Kids refusing to go on weekend breaks and holidays!!

[Stressedoverkids]

We have 4 Dc and me and Dh love to travel have weekends away etc

Dd1 is 18 and no longer wants to go - fair enough she can stay home alone.

Ds1 is 16 - he can stay at home with Dd1.

However now the younger two are also refusing to go and when we make them go they complain and fight the whole time and ruin it for everyone.

AIBU to be really upset and frustrated by this!

I really don't want to spend the next ten years unable to do what I want because of two ungrateful children.

Ds doesn't want to leave his playstaion. Dd doesn't want to leave her friends and is bored with just Ds.

I have just cancelled this weekends hotel booking and I am not happy!

Because grandparents (OP says they exist) like being with grandchildren, Everyone. And that way everyone's happy, including the parents who get a cheaper, childfree break. It's called win/win.

Is it spoilt and entitled for someone to say they don’t wish to go on holidays? My sil hates going on holiday - she refuses all trips and her family go without her, she far from being spoilt! And by the time kids are in their teens they will almost certainly (we hope) developed their own views on how they wish to spend their time which will often not be in agreement with how their parents wish to spent theirs.
What is the point of your holiday - what are you hoping to achieve, what are your objectives? Does forcing your kids to go on a holiday help to meet those aims?

OP-what sort of weekends away are you wanting to do?

We go away for a couple of villa/pool family holidays a year, plus a weekend or two of yurt type camping. All kids come (11/15/17) and are happy to do so. WiFi is around and they use it when they want.

Because grandparents (OP says they exist) like being with grandchildren, Everyone.

I know many people who are grandparents. Most of them have a great many commitments. Caring for ill/elderly family members. Work. Volunteering. Classes. Pets. Own holiday arrangements. They don't exist just to be available for child sitting services as and when required.

(I have known some grandparents who have been guilted into missing or giving up pre-arranged activities they enjoyed, because they conflicted with demands for child sitting from their families.)

It's a weekend, MissLingo, not the rest of their life.

Dd2 is 14 and thinks she is old enough to stay at home with Dd1

That sounds ok...as long as DD18 is agreeable and DD14 behaves well.

Not read the whole thread...so sorry if that's been mentioned.

Mine are younger than yours and I can't see them wanting to go away just before school starts, that's home time! Other times, I think you'd better think about only taking the nine year old OR having a holiday where the location is a product of negotiation

I think I stopped going on family holidays at 16 but I was an only child so used to spending a lot of time with my mum and dad. They also used to usually take me to Spain so there was no way I was turning down days sunbathing and swimming, nice evening meals and a bit of exploration!

I do think it's important to have the context of the holiday(s) here. I hate camping and will not go with anyone. I also don't really want to go somewhere like Scotland or the Lakes when it's 13 degrees and raining. Or Wales in any weather.

I think it depends on what their reasons are.

If it's just "humph we don't want to be away from WiFi" then I'd drag them out.

But my parents liked long walks. I hated and still hate them. It involved: driving a long distance down country roads. I get travel sick, which they never really believed.
Then walking through mud, getting lost, through fields with cows in (which loved df so always chased us), through farmyards (with territorial dogs), having a packed lunch made up of brown bread ham sandwiches and squash that had been frozen in the freezer overnight and not properly defrosted.

Then when you were properly exhausted, you'd find that either df was totally lost and we'd have another 10 hour walk trying to find out way back again, or find that his short walk had been expanded (without telling anyone) so we were now 8 hours into a circular walk rather than it being no more than 6 hours as he'd promised.
Arriving home at around 10pm or later, filthy, having not had dinner (and in my case normally had disposed of the inedible lunch) to have to pack bags and be up for school at 8am the next morning. By that point I usually couldn't eat anything for feeling sick, often beginnings of a migraine, and no one felt like cooking anyway.
This would be interspersed with comments about how we were all having such a wonderful time and weren't we so glad that we had parents who appreciated such a life.
Any time I suggested anything that I would have preferred I got told no one would really like it, and their wonderful walks were much better.

However my parents would have said it was a lovely family time sharing the joys of the countryside and they loved it. (except the time we got lost up Pendle Hill on Halloween. Even df admitted that was stupid)

If ever I asked to stay behind, I got guilted into going. That they wanted me etc.

The thing was if they'd even acknowledged that it wasn't fun for me then I would have felt better about it.

The things that stand out to me is that all the children don't want to go. And you've implied that it's every weekend. At your dc's age they don't want to go away every weekend. Give them a bit of time off. You might even enjoy spending time with them at home anyway.

Grandparents might enjoy time with grandchildren but that doesn't mean they would be willing to have them all day and night, especially when they are behaving in a stroppy way!

But they won't be stroppy if they're at home doing what they want. It's being dragged away to places they don't want to go when they'd rather be at home that makes them stroppy!

That's stroppy entitled behaviour. At that age you do as you are told. Yes their interests should be taken into account but kids don't get to call all the shots. That way trouble lies.

Well, there we differ. Apart from the youngest, it's young people having some say in their lives. My parents very wisely stopped forcing family holidays on me when I was 12. It worked fine for everyone.

So where did you go Blue? My DCs have 2 GPs left and neither would I leave them with.

'Some say' is different to refusing.

My parents dragged us away. I hated it for similar reasons and still remember how much I hated it. Once my sister hit 18 that was it, I was staying home with her because she was an adult.

Do you want your DC to remember all those unwanted trips? I notice you call them "ungrateful". Why should they be grateful that you keep offering them something they actively dislike doing?

I stayed with my gran, we both loved it.

My parents did the wild camping holidays when we were growing up that we all sometimes liked if the weather was good and there were plenty of cousins around but invariably the weather wasn’t good and my parents spent those days in the pub and we were just expected to deal with it. So we all stopped wanting to go on holidays with my parents from about the age of 12.

We did a trip to the Lakes with the teens earlier in the year - it was not a great success (but it was great last year) so we will be holding off walking holidays till the kids scarper off to Uni or have a major rethink.

I know loads of people who still holiday with their parents and not just for free childcare, I think to make holidays successful you have to employ a bit of give and take on everything you do, taking everyone’s needs into account.

After threatening not to take my teenagers away with us again if their attitude didn’t improve, I’m pleased to report that they have listened and we have just spent a very pleasant day together and are off out now for some tapas.

What is the holiday?

If you go away a lot - as you said you do- and it’s always the same kind of thing - if it’s not something the dc enjoy- I can see why they are kicking up a fuss. For example my teen dd (15) would rather stick pins in her eyes than walk round art galleries or anything like that - although she would happily do it as a one (or two) off or as part of a longer holiday but if it was a regular ish thing she wouldn’t want to go. We’ve just come back from a week by the sea (we also have ds aged 6) and we did a mixture of sightseeing, beach, arcades and all kinds of things.

Why don’t the dc want to come? Is it because it’s not something they’re interested in?

Our 14 yo gets to choose sometimes but needs to negotiate with her older siblings or stay with a friend (I approve of and know well).

I find it better to lay the holiday out clearly - we're going to Birmingham for 3 days of Art Galleries/St Tropez to sit on sunloungers with no electricity etc. All welcome (we have 4 too) but no whining.

You have to bear in mind that children often just like relaxing in their own houses. Luckily,none of mine have been into gaming in a big way - ds (now 21) would play but the others couldn't care less.

We're off doing Eurocamp to the Dordogne on Monday - dd3 (14) helped choose and others were given the option. As others have said, it has to appeal to all. I am lucky enough to have appreciative children though.

18 fair enough,maybe the 16 year old but the other two,err no. No way would my dc get to bail out of what we as parents deem is worthwhile for a weekend. You are the parents and a good deal of latter childhood is doing what you don't want to do. Making the best of it with good grace is an important life skill;stropping and refusing because it isn't what you exactly want to do and it gets your own way,not so much. A 14 and even 16 year old staying home to basically sit at home on screens and eat junk the entire time( let's be honest)as you won't be there to stop it isn't healthy. They need to experience other more mindful activities,I do worry about the pull screens and binge watching /playing has. I often have to force my 14 and 13 year olds out on activities. They know we will go as want the exercise which means 3 or 4 hours of unfettered slothing on top of the rest of the not doing much time a weekend involves. We give them more input as to where we go but they get out. Could you do that with weekends away. Say we will be going so let's try to find somewhere with something we all enjoy.

No 14 or 16( even 18)year olds will ever want to willingly socialise with their parents however right on you are. Forcing an 18 year old away in a caravan for their 18th birthday is a world away from the op.

P3onypenny our 18 and 15 year olds are more than happy to come on family holidays and days out because they are occasional. They also get time at home to chill and meet friends. It's just a question of getting the balance right.

My sister and I loved going on holidays with my parents as teenagers - and we still do and we’re both in our 30s .
Last year we rented a house in the Algarve together, and now I’m currently discussing Summer 2019 plans with my mom, probably northern Portugal or Spain. We always rent with a pool for the kids.
My eldest DD will be 9, and there is no way she is not coming, or allowed to act stroppy about it!
This year we took her to Rome with us, and she never complained about the walking (but she did enjoy plenty of delicious gelato and pizzas!). She also gets time to chill out at home, of course. We don’t travel a lot outside of school holidays and enjoy being home on the weekend.
I think you just have to try and mix things to please everyone as best as possible.
I hope your children will come to appreciate the opportunities for travel and discovery you are giving them.