How often do you take your kids to the park?

[itsraining2024]

Weekly seem likes too much? Every other week? Monthly? My kids aren’t that active…I want them to ride their scooters and bikes but they’re just not interested…

Most days, when they were young.

What do your kids like to do instead?

Every day after school but its opposite the school.

Probably 1-2 times during weekdays and 1-2 times over weekend.

so…often it’s 4 times a week!! I love the idea weekly is too often. How do you get your kids to run around and get some good exercise for free otherwise?!

How old? I took mine daily until they went to school and then several times a week through primary school.

More like daily! Sometimes more than once a day!!

Daily when there’s no school!

Almost every day.
The benefits always outweigh the effort.
We all enjoy large outdoor spaces, trees, birds.

The walk is sometimes active - with balls, fishing rods, swings. And sometimes lazily relaxing with reading, drawing and eating on a rug..

When we can. I don't create expectations like every day because it isnt always convenient. We do have a garden and some local outdoor space where the kids can play under minimal supervision but as for going to the actual park, it really depends on what we have on. I'd say we go regularly. I doubt a month passes where we don't visit and in the warmer months, it will be a couple of times a week.

Mine are 15 now so never and I have to admit I miss it a bit.
We went most days.

We have a really lovely par less than a 5 min walk from our house which helped.
It's well lit but we used to go down with torches in the winter.
If DP wasn't working away one of us would stay home and clear up after dinner and the other would take the to the park to runn off some steam .
Oh gosh I really miss those days now.

Most days!

We used to live on a housing estate and would go to the park pretty much daily.
We are a bit more rural now so less often, perhaps once a month. My DC are constantly on their bikes/scooters on the driveway though!

Rarely. We prefer using the garden or going for a bike ride.

3/4 times a week usually, play and run around the garden and street every day and usually a big long walk once a week. DS is 4.

Most days - but I live in a city so have a tiny garden, and countless parks / playgrounds walkable from my house.

So it’s less of a planned activity, and just part of day to day life.

Pretty much everyday.

Hardly ever. I hate the park. We only ever go if we are meeting friends there really. But they walk the dog in the fields/woods/along the river with us at least 2 week nights and both days on the weekends. Plus play rugby twice a week, swim once a week. And they are in school/breakfast club/after school club/collected by grandparents every school day so there isn't really time for a park trip in the week. We could go at the weekend I suppose but they don't need the extra exercise, I hate it and they don't really love it 🤷🏼‍♀️

Mine lived at the park when they were younger. In the summer we'd walk home from school and never get home because we would reach the park and play and chat until DH walked up the road to see if we still existed. There may or may not have evolved a weekend and holiday habit of certain mothers drinking g&t at the park while their children played.

I miss that now they are grown. We're still all friends but hardly see each other.

Mine are very busy doing football, rugby, cricket, gymnastics etc and they love playing in the garden so not hugely often. They are active lots of the day though so if they weren’t doing so many activities they’d go more.

every couple of weeks with my four year old. But we do tonnes of other stuff. Days out in London, we have trampoline park membership and one for a big adventure soft play, he’s always out and about. Scoots everywhere. Just going to the park all the time is boring.

Generally both weekend days, unless the weather was terrible (sorry, park in pouring rain isn’t for me no matter how good the waterproofs are - gives me covid lockdown flashbacks!!) or we have a big day out planned eg visit to NT property type place or visiting family. Often a day out would be somewhere with a park anyway though.

We don’t always go to the same park though…we have a tiny one 5 mins walk away and a good one 15 mins walk away, then 2-3 others within a 10 minute drive which we go to less frequently.

Summer holidays, 4 times a week I’d guess. I hate sitting round the house all day! My kids love it though and whinge about walking anywhere or cycling more than 15/20 mins.

Weekly seems like the bare minimum in decent weather, hardly excessive! Unless you have such an enormous garden that they can get enough exercise there

I imagine it depends on your accessibility to parks, your outside space etc.

We have a small terrace but live 1 min walk from a little park / community garden, 5 minutes from a bigger park and an adventure playground, 10 minute walk from another play park and a 20 minute walk from a splash park. We also have a massive park that people travel from miles away 20 minutes in the other direction. So when they were little it was often at least 1 park a day. Often 2 or even 3!! We used to do one park in the morning and another in the afternoon and maybe back to the little park for our ice cream in the evening when it was good weather.

Now they are older we do more bike rides / canal walks / activities but DD's (late primary) still like the park after school so we go at least 2 afternoons a week in good weather.

It depends on lots of things, we have a big garden and the park isn't very close so not that often, but I grew up with no garden so we went to the park a lot. Also depends how much organised activity your kids do.

What age are your kids? If you want them to be active and outdoorsy, park or otherwise, then you are best starting, well, at about 1ish.

If you've left it til they're 6+ then you might have to go all-in on removing devices etc and making the outdoors super exciting. And you'll probably need to stock up on appropriate clothes if your idea of frequency is less than weekly...