to be too selfish to let my kids go to the park after school?

[ZippysGob]

There's a park by the school. DC (8 and 5) like going there after school. Thing is, it's absolutely thronging with people at that time, and I'm always knackered after work, so usually we go straight home.
Is this horrible of me? Should I just suck it up?
We have a garden, and there's loads of playground action at the weekends.

What do other people not do which their kids would love to, because of their own preference?

I love a full playground when knackered. It's so easy. I either chat to someone I know while the dc play with friends, or sit quietly playing with my phone on MN

Compromise?! Go some days, but not every day? So yes, suck it up some days, but other days they come home.

It's really fun for the DC to play with OTHER children in a non-school environment.

Not particularly unreasonable. Maybe you could mister up the enthusiasm once a week or so?

Can you make up a flask of hot water at work, get a batch of those coffee sticks from the poundshop and neck while the children are playing. Maybe make it a once a week thing? Tbh I would go every day whilst it's dry. Huh.

YANBU I bloody HATE the park. I hate sitting there and either making polite conversation with some Mother I don't know or sitting bored witless while DD2 shouts "LOOK AT ME MUM!" over and over.

I do it about once a fortnight and don't like it at all.

Go home if you are tired and that's what you need to do. You need to look after yourself too. If the park weren't there you wouldn't give it another thought.

Take a book and a coffee? I hated the park when my kids were small and you had to watch/help/push the swing. But once they are older, and if its busy you can pretty much sit and ignore them.

It'll be winter soon enough.

Can you compromise and go some days or go but don't stay too long? If all their friends go then I can see why they'd feel they were missing out. In answer to your other question, I don't bake or get the paints out as often as the kids would like because it makes so much mess.

I hate going to the park after school. I can't handle the crowds or the noise, and I get stressed and tense. I have face-blindness so the children disappear off, and unless I have someone with me, I am unable to spot them again.

DS cries unconsolably every time we come to leave. I've tried a number of tactics to help him not wail at leaving time, but he can't manage it (SENs). So that adds to everyone's stress.

We don't go. The children have survived. We go home where we do a calming down routine then get on with homework and so forth and they go to other activities where they get to play with children outside of a school setting.

They go to the park on Sunday mornings when it's quiet, or DH takes them.

If it doesn't work for you, that's actually OK.

Half the fun for the kids is that their mates are there. Do it from time to time.

YANBU, I hate taking my kids to the park! One of them ends up hurt then they all protest when it's time to go, no matter how long we've been there. I do make sure we do loads of playdates and pretty much every single party every weekend to compensate!

Take a few more kids to the park, and ask that some mum takes yours somedays. That way you'll score brownie points by having a play date and have a few afternoons to yourself too.

A garden doesn't cut it for mine, they really like to play with OTHER kids you see.

I would suck it up occasionally - could you take a book or do something practical while you are there so you have either relaxed and decompressed from work or achieved something (pay bills, clear email inbox etc) and can feel as though the time was well spent?
Admittedly, mine isn't at school yet, but anything that tires him out gets my vote, so I might be biased!

Can you use it, say on a Friday, as a reward for good behaviour/doing something specific, all week? That way you all get something out of it.

Do it twice a week and make them designated Park Days, weather permitting. I was in this situation last year at school, and I wasn't always overjoyed either, but I ended up teaming up with another mum and we'd sit and gossip take it in turns to go to the shop for coffee and toffee crisps which we ate when the kids weren't looking I froze my arse off most days, and CBA quite frequently, but by the end of the year, I was quite enjoying it & had made some new friends

Swimming! I do do it, but not as much as I should. I don't have anything against swimming itself, but just hate the faff of having to wash your hair afterwards, trying to get a little one dried and sorted, helping them 'swim' rather than just being able to swim lengths, getting cold because you're hardly moving because you are helping them swim, horrible changing rooms...the list goes on and on. I don't mind in a hot foreign country, but that's about it.

Absolutely you are truly horrible!

It's not as if you've got up, made their breakfast and packed lunches, got them dress, ferried them to school, gone to work to earn money to feed and clothe them and keep a roof over their heads.

When you get home you're clearly going to kick back with a glass of wine and a magazine without giving a thought to helping them with homework, getting their P.E kits ready for tomorrow, making dinner, cleaning the house and generally running round after them is it.

I like the idea of Friday as park day but only if they've been good all week.