I love my children but I hate weekends with them

[boatonapond]

They are so so dull.

I just don’t know what to do with them at weekends and they stretch on. I feel like we should be enjoying time as a family. But it feels as if we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

They are 3 and a half and just turned 1.

@boatonapond solidarity: ignore all the perfect parents on the thread. Small children can be entertaining (very fleetingly) but they’re mostly really, really dull and hard work, IMHO. God love them.

kids are kind of like trainees in professional services - takes a while for them actually to become profitable and start “paying into the business” (the family being the business in this analogy). You take a hit and input into them until they do.

See our farms have turned into huge tourist things and they cost an absolute fortune. I took both mine for an Easter bunny special a few months ago and it cost nearly £50. Just crazy. It’ll be worse when the baby is 2, too 😩 I mean, we do it, but it isn’t massively enjoyable.

Can your DH pick up the little one while your’e in pain? Is he not there at weekends ? I was a sahm for a few years so it wasn’t t just weekends and maybe that’s it as I was used to it. You’re probably feeling the change of pace more keenly. I used to meet up with friends that had similar age chn and that would help for more conversation. We’d take turns going to each others’ homes or meet at a park or play area.

HOWEVER I will say my son has turned me from a selfish wee bitch into a slightly less selfish wee bitch, so that’s a huge step forward.

I get that worst of both worlds age with the youngest one. My DC2 was a late walker and there came a point where they were no longer a portable baby but we felt we were just waiting for them to walk before we could go on a decent day out.

Are there any local farms etc which you can join? Ours is £50 a year fir weekdays only, which gives you something to do with them during the week. Under 2's are often free so only need to pay for 2 passes, works out at £2 a week for you and the little ones

That stuff is ok but costs money. If you are skint then the options are a lot less.

Only so many times you can go to the bloody park without being bored out of your brain. Especially if you are on your own with them and no adult company

@WhatNoRaisins it feels a bit like that just now. Plus she’s still supposed to be having two naps a day and she doesn’t really nap in the pushchair now; she has FOMO. Ds was the same. I went last a couple in a cafe a few weeks ago with a child of about two peacefully sleeping in a buggy and realised why some parents just Don’t Get It 😂

I did smile wryly at fruit picking and rockpooling with a non walking one year old 😂

What’s wrong with a non walking baby at strawberry picking though? It’s fine to do things your 3 year old enjoys that aren’t always appropriate for a 1 year old.
1 year old can stay at home with DH, or you can go around chatting with 3 year old and DH can carry 1 year old so they can see everything too.
It does seem like you immediately just want to moan about all suggestions, free things are boring, park is boring, library is boring, but farm is too expensive, baby can’t walk so can’t do X,Y or Z etc. At some point you just need to accept they are different ages and make the best of it.

I’m with you OP. I love my DCs beyond measure but that age was tough, and yes, dull.

Only thing I can suggest is do you have a zoo or similar nearby which does annual membership? That was good for us as it meant we could just pop in for a couple of hours, no pressure to stay the whole day or see everything, and sometimes we’d just go to use their (big) playground and have a coffee.

I am way beyond this stage (mine are 16 and 14!) but I remember the 3 and 1 year old stages as really hard so I think people who have children just a few years older than yours telling you how easy they find it have blocked it all out, had easy, sleepy, content babies or are being disingenuous. For what it's worth I found 3 and 1 to be THE hardest time for me as a parent (well maybe until teen anyway) so just hang in there and for me anyway it got much easier in a year or so.

You're suggesting OP doesn't love her kids? 🙄

So true! I'm 90's kid too and my mom was SAHM when we were really small and I just remember park, little library trips, playgroups. My parents had no money really but I had a really happy childhood. My mom still worries about not being able to provide more for us when we were smaller, no matter how often we've told how happy/contented we all were. Try and find the fun in the small stuff OP, it's what they will remember (more the 3yo, granted haha)

@zzar45 the point still stands though. The baby wouldn’t be content to just sit in her pram and watch and carrying her round is hard going - she’s not even particularly heavy as one year olds go but she isn’t light and she’s very wriggly.

It is partly a moan but that’s not the aim here. I’ve said I’m feeling low and I’ve been trying to work out why. In part I have thanks to the thread. What do you think your post added in terms of either support or anything really?

We could all describe days with children (rockpooling, picking fruit, wood fired pizzas, movie nights) that sound idyllic. It doesn’t stop the reality being exhausting and expensive. But in any event as I’ve said six and three And one and three is like comparing Alaska to Florida , it really is.

I do need to look into annual memberships for somewhere but we’re not really all that close to anywhere do I’ve found when I’ve got them in the past we haven’t really got our moneys worth.

Because my son, 16 months, has nothing like the finger dexterity to pick strawberries, let alone the mental faculties to understand the task, and nothing like the self control not to instantly smear them onto his clothing or put them in his mouth. It’s one of those laughable suggestions like when I saw a poster suggest somebody put their 3 month old baby on the swing at the park.

Children don’t need to be entertained 24/7. They should be amusing themselves some of the time.

I have done the same. Kids are being activated and entertained far too much. We don’t even have that many toys. They just play endlessly with chairs, sofa cushions, blankets or other things they find in our house. They are very creative and imaginative with fewer things and less entertainment. They can also spend hours at the park on the climbing frames and playing with friends

I agree with you that there is nothing wrong with taking a 1 year old to less ‘appropriate’ activities. In fact it’s what we do most weekends as DH and I would rather spend time together than divide up. We do things us/the 4 year old (in theory) would like and 1 year old comes along

It doesn’t stop it being a lot of work though managing everyone’s needs, especially when the stage of development means your kids needs are extremely different. I am absolutely a ‘get out of the house’ kind of person but it comes with a lot of mental and physical load with tiny kids. It’s okay to find it not particularly enjoyable!

One year olds just go where you go. Doesn’t need to be over thought. Allow time for rest etc but they’re learning by watching and listening.

This^^

I have a 2 year old and can relate to what you say. It is hard work and monotonous and weekends just feel like a continuation of that rather than the chance to rest and relax before having kids.

One suggestion I got from here was to break your weekend into chunks and ensure that you get a morning or afternoon to yourself each weekend. This has really helped.

Also I'd try get out the mindset off too of that weekends always need to be exclusively family time. Ensure that you take time out a weekend for yourself or to see friends. I find this really helps too.

I think people do forget that children of bygone days played ‘out’ from a very young age. And if you can remember a particular type of parenting then you were almost certainly a fair bit older than my children are now. I do get a bit weary of justifying why I’m not just sitting on my ass letting a baby and preschooler run amok.

Oh come on

Again, get that to fuck.