Do you still entertain your 10yos in the holidays?

[HeyThoughIWalk]

Talking to a friend today, who has a 10yo and an 8yo. She's a teacher, so they're all off school/work now for the holidays.

She was telling me that she has made a calendar of something to do every day. Her sister is also a teacher and has 2 kids (I think around 6 & 4) and they have planned something for every day until they go back to school. She was complaining about the hassle of organising all this, and the cost. The things they have planned are stuff like ice skating, swimming, going to local attractions like museums, the zoo, and stately homes, and some days at the park etc.

I have pre-school kids, and I plan a few things for the summer - maybe swimming, a day at the farm, and a picnic at the local park. But mostly I just expect them to amuse themselves in the garden, or take them to a playground if it's a nice day and they fancy it; if there's a long spell of wet weather and we're getting fed up indoors, we might go to a cafe or the library or something, but it's spontaneous.

I think I'd expected that but the time DS is 10, I won't need to organise much entertainment at all. I imagined I'd be trying to persuade him to come for a day out, not planning them to keep him amused.

Is it unusual to organise your kids' holiday time to such an extent? Does it depend on their personality? If I neglect them now, will they learn to entertain themselves and save me the pain in years to come?

It depends on the parent and the children. I like to have a vague plan in place so it doesn't seem overwhelming having all the blank time ahead of us, so there are a few things on the calendar. But I've already said to my DCs today, I have played with you for a while, now entertain yourselves. I like sitting with a magazine or whatever just listening to them do their own thing. They have to be bored sometimes to learn to be creative I think.

My DCs are 8 and 5. I expect in a couple of years the eldest might go to the park with a friend.

One last thing--I'm also a teacher and generally we like to plan ahead 🙂

Yes & no -

My dd is 10.5 & is doing a dance workshop for a week & after that we'll be having 2-3 days a week of organised stuff & a few days just at home, she likes time to play in her room on her own, usually setting up dolls/lego/playmobil figures etc.

I find if I don’t organise things, my 10 year old would become physically melded with his xbox. Something every day sounds a bit much for me personally, but yes entertaining kids gets far more expensive as they get older.

My dds are 8 and nearly 10, and we plan so much as in, we’ll go here, would like to go there, book a lesson/club on a certain day. Some days we just chill. We’ve planned everything around our two week holiday.

What sort of age would they start to have friends round for a day, or go to someone else's house to play? My friend's DD doesn't seem to see her friends at all over the holidays.

I used to have rough plans, mainly because I have an only child & he loved being with other children so I would arrange for him to go to holiday camps (cheap/free ones) and play dates with friends. We never spent much money, there’s loads you can do cheaply if you have the time & energy to research it.

Every day?! What’s wrong with having dossing days at home?

Mine are older but I never planned stuff everyday. Kids don’t need to be entertained, and it’s good for them to learn how to entertain themselves. Also, good for kids to be bored sometimes.

yes at 10 the summer is a very long time and they still need some entertaining- every day is a bit overkill tho

My DS would have friends round from age 3 (obviously I had to arrange it & they were usually my friends’ children) but we would take it in turns to entertain each other’s children which meant we got a free day out of it ourselves .

I think until secondary school you still need to organise things to a degree. We don’t have a day by day calendar but at the start of the summer we write a big list of all the places we’d like to go/ things we’d like to do: museums, parks, National Trust type places, cafes they like, theatre trip etc etc. We book some stuff that’s ticketed in advance and then day by day we pick whether it’s a mooching about day or whether we’ll do an activity from our list. They also have some meet ups with friends but everyone’s away at different points over the 6wks so that can be hard to organise. Don’t forget older kids also have later bedtimes - 7am until 8.30pm or whatever is a long time to entertain yourself.

We plan something most days even if it’s a run around at the park or a supermarket shop. If we’re at home, we do something too even if it’s a bit of baking.
They have plenty of down time but I really dislike 6hrs on the Xbox so I try to help them avoid it.

I'm self employed with an 11 year old. I mix my days with work and ds either helping me, playing, or playing out on our street with friends, and doing stuff together. It can be something as simple as today, we went for a walk and stopped off at a park. He is used to entertaining himself for short periods while I work. I think it would be different if I had two children who were liable to fall out. I am also fortunate to love on a quiet cul-de-sac where there are a couple of other children that are a similar age and they all get along well.

I don't plan something for every day but we tend to do something every day. We don't necessarily go out for the whole day. Quite often it is just for the morning or the afternoon. They have plenty of time to amuse themselves and to play outside over the summer.

I have a plan for nearly every day of the holidays and dc of similar ages. I'm working one or 2 days each week so obviously booked childcare/clubs to cover most of those, the rest are being covered by friends so I've then booked in tbe reciprocal play dates.

DC have got camps for their groups like beavers and brownies,. sports training days, and we have holiday meet ups with old friends that have been booked in for months, plus our actual holiday and trips to grandparents...

I love the idea of long lazy days and empty weeks stretching ahead of us, but in reality that level of unknown would cause me a lot more problems than being over scheduled!

My oldest dc is nearly ten and likes to do something every day and likes to know what we have planned. She's not v keen on drifting. The younger 2 are much happier to hang out at home.

Horses for courses.

I try to arrange something with ds every day, preferably outside. Might be cycling or picnic or just a water fight in the garden. If I didn’t, he’d spend 10 hours a day on his Nintendo.

Another teacher here, we roughly plan what we are going to do, otherwise well waste the time. It’s a long time to be off without a rough idea, DD is an only child and I’m a single parent so I also try to make sure she sees her friends at least once a week.
Block out time on the calendar for
overseas holiday,
Any extra curricular still running or extra workshops,
Free events in the community, fetes etc
A weekly trip to the library for the reading challenge and any events their
Cinema and theatre trips if there’s anything we want to see.
We live near the beach so fill up extra time there or at the local pool as DD swims free.

We don’t necessarily do every thing on the list but its good to know what is happening so we can go if we want to.

I live for the summer holidays and the chance to do all the things with the dc that school gets in the way of. We usually have a bucket list, and it’s amazing how fast time flies by so a certain amount of scheduling is necessary.
For me it’s not about entertaining them as much as spending time together or exploring something new together.
At 9 and 10 mine can pitch in with the housework in the morning and take a turn at preparing lunch as well as read their library books alongside me of an afternoon so it’s not comparable to the full on child management of the toddler years.
It’s not necessarily very spendy though. There are lots of free options if the weather is halfway decent.

Where I live, all the kids just play out with their friends from dawn til dusk. As I used to do when I was that age.

Yes. My eldest is at uni now and my youngest is 12 and I do stuff with both of them. So with my youngest it's a few lunches out to restaurants we like, cinema trips, bike rides and a trip to a wildlife park. With the eldest it's lunches out and some shopping trips

I don't do stuff with them every day of course but yes we do things. Why wouldn't you?

I'm a teacher and enjoy the time chilling out. My two are 11 & 14 and have always enjoyed a mix of pj days, local parks/meeting up with friends and usually one planned activity a week. It used to be parks, museums but now it's usually the cinema. We go abroad for a week too.
The holidays are when we all get to have a break from routine. My children would have hated having to get up for planned activity every day.

Mine are 13 and 15 and we still plan stuff - in termtime there's little free family time as they do sports and homework at the weekend as well as meeting friends. In the holidays its a mix of sports and drama camps, seeing friends, days out (beach, NT properties, trip to London, sometimes just shopping or bowling, cinema, lunch at McDs) as well as quiet days at home. Mine generally don't need any persuading to do this sort of thing as a family still.

I think if you have pre-school children, then 8 and 10 sounds very old. But once you have an 8 and 10 year old (and blink and you will have!) you'll see they're still babies!

They DO get more independent. By that age, they may well have holidays and clubs.

But they're also increasingly more fun to spend time with.

With mine (only child) the more independent she got (which I celebrated) the more I missed her. She's 17 now, and I ADORE it when she wants to hang out with me (she usually doesn't)..

Yes, of course they should have independent play AND lazy days. But one of my most glorious things is when my DD wants to spend time with me... it's an honour now.

Also, as a rule of thumb, in primary school, you're probably going to know most of the other parents/families. And you're probably going to live quite close to each other.
In secondary, not so much. So in secondary school they start organising their own social lives. But in order for them to be enabled to do that, you need to model to them how to organise playdates, etc..

Make the most of the control you have, because you will miss it when they organise the most hideously impractical things and expect you facilitate it (hypothetical example:... "New friend lives on a farm 20 miles away and is having a sleepover. It's boys and girls. I'm 12. I don't know if there are tents or if they're inside or outside. I've forgotten my toothbrush. No, I don't know the parents. Can you drop me there and pick me up tomorrow morning? And can we also take 7 other children you've never heard me mention before now? Yeah, I think their parents said it was fine")

I think it is too much and they don't need all the planned stuff. We never had it and think they need down time as well. My 14 year old is still asleep, I have a ten year old also. We will just be hanging out at home this morning while i do some jobs ready for going away next week. then we'll go out for a walk or take books to a cafe later for a bit. maybe get pizza.