present etc. So much pressure on parents. I hope if I ever have kids I can resist the pressure but it must make the day to day just that little bit harder. No way i could afford all this tit though
A lot of it is facebook/Instagram fakery. Don't get taken in by it. I spent the day at the beach today and there were dozens of kids splashing in the sea, fishing in rockpools, building sandcastles, flying kites - all ages and not a smartphone in sight, and no parents videoing the whole 'day at the beach' experience for social media.
If it wasn’t for the rain, we wouldn’t have such gorgeous landscapesI love the rain.lying in bed with it hammering down
We had our radios, our cassette recorders & our bikes and the library. We were never bored.
Same in Ireland. 9 weeks summer holjdays. I roll my eyes at people saying they don't understand why the kids can't be left out to play. Unless you have kids, you have absolutely zero idea what you're talking about. It's really boring and irritating listening to childless people shite on about how things were done in their day.
Why is it different though? Totally get that, might eat my words if I do have kids but how is spending tons of money on taking kids to expensive activities a requirement these days? Would really like to know what's changed that this is now a thing
Was your mother a stay at home mum?
No but that has nothing to do with what my original post was about. I was purely talking about constantly providing kids with paid activities, like taking them to a cinema or bowling. Surely someone who can do that must have enough time off to actually go
as a childless person, have you simply considered leaving your 5 year old alone in the house à la Matilda?
I see a lot of Instagram mums who have the time to spend with their kids seem really afraid of letting them getting bored - as if that’s the worst possible thing that could happen? Or they make play really structured and just want to keep them constantly busy - but they don’t actually let them choose what they want to do or give them the opportunity to be bored.
Me and my brothers were born late '80s early '90s we use to love to make "radio stations" we had tape recorders that had space for two cassettes and we thought we was the bees knees with our own radio station
feel little sad for my kids cos they won't have this no matter how much I try, they'll look at me like I've just landedExactly, that's what I mean. Some boredom is good so you can learn how to be creative, how to entertain yourself, and how to deal with being frustrated due to boredom. But as soon as school holidays are close all I hear is moaning that the kids will be bored. Well maybe they should just cancel school holidays altogether if kids are so bored with them lol
