Would this be too much for your young kids ?

[toomuchfu]

I'm aware they're all different etc etc.

But I am just talking to my mum and how things were when I was little and what we would get up to on holiday and how we would behave vs how it is with my kids..

So I will outline a couple of days as an example

1. Get up after around 9 hours sleep ( kids are 2 and 4 ). Go to the beach until around 1 pm. From around 10 am. Then have a sit down lunch until around 2pm. Go home, 2 year old naps for a couple of hours and 4 year old goes in the pool. Go out to dinner at 8 or 9ish. Sit down dinner for at least an hour. Then go to a fun fair and let them go on trampoline, ferris wheel etc.. then home and in bed at around 11 pm.

1. Another day, get up after 9ish hours of sleep. Play at home and have lunch at 1, set off on 1.5 hour car journey. Kids nap in the car. Arrive at destination, go to friends house for 45 minutes . Wake kids to go into house. Then stop at hotel for 30 minutes, then go to buy some food at supermarket, then go to buy kids clothes at shop,then onto another stop and then a two hour meal. After meal at around 10 pm, go to an another place for a drink with kids. Then go home and kids in bed by midnight.

1. Kids up after 9 hours sleep. Off into the car to have breakfast at cafe, then quick play at playground and onto 30 minute journey ti have lunch at relatives house for two hours. The straight back to the car and journey home for 1.5 hours. Then just home time and bed.

I didn't cover bath time and story time but it's also I there.

Don't you think that this is A LOT for kids this age? Especially a 2 year old? And you'd naturally expect there to be some tears and tantrums with this kind of schedule ? My mum says my parents did even more with us and we just slotted in and didn't complain......

If they are only getting 9hrs sleep they are sleep deprived. V young kids need more than that and whilst the occasional late night is fine, more pre midnight sleep would help imo.

My mum spouts all sorts of nonsense about what she supposedly did with us when we were little. She forgets that as my youngest sister is a decade younger than me I have very clear memories of her infancy and early childhood even though obviously I don't remember my own! So I know that her versions are massively rose tinted and edited to suit whatever she wants to say now.

She used to try to bully me into keeping my children up late so she could have them on display at unsuitably late events by comparing them to my niece who supposedly was completely able to fit in and just sleep sitting up at late night family gatherings too - until the fact I put my foot down and said no gave my brother and SIL the courage to admit how keeping her up had always meant a really difficult day with her the following day and refuse to do it when they had their second child!

For mine yes, bed by 7pm every night for 12 hours sleep and then a big sleep in the day. I suspect this is why we don’t have tantrums. Tantrums = exhausted kids. I’m not saying there’s never tears when things end but the tears quickly pass as there is no exhaustion. People say you can’t plan your life round kids but I can’t be dealing with exhausted tantrums.

Massive point to consider - all kids are different. That’s why I started with ‘For mine’

I'd imagine they have a very long nap during the day? I don't buy the argument that European pre-schoolers need less sleep than Uk pre-schoolers. I imagine they simply have a siesta through the heat of the day allowing them to stay up late in the cooler evenings. Surely?! My children NEED 12 hours sleep a day. That's not my choice. That's simply what they need. To not give that to them would simply be cruel.

Yes - lots of children who are up late into the evening are in a long term schedule of a 3+ hour siesta/ lunch time nap. You can't just suddenly introduce that for a week's holiday, it's what they always do.

Weirdly DD almost 3 would be fine with that; she’s a pretty relaxed child though and would happily curl up on my lap for cuddles. However, DD5 would be absolutely awful. She’s infinitely more high maintenance! We’re away atm and bedtimes have been around 8.30pm, yet she’s still insistent on getting up at 5am (plus a couple of wakes overnight as per usual) and so is absolutely shattered. She’s on the go from the moment she wakes up until the moment she finally goes to sleep, whereas DD3 will happily sit and chill if she feels weary.

Different personalities I guess; maybe you and your siblings were immensely easy going?

We have done very long naps on some of the days that we kept them up late. Days I didn't describe in the OP, as I think it's fine for them to stay up late when they've slept 3-4 hours in the afternoon.

Although I must say we still had bad tantrums when leaving the fun fair, even on those days. However my two year old does that whenever he needs to leave a fun activity. It's not suddenly worse in holiday. He just hates it when he has to stop having fun. Pretty typical for that age.

Sounds fine for one offs and holidays.

Mine were / are terrible tantrummers. It's luck of the draw imo. I remember throwing tantrums myself in the 80s! Kids tantrum. Grandparents remember with Rose tinted glasses. Tbf to my Dad, he does concede he was at work most of the time!

It's bonkers imo

Stopped me acting up anywhere 😳

I don't think I could manage that if it was 3 days in the trot but you don't say it was.

If that was 3-4 days in between of chilling my ds would have managed it at that age - but he also wouldn't really have cried as he just wasn't that type of personality.

Those late bedtimes would be too late for me let alone my kids! Hard no from me! I'm a day time person though!

Mine are fine with this stuff but they are kids that will literally sleep anywhere and through a lot of noise so it depends on your kids. For holiday purposes I would have a 2 and a 4 year old in pushchairs then they can rest and sleep as they please.

We ways had them in the buggy on holiday, usually watching evening show at the hotel/complex as the always passed out by 8pm (and got up at 6am sigh).

That's the great thing when they are little and if they sleep in a buggy they are pretty portable

Mine never slept later on the mornings no matter what time they fell asleep so we had to make sure they got some decent sleep before waking at 6am

We still had the double buggy last year when they were 3 and 1 but it's just so huge and difficult to get around in. We have the single travel buggy this year, I do miss the double at times, I must say.

https://thesleepcharity.org.uk/

I don't think it is that busy at all. But I suspect there were more naps in there than your mum is remembering.

No my kids would not have coped with being up so late night after night at that age. I've just been in Spain and we didn't eat out that late (we had a disabled child with us who can only do so much). We ate at 7.30, early for the area, and headed home at 9, just when the places were getting busy. We then played games (Scrabble etc) and had some drinks at the villa, any kids who wanted to go to bed could go.
We went to Australia when they were just under two and four. We would get up and do an activity for half a day, have lunch, come back to the hotel and spend the afternoon in the pool, dinner at 6.30 (they do eat early there), then kids to bed by 8pm. My kids didn't really nap much at that age, maybe the odd hour after lunch. Yes it did restrict me and DH's evening activities but that's the sacrifice you make when you have little kids.

Lol my 2 year old DGS has a tantrum often on having to leave nursery while he's having fun

Good for her 🤣🤣 my mum has a teacher look which quelled 15 years worth of naughty reception kids bit it was gran who kept me in line. There certainly wasn’t any holiday sabotage from me 🤣🤣

I think that you need to reread it. I'm nearly 60, I'm sick if my generation and older going on about today's parents. We were smacked which is why we didn't carry on in public. Your child (and my two) would be being pushed into residential accommodation, in the 60/70's. I have three excellent adult children, I've been far from emotionally unavailable, despite being widowed. How the fuck did you gleen what you did from my post? My children and my GC would be fine because ADHD runs through us and we are all lucky if we sleep longer than six hours. I got nothing but judgement because I wasn't putting my DD to bed at 7, she went up at 11 and we were up again at 5. She excelled at her work because of the hours she could put in. She used her ADHD to her benefit.

Sounds like my childhood holidays totally 😂, it’s part of what has made us all very adaptable individuals as we have grown older. My parents were very much the ‘sleep where you are’ type so they would think nothing of putting 2 chairs together in a bar on holiday for one of us to sleep on if necessary. I have hugely fond memories of our holidays.

There were probably no tears when you were little because back then they would have smacked you if you were ‘naughty’, which thankfully doesn’t happen now. The days you’ve described (minus the naps) would be fine for my kids now (12 and 10) but would have been too exhausting for them at 4 & 2. Not so much the travelling about and seeing family/ playing in the pool, but the lack of sleep! Mine slept for 12-13 hours at night at that age plus a 2 hour nap for the 2 year old. They still needed that sleep on holiday. They typically did 7pm-7am at home so when on hols we would stick to the same and not adjust them to the time difference (so for example in or South Africa we did 8pm-8am to allow time to have an early meal out) and in Crete we did 9pm-9am - although we did wake them early a few days there so we could get out to a beach or day trip at a reasonable time.

To be fair my boys didn’t tantrum or cry really on holiday BUT they were getting their normal amount of sleep, and they usually had both parents plus some grandparents or a uncle or aunt around to give them loads of attention, which was quite a novelty!