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.

There's plenty of play parks open here albeit with out the swings. I try to do one 'big' trip every other week then little local things inbetween. Our big trips have been seaside, fairy walk and train ride, zoo and shopping lunch out trip. Some days we stay home, paddling pool, water play, trampoline other days we go to country parks, national trust places, we live near lots of farms so we often walk by the paths nearby and look at all the animals, we have been to the forest a few times, built dens and 'tree houses'. We've met up with some friends, had picnics at the park, walked by the river.

I found it really helped to have some jars with ideas in, I split them by cost so free, less than £20 and more than £20. Whenever I think of something or we have enjoyed being somewhere it goes in the appropriate jar. They pick one £20+ a fortnight, one less than £20 each week and a free thing whenever they are bored. It means I dont have to think of any ideas on the spot and we dont have the moaning that they are bored. Funnily enough because they pick the idea they are much more excited to do it than if I had suggested it to them!

Both of us grew up in the 60s, our mothers couldn’t drive (and even if they could, our families couldn’t afford a second car) and couldn’t afford paid for activities! DH only remembers going to see one film in his childhood; no holidays, presents, birthday parties, trips to the circus/fair/you name it; while I probably got to see one film a year. Our mothers spent their time cooking and doing housework.

From the age of five, we were expected to play with our friends and occupy ourselves. By about 8, my best friend and I went out for the day on our bikes; one summer holidays we played Monopoly all day every day! DH spent his whole childhood playing football with the neighbours children!

Neither of us ever felt deprived of things to do with board games, me with my bike, the garden, parks, ball games, and Children’s Hour!

Our cinemas are open and showing a variety of films on Fri & Sat (South East). Must just be where you live.

There's still plenty to do imo, bike/scooter riding, park/woods adventures, National trust day outs, picnics, bbq's etc.

Also UK theme parks, zoo's etc but a more expensive day out.

@BogRollBOGOF

It seems to be lost on a lot of people that children's lives have been put into suspended animation for very nearly 5 months now. By the time English schools resume next month, we'll have gone through 4 years worth of summer holidays consecutively. Half of that before hedonistic luxuries such as a playground were allowed to open. Some playgrounds are still only just opening/ or still closed because of petty beaurcracy. Lots of free or cheaper options such as swimming pools, water play, paddling pools are still closed or like the cinema OP refers to, not accessible to children.

Out of 4 public pools in a 15 mile radius. 2 are shut. 1 adult lanes only. 1 has 30 family slors per week where you have to hire half the pool, plus the weekday sessions are 5-7pm. That's serving an area of about 40,000 people.

Individual organisations are considering their own practicalities but cumulatively children's needs are being ignored and neglected as they have all the way through this giant farce. They also gain the least in public health terms.

Kids were bored of going for yet another bloody walk months ago. It makes me laugh that all these lovely, simple, free ideas get thrown out as though parents weren't intelligent enough to have though about them at some point over nearly 5 months.

This isn't the 70s/ 80s/ 90s. It's not socially acceptable to turf kids out and let them get on with it. I'm sure my 7 & 9 year olds could entertain themselves happily in the woods 150m away for a couple of hours, but it's not the done thing. They haven't got the support of other children being allowed out to play, and on the random off chance of something awful happening you'd have social services breathing down your neck for neglect, and worse case scenarios the police to deal with and media villifying you. Also children in the 70s/ 80s/ 90s didn't have 5+ months of this. Just 6 weeks at a time. We're already in week 22.

Opportunities for children are still thin on the ground and have not opened up equally with those for adults.

So what’s your solution?

@1Morewineplease not sure about @BogRollBOGOF but my solution is open the play areas, open the libraries, and possibly even open the swimming pools. Kids haven't had proper exercise or learning opportunities. Councils shouldn't be allowed to get away with not opening the resources we are funding them to manage.

[quote Love51]**@1Morewineplease* not sure about @BogRollBOGOF* but my solution is open the play areas, open the libraries, and possibly even open the swimming pools. Kids haven't had proper exercise or learning opportunities. Councils shouldn't be allowed to get away with not opening the resources we are funding them to manage.[/quote]
Yes councils could do more but they’re all bu broke right now .
I don’t know why some play areas are shut, they certainly aren’t where I live. Our library is open but you are restricted in what you can do there.
As to swimming pools, I’m sure that it’s a hygiene thing .
I’m just not convinced that the state owes us entertainment for children which is what the OP was implying.

Op the summer you are describing is every summer I had as a child and I survived. We went to the park, we would go day trips to the sea side where we'd sit on the beach then eat a bag of chips, we'd go bike rides sometimes but mostly we played in the garden and in the front street.
Your kids won't become depressed because they don't have the cinema and soft play. We're in a pandemic. Adapt.

Surely most families can't afford swimming/theme parks/cinema/zoos/splash parks as more than the odd treat across the summer holidays?

Summer holidays with young children for us was mostly going out to parks with a picnic/playing in the garden/getting out the paddling pool/playing in the woods. Basically stuff which is all still available. The main lack would be, for children old enough to play out, that they can't really do that at the moment. But for children under (say) 9, I disagree that they are missing out at all!

We went for yet another ‘boring walk’ in the woods yesterday evening. Yes, the kids did moan about it but once we were there, they relaxed and started chatting and ended up having a nice time. This always happens so I have no qualms about giving them no choice.
We’ve been to all the green areas in the area and some a bit further out.
We’ve met friends for bike rides and picnics during the day and evening, paddled in rivers, played games outside. I bought a load of those spongey balls which we’ve used for wet dodgeball games.
We’ve had movie nights at home and the kids have been on their Xbox with friends.
It’s not the most exciting summer holiday but it’s not miserable or boring either.

Our schools are back, so nothing had really opened before this. There is so much to do if you have some imagination and planning. My youngest can’t sit in cinema due to additional needs and it’s not fun for him anyway so we did the park, walks lunch or go somewhere for ice cream and a different park or the beach/river even just playing Lego or making a jigsaw also got a few cheap outdoor games so summer hardly cost anything, I didn’t go on fancy outdoor trips when I was young I went out on my bike, played with friends and had a really carefree summer. Yes there are restrictions on paid activities but surely you’ve managed to entertain your kid since March without them anyway?

Councils shouldn't be allowed to get away with not opening the resources we are funding them to manage

Did you miss the news bulletins that referred to loads of councils being on the brink of bankruptcy due to Covid @Love51? The combined effect of direct costs, like IT equipment to enable staff to work from home, PPE, housing the homeless etc and loss of income from business rates, parking, fees from leisure centres etc has been crippling.

Brighton council is about £50m short of what it needs.

I'm sure my 7 & 9 year olds could entertain themselves happily in the woods 150m away for a couple of hours, but it's not the done thing

Maybe more people should start doing it until it is the done thing!

Seven is probably too young, but there are primary age kids in my street that are allowed to go and play in the fields that back on to where we live, they must be 400-600m away. I'm bloody sure they go as far as the woods, too, which must be half a mile further, because I see them coming back along the road with big sticks!

I swear they'll be walking the South Downs Way by the time they're 12.

But they have books in the library and are paying the staff. Literally the cost of putting the lights on - no heating necessary. The council aren't saving money by not allowing local.leisure centre to open. And the play areas don't cost much once they put the equipment back, which will cost the same if they did it back when Boris said they could or wait for 2021.

Same as me DarkMint Chocolate as a child of the 60's. The only difference was I had to make my own Monopoly set by copying it from one that belonged to a friend, as my parents could not afford one from a shop and we could never find one at a jumble sale ! It was actually an entertaining and very rewarding activity in itself. We did however get one small birthday present . None of us felt deprived . We had very old, 4th hand bikes and the freedom to cycle wherever we wanted. We had the garden, a nearby field where we could build dens in the summer holidays when the cut grass had dried and neighbourhood friends with whom we could play everyday. We made our own Go Carts out of wooden planks, nails and any old pram or pushchair wheels we could find. In those days we called them Trolleys.

They have to open these things in a Covid-secure way. That's in national guidance. The risk assessments and implementation of Covid protection measures takes time.

The organisation I work for won't be able to open any of its MH wellbeing and recovery centres until the end of September, because every single building has to be surveyed, risk assessments of all activities that take place in them have to be carried out and only then can they start to make the changes that will make reopening possible. Capacities will be massively reduced.

Our pools aren't open yet. They're run by a private company and iirc the deal is that they lease the buildings from the council and make their money by keeping the admission/membership money. There's clearly no money in opening the pool or they'd have done it by now.

In two of the 3 neighbouring authorities, the centres are still run by the councils and the pools are open.

With play areas, they have to be inspected regularly at a specified interval, and safety tested. If a playground has been out of use for a while, it has to be inspected and equipment tested before it can be reopened, and any repairs carried out.

My BIL works for one of the biggest companies in the SE that does the repair work and and they have shedloads of council contracts.

Everyone who works for them has been furloughed. Many, BIL included, have been given redundancy notices. Because the playgrounds have been closed and inspections haven't been taking place, they have no work.

But his mate, who is an inspector, has a massive backlog of inspections to do and if anything needs to be fixed, a lot of councils won't be able to get it done for ages.

@Love51 - Library worker here. If only we could switch the lights on and be open! Libraries generally have much less space than retail particularly in the book shelf aisles. Borrowers enjoy browsing, handling books and putting them back on the shelves. We know that the virus can survive up to 72 hours on a plastic book cover surface and the very nature of borrowing means that you're taking it home but unlike retail you're not keeping it.
So, whilst we're not open to the public yet the majority of libraries are now offering an order and collect service either by telephone or online. Any returns are quarantined for 72 hours to keep the public and staff safe.
If your own library isn't open or offering this service, did you know you can join any library in the UK? It might be worth seeing if there's one within driving distance as an alternative. Depending where it is, it might be open to the public.
I'm sure you didn't mean it as a dig but library staff have continued to be paid as we have been diverted to working in other areas of the council.
Hope you and your children are able to get some library books😀

@Love51

But they have books in the library and are paying the staff. Literally the cost of putting the lights on - no heating necessary. The council aren't saving money by not allowing local.leisure centre to open. And the play areas don't cost much once they put the equipment back, which will cost the same if they did it back when Boris said they could or wait for 2021.

I wish it were that simple. Public buildings such as libraries opening back up may have lots of extra costs they would never have had before. A Covid trained assessor to come in and ensure that the building can be used safely such as possible one way systems, approved entry points and someone to man them so that the place doesn't have too many people in at one time, Covid safe qualified cleaners to sanitise everything, properly 10x more often than ever before, installation of safety screens for staff, the extra cost of PPE and sanitising stations for the public, staff to enforce a possible no touch policy on the books, creating a new storage space to leave returned books for 72 hours before they can be placed back out....

Basically, switching the lights on and having librarian back at his or her desk isn't anywhere near enough for some council owned public buildings.

It's shit but even our school won't open our lunch money envelopes for 72 hours and they're just bits of paper and coins. Nothing more than what shopkeepers are expected to touch every day but because it's a council owned school the rules are stricter.

Stilts - can the kids walk on stilts?

You can make a basic set for a small child with two tin cans a hole drilled in the side and a loop of string. Like this www.playfullearning.net/resource/diy-tin-can-stilts/ get the kids involved in making and decorating them.

When they have mastered that you can make proper stilts. My dad made a pair for my sister and me out of scraps. One pair were two broom handles with wooden blocks screwed to them. The other were made out of part of an old wardrobe I think. They looked like this www.babipur.co.uk/toys/active-ride-on-rocking-toys/gluckskafer-wooden-stilts-with-handles.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwydP5BRBREiwA-qrCGh_eYW0iYfRpVN81XjXw7S2Yqg2grAoB0Ul8-ScwkRqbiQUOImkD-RoChEQQAvD_BwE except more home made!

Kept us busy for ages learning to walk on them!!!!

Councils shouldn't be allowed to get away with not opening the resources we are funding them to manage

The trouble is, as a nation people vote for the Tories and lower taxes - we do not pay enough tax to fund all the services, we want.

In my local area in the 80s we kids used to play Bare Arse, which basically involved a group of mates taking turns booting a football at each others' backsides.

Councils shouldn't be allowed to get away with not opening the resources we are funding them to manage

Exactly. Councils have had more than enough time to re-open the things they could safely re-open. Our council just put out bland statements a few months ago that a whole list of things wouldn't open this year. That includes a mini zoo, splash park, etc., that local council tax payers paid millions to have built. How come "proper" zoos, water parks, theme parks, etc have managed to re-open, but our local council appear to have made no effort whatsoever to even try to re-open their facilities, paid for by local taxpayers!

^Agree