to disagree with "The two weeks you spend on holiday with your kids are the most important two weeks of the year."

[No19]

?

As stated by First Choice on all the ads on the MN travel topics, it REALLY annoys me.

Perhaps I need a holiday.

Not if you go on holiday and promptly book the kids into the holiday clubs so you don't have to see/entertain them for much of the day!

The one week we went on holiday last year was spent listening to the kids fighting. Sure couldn't I do that at home!

So forgive me if I don't label them as the most important weeks of the year......

You are quite right, No19. Rubbishy advert.

But are you a First Choice customer? Somehow I doubt it...

You beat me to it, gagarin!

we haven't had a holiday since the littlies were born.

does this make me a shit mum who doesn't care about spending important time with my kids?

oh feck

squonk - don't let the marketing men induce an unnecessary sense of guilt [stern emoticon]

Nope am not FC customer.

And squonk even if you had brought them on hols for a fortnight every year since birth that fortnight would STILL not be the most important time you spent with them.

Unless it was also the ONLY time you spent with them and for the other 50 weeks of the year could not have picked them out of a line-up.

well... there was that time I took them to a nice, riverside cottage last summer

(but that was so I could leave them with my mum while I went to a rock concert )

and there was the time I took them to a posh hotel in Edinburgh

(but that was so I could leave them with dd2's godfather so we could go to a party)

and there was the time we took them to a lovely Cumbrian seaside town

(but that was so we could leave them with dd2's godmother while we went out and got pissed)

so I suppose we have taken them on holiday.

I love holidays with the children.

But one of the reasons that I love them so much is that we all relax and chill and don't bother so much with all the hard work that parenting requires.

So in that sense - holidays are probably the least important part of the year

Oh I agree, that ad on first choice is utter rubbish.

But then, they wouldn't be the people I go to to organise a holiday!

Well my annual holiday is the most important two weeks of my life precisely because we don't take our kids on holiday.

I guess I should point out that they are old enough to take themselves on holiday but, as impoverished students, I am scared witless that they will try to invite themselves on our quiet, Cornish-cottage break this year.

@ ThePrisoner.

It is in that you get time with your DCs and can relax but you don't need to go away and I wouldn't use kid's clubs.