No thought has been put into the fact that DC are on school holidays - AIBU

[FatalDistraction]

DC are off in school holidays after being stuck in for months before hand. There is very little for them to do. It's OK to shop till you drop with a mask on, but opening places for children to play and get some exercise....oh that's just too much.

I just logged on to book some cinema tickets to have something for my DC to do. There is one movie, opening at the end of August and it is a 13. There are millions of DC off school, not going on holiday, with nothing to do and they decide to put a violent, older movie on. They could have rehashed Frozen, Trolls, put on some other loved movie if there is nothing new, but no, they think we all want to see Tenet.

No one has put any thought into the fact that DC have been off for ages, are on holiday with nothing to do and are going round the bend. But shopping, that's ok. It is no wonder there are children in my town turning on others in the parks when they have nothing to do.

Shame on the lot of them.

Staggered at the sheer entitlement of people like OP...it beggars belief

We’ve done quite a lot this holidays. Long walks, dip in the sea, crazy golf, meals out, zoo, tennis in local courts. Then lots of stuff at home, home cinema, paddling pool in the garden, board games. We’ve been to friends gardens and had picnics in the local park.

Poor kids are having a childhood like mine and every other child of the 60's and 70's. It was hell hmm

Don't exaggerate, @notangelinajolie, we didn't even have daytime tv and there were only 3 channels!

After Playschool finished in the morning, there was nothing to watch until "Watch With Mother" at lunchtime, and that only lasted 15 minutes, then nothing till teatime.

Me and my mate used to go and play in some derelict houses that had been bombed during the war (how ancient does that make me sound?). They didn't get round to pulling them down and building flats there until well into to the 70s.

Maybe they should go back to leaving building sites unsecured for the entertainment of children. We used to have great fun playing in half-built houses. It was especially amusing if you or one of your mates had a poo in a toilet that wasn't plumbed in.

Why did people bang on about it being a 6 month holiday?

Easter holidays we were still in total lockdown and all you could do was exercise once a day which was an hour or 2 tops.

May half term we could get out a bit more

Now it's the actual holidays and they can entertain themselves if they've been taught well and not always been spoon fed excitement every waking hour of the day.

I don't know one single child who has had 6 months 'holiday'. Not even my ds who is year 11 and so actually didn't have home school as such. They still had work sent as schools and fe colleges teamed up and gave them stuff to do.

@formerbabe

We've had messy play in the garden, all sorts of nature hunts. We've explored the woodlands each day and the children have abs loved it. They seem to find something new every single day

This is fine for little ones..but try it with an older child, a tween or teen...

We've taken our two away for a week on holiday...I'm so unbelievably grateful that we've had something to break up the monotony.

It isn't a six week holiday, it's effectively a six month holiday. It's an absolute nightmare

We've been out in the country side with our teens, Shropshire hills, the cotswolds, down to Somerset and Oxfordshire, they like it as much as when they were younger. On days we haven't had the car we have gone on our bikes, most places have some countryside within ten miles or so or at least a park. Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester certainly do. Obviously London does and you don't need a bike there.

That's fine @homecomingcabbie but we've been going on sodding walks and bike rides every day since march...

I agree with dayswithaY, WiddlinDiddlin, Lexilooo and the others who have posted positive means by which to allay the unremitting boredom of the children.OP's children. As a child of the 60's I can relate to the sixties person who posted. I know this era is not of the OP's experience, but as the eldest of three children in a family with absolutely no spare money, then the priority was food and home made clothing sewed by my mother, or second hand clothing from a lady up the road. There was never any provided entertainment. We had lots of fun however being left to our own devices. I really wanted a Monopoly set as my best friend had one and I enjoyed playing it. I knew my parents didn't have the money to spare so my friend and I set about making one during the summer holidays. We copied the board design onto two pieces of A4 sellotaped together and glued this onto two pieces of hardboard which my dad had. My dad helped us make the two pieces into a hinge so it actually folded. The community chest and chance were made out of old Christmas cards kept for such paper activities. We enjoyed making it and although only 9 years old felt a real sense of achievement. We were lucky enough to have a reasonable garden and as my dad was a good handyman he made us a seesaw and dug some bars into the ground for us to swing around on - tall ones for me and shorter ones for my younger sister. My youngest sister who was a baby at the time got to enjoy them later. I was a very creative child and used to write plays for performance to the neighbours. The one I liked best was based on William Tell, a children's programme I loved at the time. I even sent it up to ITV and somehow found the address without the internet. They sent me a very nice letter back! Of course I played William Tell as I wrote the play and had the two and sixpenny green crossbow from Woolworth's which I saved up for by doing jobs, mainly for the neighbours who were elderly or didn't have younger children. These were primarily going to the shop for them or taking their dogs for a walk. I adored dogs and always enjoyed it so much I would have done it for free but I wanted that crossbow. I also organised circus performances for the neighbours. We made stilts out of tin cans and string, constructed a tightrope made from washing line between the two trees in our garden, dressed up as clowns with mum's lipstick on our noses and performed all the walking on our hands and acrobatics that we could muster. My 10 month old sister was billed as "The Balancing Baby" and guided across the seesaw , dressed in a pink tutu I had made for her out of crepe paper. My grandmother who lived with us at the time (and was quite embittered on occasions due to a very hard life ) declared I was" torturing" her by virtue of the tutu but my sister didn't seem to mind and I carried on. The neighbours were all given homemade fairy cakes and lemonade as refreshments for which they were charged the sum of 2d old money. That's how it was for me at that time in the 60's in a family with very little money despite being hard working tax payers. The first time I had a yoghurt was at a middle class friend's house at the age of 15 and that was in the 70's! I was once taken to a restaurant called Rooftops as a teenager by a group of ladies who had coffee there every Friday. I had never been in such a place before.It was basically an ordinary cafe at the top of a department store but the tables were covered in starched white linen cloths and furthermore an array of delicious looking cream cakes. I was treated to a cream horn which I had actually made in what we then called Domestic Science at school, but never one of that luxuriousness. Anyway none of this I suppose may be of relevance to the poor OP and her 21st century children, but it has allowed me (currently in throes of Multiple Sclerosis attack) to reminisce over hard but generally happy times due to creativity and imagination and more freedom than children have nowadays. Of course I worked since the age of 12 as our newsagent allowed us to get a round then, and I had 2, morning and evening. I went up at 6.15 am for the papers and collected the later one after school. I had full time summer holiday jobs from 14 in a kennels and 16 in Cadbury's cake factory. It was only about 5 miles from us and my friends and I would cycle there. I managed to go on holiday to Bournemouth at 18 after A levels with friends as I had saved from summer work ( and regular babysitting for a family who owned a pub - the children were young and generally well behaved so I was able to study which was important as I wanted to be a teacher). It was after earning my own money that I realised you actually needed it if you wanted to live above a basic level. My parents although intelligent, were not educated. Both left school at 14 due to necessity. I was the first in the family to enter Higher Education and although not on a high wage, as a qualified teacher I had far more economic freedom than them . My 3 children were born in the nineties and noughties so things were a lot different in some ways to my childhood regarding freedom to roam at a young age but they were all quite creative and found ways of entertaining themselves. They were bored sometimes as all children are, but certain studies convey that boredom fosters creativity. Anyway you are probably all bored by reading this and I have only posted because I found out how to post without receiving loads of mumsnet emails in my inbox! (and the subject brought back memories by the virtue of posters other than the OP but I realise things are different (as you would expect) in a pandemic.

Sorry ,it didn't appear in the paragraphs I had inserted!

It's even more onerous to read now!

@formerbabe

That's fine *@homecomingcabbie* but we've been going on sodding walks and bike rides every day since march...

Instead of school work?

We have been doing stuff like that in the holidays but in term time they were doing school work like they should have been.

user i loved reading that. The Balancing Baby made me laugh.

It all sounds like it was a lot of fun. Makes me sad my kids won't have anything like that really.

ReggaetonLente well done for getting through it! Glad you enjoyed it. The Balancing Baby doesn't remember anything about it of course, but I have relayed it to her. We did have a lot of fun in those days with little money and no laid on entertainment. But it could be exciting . I loved reading Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton (the William books) as a child and was always forming clubs with home made badges and meetings in my dad's tool shed.

It would be lovely if kids today could experience some of this but even my own (all three in their twenties) didn't . But at least we had enough money to give them some of the entertainments that their peers were enjoying. In my day none of my peers were experiencing entertainment on tap so we basically knew no different and made our own. I realise I am writing this at 4.15 am but despite a storm, it is very hot and I can't sleep!

The playgrounds are still shut in my town. Everywhere else they seem to be open.

Sorry just seen that in the second line it appears as though I attempted to write "the children OP sired". I really didn't ! It should have read "the OP's children".

I'm partially responsible for a business that is aimed at community groups and more often it's children's groups. We simply cannot open and actually make any money whilst complying with the current rules on Covid and public venues.

Groups have always been responsible for cleaning up after themselves and securing the building etc. If we wish to reopen we would have to provide a Covid safety staff member and a professional Covid trained cleaner to be there after each session throughout the day, 7 days a week. A cleaner is £10-£20 an hour. A group pays less than £10 an hour. Providing hand sanitiser stations (and expecting them not to be nicked or at least emptied when unsupervised), plus electricity and heating costs then we'll be losing huge amounts of money to open up.

I would assume a cinema would work on a similar level. Yes a cinema ticket is stupidly expensive these days but unless a cinema can make a profit with less than a quarter of their customers (to allow to socially distance them seating wise) whilst having extra staff, if only just for all that extra cleaning then I can see why they're not wanting to have a full range of movies on for little customers who get their tickets at half the price of an adult.

No business owes children entertainment anyway!

insert facepalm emoji here

i am surprised there arent those films for younger children at cinema

@homecomingcabbie. Did you want your canonisation now, or later? Are you seriously saying that your kids did schoolwork the entire time they were awake? You NEVER took them for walks/bike rides? Don't be ridiculous. Most of us have exhausted all our ideas by this stage and the OP is just annoyed because some forethought could have gone into the cinema schedule. That hardly makes her entitled.

I’m totally with you @formerbabe 🙌🏻 Going away on Saturday for the first time since last August and can’t wait for at least a change of scenery.

@pabloshoney

It's been bliss... enjoy your holiday!

I would write a strong letter if I were you, OP. I mean, how DARE they not know that the world revolves around your offspring's entertainment needs and desires

Instead of school work?

We have been doing stuff like that in the holidays but in term time they were doing school work like they should have been.

You weren't taking your children for things like walks and cycle rides during term time? You do know that schoolwork includes PE, don't you?

Plus in April/May/June there's what, about 14 hours of daylight per day, so ample time to get a full day of schoolwork, chores, downtime and a good hour or two, or more of walks and cycle rides, whether it is considered 'PE' or just out of school relaxation.

I like going for walks and am lucky enough to have nice woods and public footpaths on my doorstep, but even I'm getting bored of going out for a local walk, which is fine, because now we're allowed to drive to wherever we want to walk or just be outside.

I don’t feel sorry for my four and six year old at all. I feel sorry for children living in appalling conditions, children who are neglected or who are in abusive households. We’ve lost sight of how spoilt we all are!

Yes they are wanting to go to play centre, swimming and have friends around to play but they have had to learn (like we have) to be grateful for what they’ve got. I find getting to a big park early with extra snacks is a good way of using a big chunk of the day, finding new walks (keep meaning to do geocaching), beach, bikes etc.

Someone else so self entitled that they think it’s someone else’s responsibility to entertain their DCs 🙄. There happens to be more important things for the government to focus on currently - crap economy, finding a vaccine for this virus. I’m sure if Boris made a statement saying he was going to focus on getting play centres and kiddies pools open, there would be an outcry. And rightly so.