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??!

We do. We're around an hour away from woodlands. We go at least 2x a month.
Same for beach, farm , zoo.

The decent park is 30 min away that suits all kids.

It's unreasonable of your MIL to expect her son to give up half his weekend to spend with her and lose time with his children. I'm not lucky enough to have grandchildren or a DIL but I wouldn't expect this.

That sounds fine but I just don't think everyone or even most people do this, or need to do it. A lot must depend where you live, what your house is like, how far you can drive etc. But surely kids don't need all this specifically at weekends to grow up happy and well, or not all kids.

I'm a homebody too, and I think it's fine to have a nice quiet life with indoor stimulation.

But for DC's development, they probably need to go somewhere unstructured and perhaps new every now and then. It doesn't do to just read about places and adventures (eg aquarium, zoo, museum, nature area, even the garden centre, etc) in books about other (fictional) children.

During Covid, where I was, chidren were getting plenty of indoor stimulation and education (and extracurricular programmes and clubs were running too), but early childhood educators noted their brains weren't developing properly due to lack of exposure to unstructured, unpredictable environments.

An unstructured outing every month or so, even if it's just to the nearby park and shops, would be good for their development.

I am not convinced that kids get enough exercise when they stay home.

A buggy is not better or worst than a car seat, but how do kids build stamina and resilience if they don't walk? It was one of the many reasons why I always took mine out daily from very little.

All weekend every weekend not doing anything would literally make me ill. I would find this unbearably stifling and boring tbh and my mental health would plummet. The odd weekend absolutely fine and in fact healthy sometimes but all the time I don’t think is great.

I think also it is teaching your children to have quite an insular mindset and a limited sense of what the world offers. And also a sense that the easy path is always the best one.

I do understand the craving for a chill weekend in the world we live in and I am not one of those who believes it’s essential to fill your kids’ schedules with organised activities but I do think you need to break out of your comfort zone and them out sometimes at weekends. Sorry.

We do have activities planned eg as it’s half term we are out and about a lot next week but weekends we just like to relax and reset and dc like to play at home

I wonder if those who are always out going for beach/forest walks, visiting farms, going swimming, out for meals etc do this by travelling to those places by car?
I don't have a car. I am lucky to live in a city with plenty of public transport....but as someone who uses it everyday in the week I have to take a break from it. The noise levels, anti social behaviour, crowds, smells......
I could have gone out today. The weather is reasonably nice. But to go anywhere interesting I would of needed to get on a bus or train and I just didn't want to. It can be quite mentally draining sometimes and can make a day more exhausting than it needs to be.

@Woolygreyowl Yeah we are going to have to ageee to disagree here. I think never doing anything at the weekend massively narrows a child’s horizons. It’s fine to be a homebody but you have a responsibility to show them there is a world beyond your four walls.

Only doing it at half term and holidays basically signals to them that leaving the house is something exotic and unusual. Not going to put them in a great position if they turn out to want more from their lives. Why would you deliberately limit a child like that?

Do you not take them to different places such as parks, zoos, seaside etc?They need to experience different environments & situations. I’ve taught children who have never set foot outside their estate & it shows. You need to encourage & enable them to experience new things.

I don't see what's wrong with staying at home over the weekend and just letting your children relax and play. If they're enjoying themselves and you're spending time with them, I don't see the need to be going out all the time. I'm sure they will enjoy their time in the garden and playing with their toys just as much or more than going to a museum, park etc.

I think its good to have a bit of balance and introduce some new experiences like galleries, museums, castles, different nature settings and so on, as you never know what might spark an interest and bring them pleasure. I'm sure they are absolutely fine at home, if thats what they do, but they may be overjoyed by an outing. I think I'd do something for one day every other weekend, or even monthly, just to keep life fresh.

We do - every half term and school holiday. We go on holiday every summer and we have loads of days out. We just keep Saturday and Sunday to be at home . They have loads of experience of the world around them and have been to lots of places . We just like to have weekends at home as they have a busy week term time and it’s nice to let them play at their own pace

My youngest is now a serious athlete who loved the buggy to hop into on a day out. She was 4+ before I passed it on. When we were on a day out, she loved to retire to it when tired. I found it great. No cranky child complaining.
OP, if it works for you, crack on.
After a busy week, your weekend sounds lovely. As children grow and get involved in activities, parties, and sports, you will look back on these relaxing, slow weekends fondly.
Enjoy!

When did it change? When I was little the zoo or aquarium or museum was a day out but it was a holiday special thing, not a weekend thing
Weekends were spent for me doing school work, playing outside locally with friends or in the garden or riding my bike maybe, or errands with parents (food shop, taking a gift to a family friend etc)

It seems daft that we spend all this money on our homes and nobody seems to want to spend time in them but be out spending more money on other places that used to be special trips out

I mean, there's a balance to be had. Every weekend is a bit much, yes.

This is exactly how we feel we keep the ‘big’ days out for school holidays !

They need a break. A lot of kids do far too much. I’m sure they’ll look back very happily on their childhood. Id personally get bored though! Do you do the odd trip to the beach or woodland walk or something?

Well that’s alright then! Sounds like a great set up.

what would you do if some friends invited you to a bbq on a Saturday afternoon??
do you think your child isn’t invited as people know you wouldn’t accept? This would be a worry to me.

Could that be because school parents know you're unlikely to attend if you prefer being in the house on the weekend?

To each their own but I'd wonder whether the children are missing out on events that help build friendships.

Sounds good to me. I used to take the DC out a lot when they were small, but we lived in a poky rented house in a boring dormitory town, and the garden wasn't safe to play in because there was a right of way through it and a constant parade of randomers walking in and out, often leaving the gate open. If we'd had your setup, we'd probably have stayed at home too!

Truly OP, your dc have loving, attentive parents in a calm environment. Don’t let anyone make you feel that isn’t great.

It’s not as if they aren’t going to nursery. Children benefit from time to decompress and play quietly. In previous generations children were not so over-stimulated by soft play, baby swimming, yadee yadee yada, and were much better at amusing themselves. Provided they get external social interaction during the week there really isn’t a problem.

Exactly. There’s no moderation in this picture. People are either spending vast sums of disposable income to curate “experiences” for their children or they never take them out. There seems to be no middle ground.

I can understand railing against the overscheduling of kids lives but this is taking them to an unhealthy opposite extreme.

And I know it’s fashionable to talk about kids needing to be bored and up to a point I agree but keeping them in the house all day every day at weekends is severely limiting.

This what we did when mine were little. No wonder kids these days can't entertain themselves and have very short attention spans.
For what it's worth I agree with you op.