To stay at home every weekend ?

[Woolygreyowl]

Is this weird / wrong?

Dc are at nursery / school all week. Each has one extra curricular activity a week. We walk (3 year old still uses buggy) but that’s still plenty of fresh air.

Every weekend we stay at home - the dc have toys / arts and crafts / the garden. It’s time to relax and do things at our own pace. They have a nice time and so do we. MIL has heavily criticised my parenting and SIL (who is a childcare practitioner don’t you know 🙄) thinks I’m affecting their ‘social and emotional development’ (?wtf!) because we are at home every weekend??!

The comments

YANBU

I love my weekends at home, and I don't have a garden. After a full week of masking my ASD/ADHD and surviv9ng fibromyalgia the weekend allows me to just unmask and relax. I do go out for shopping one of they days, but that's my limit. I try to get everything done whilst out for work.
Sometimes I do go to parties, events or days out but these are limited and planned on advance.

Some don't like staying in but others do thrive from it, as it's the kids only time to do what they genuinely like without limits or hundreds of rules. Don't feel bad about it.

I have also a background in child development and psych, so your SIL might be using this to give her opinion rather than research based.

It's how DW and I we brought up and hw we brought up our DCs.

Only weekend out was shopping.

Your DM and SIL can bog off.

To be honest, that sounds tedious beyond belief. I couldn't stand it. But I am a self-confessed "get out and do things" kind if person; if I have a weekend with nothing on the calendar I get the horrible feeling that life is passing me by.

I was actually raised this way and I hated it. My parents worked FT and behaved as though they worked 80 hours a week down a mine. Weekends were to relax - i.e. do their own thing while we occupied ourselves. My memories of childhood are of my mum being too busy cleaning the skirting boards to take us to the park, or my dad telling us to be quiet because my mum was "having an hour." They are still incredibly low-energy people now and I'm still frustrated by it.

I've got some lounging round the house clothes I'll wear if I'm not planning on doing anything, but since I work from home anyway it's not far off my usual attire. Maybe just joggers and a t-shirt rather than jeans.

DP and DS will happily sit around in their PJs all day if they've not got plans. Doesn't happen very often but if that's what they're comfortable doing it doesn't bother me.

I'll make a point of making sure DS is dressed if we head out anywhere though!