AIBU to say I'm not having any more family holidays till DD is a bit older?

[ShootMeNowPlease]

Just come back from a weekend away with DH and 3-year-old DD. It was grim: DD is in full-on threenager mode, and we ended up leaving before lunchtime today because it simply wasn't worth trying to persuade her to do anything else. This is the second holiday this year that she's wrecked by being sulky, unwilling to go anywhere, messing around when we do get there, pretending not to hear us when we talk to her - I could go on. The first one was a bucket-and-spade holiday in Cornwall entirely for her benefit.

AIBU to say I'm taking my holidays on my own while DH looks after DD (and, obviously, DH can do the same), and we're not having any more family holidays till DD is something resembling civilised, because it's a sodding waste of time and money? It may be a long wait till she gets another one...

I agree as well with the idea that longer holidays are more worth it. Ds1 especially always takes a couple of days to adjust to new surroundings / routine, and he's an absolute whingy PITA until he does. So if we go away for a weekend , all we get of him is his bad side. But if we stay somewhere long enough to let him settle into it, we have a lot more fun overall.

Time to read unconditional parenting. It's not all supposed to be a constant battle! Go with go her flow for a bit.

Pre kids I thought the worst insult a child could say to a parent was 'I didn't ask to be born!'. Now I try to remember this when I am battling to get one of my kids to do something that I want them to do. They didn't ask to be born, I choose to have them for my own selfish reasons, and I have a responsibility to make them as happy as I can. It's not always easy to apply especially when sometimes you just need to be able to say no and for it not be challenged.

I think it depends what your expectation of a holiday is. If it's about having plenty of downtime, then a three year old can be challenging.

robin

i was a bit oversensitive yesterday.

We found that taking GP's along made the holiday worse. They were quite happy to take the lead on the few nice times muscled in and then left all the tantrums and early mornings etc to us. I just spent a week enabling 2 extea people to have a nice holiday while I took on an extra proportion of the shit bits. We were up at 5am, 17 knackerinf hours later we would finally collapse to be faced with "you should go out, enjoy some child free time".

Never. A. Fucking. Gain.

ragwort - you do have a point - we are pretty comfortably off and having a nice holiday is made a lot easier by throwing money at it.

Having said that I decided recently that we should have a nice cheap long weekend away camping. Once I'd priced up all the costs even before food it was more expensive on a per night basis than our 2 weeks all inclusive in the canaries. And we'd have all been in the same sodding tent! I'm sticking with my big villa, maid service, 4* AI!

I should also probably add that holidays are still cheap for us at the moment as dd doesn't start school until September.

Worriedkat - yes, we had a very similar experience. GPs being present is no guarantee of anything.

Totally agree about GPs. We drove PiL to Spain. It took only until the first petrol station to realise that far from taking GPs to look after children we had taken children to look after GPs!

Is there any grandparents to take with you?

We have news tradition starting this year in August. We rent a massive cottage/ barn conversion/ holiday home, and go with both sets of grandparents.

Tag team discipline, and on tap babysitting so DH and I can sneak off sometimes. As well as all the fun holiday stuff you get with small children.

Dd is only one and there are two more on the way ( also have sd 11) But it doesn't hurt to get prepared early

Sorry, brain fart.

Ahem....' Are there any grandparents to rake with you'

Holiday clubs are probably the answer. Heigh ho. Thanks for all the constructive suggestions, and I'm sure it's right that older parents find this sort of thing harder to cope with. I'm old, and tired, and DH is even older.

She's not in full-time nursery, by the way - she's in pre-school three hours a day. Starts school in September (turns 4 next month).

Could you increase her hours at preschool for this last bit before she starts school? It might be good as a transition into full time school and would give you more of a break.