to think it’s easier to take kids out rather than be at home all day???

[cadburyegg]

All I hear in the run up to the summer holidays is
”Kids don’t need to be constantly entertained”
”Kids need more unstructured time”
Which I agree with but today we have been in all day and my kids have spent the whole time either arguing or getting hyper and winding each other up.
It is just really hard to deal with!!!!
Does anyone have any suggestions??? Am I the only one who finds this?

Will be for some
Won’t be for other
🤷‍♀️

Depends on the children. Mine are generally easier at home (they still fight when out!), but it's we like being out too.

When we are ‘home’ it means my DC are outside playing. They are not literally in the house. DD1 is now a teen but even she is sent out to walk the dog at least 3 times.

Ay, but taking them out is 100x more expensive.

Mine were pretty chilled but I still preferred getting them out every day when they were young, fresh air doesn’t harm anyone!
Some dc are happy to potter, do a craft activity for hours, play Lego or sylvanians all day, mine were like this. They didn’t fight or argue, they played really happily together. But I still insisted on us getting out for at least an hour, even if it was just to walk from our front door and post a letter in the postbox (deliberately chosen to be one that was a half hour walk away rather than the one 2 minutes from our house!), the ‘letters’ we were posting were usually just some of their drawings to family members who lived nearby 😂 I can really make an activity out of nothing!

Honestly no I find it super easy to be at home with them. But our summer holidays have already gone on for 4 weeks so I do need to pace myself more!
We do go out most days but rarely for a full day. They’re still young so a full day is extra work on my own.
At least one day a week we basically go nowhere, maybe pop out for an hour but just relax at home, draw, clean, change the beds, run around in the garden, read.

If your child will sit down all day and watch tv and you’re happy with that then yes it’s easier staying in. I much prefer being out

We were always out and about when my dcs were smaller. They couldn’t stand staying at home - too much energy.

I set up so much for them to do but they’ve got the attention span of a knat

That’s a bit judgmental really. Plenty of people don’t need to be at paid activities every day and it doesn’t mean their children sit and watch tv all day.

when my DCs were little I found it easier to be out at least for a couple of hours. My two would play nicely together for most of the time but when they started arguing I just found it easier to go out and distract them. Then when we got back they would chill and watch a dvd (it was the olden days before digital everything). I think if I was an arrty craft person I’d have done something like that to break up the day- I always felt as though I should do more painting and stuff - but I’m not that way inclined.

If I was a mum of young DCs now I’d want to go out to avoid the temptation of giving them devices.

We go and spend hours in the woods or at the beach. It's free, unstructured time and it's child led in thay we don't have to rush out anywhere and we can decide together where we want to explore and they can do/play wharever they choose. We aren't stuck literally inside the house.

It also depends on the ages, previously I felt we had to go somewhere or they'd go nuts, now they can play happily in the house and garden for much longer periods of time (they are 5 and 8). I would always want there to be an outdoor option though, eg garden, for everyone's sake.

The obsession with “unstructured play” and “the importance of being bored” are fashionable tropes at the moment which people trot out without really thinking about them.

Like most of these truisms there’s a germ of truth but the virtues of “being bored” are massively overstated in my opinion. As a child who was chronically bored because my parents couldn’t be arsed to sort out clubs or hobbies, I would have given years of my life to be a bit less “bored” and to learn some useful stuff instead.

Its a classic piece of nostalgia where parents who came of age in the pre screen eras of the 70s and 80s put a positive gloss on something in retrospect which at the time was pretty shit. In the memory its all Enid Blyton style apple scrumping and fort building and in reality it was deathly boredom, watching shit TV and fighting over broken toys before graduation to smoking behind the bike sheds.

Its true that children don’t need expensive leisure activities every day and back to back Chinese lessons but a brief trip to the park or library is better than sitting around watching tv or staring at walls, of course it is.

I think a lot of the ersatz obsession with “boredom being good” is parents trying to justify not being arsed.

Depends, mine are definitely easier at home.

Mine only do chilled out days in when they're ill. We have to at least go for a walk.

Depends on the children, surely?

Of course it does

I wonder about these OPs sometimes, I really do!

I found it much easier to go out than stay in when mine were younger

We spent a lot of time at the library, free museums, stay and play type holiday clubs in church halls/sports halls and going for walks/the park. We'd tend to go out mid morning and stay out until late afternoon, home ready to cook tea.

I have really fond memories of school holidays when my kids were small as my work pattern was arranged to have 3 days off a week with them

Mine have bikes and scooters and play in the local neighbourhood with friends from school. So not stuck watching TV at home. They get to do a bit of that but not all day.

It's not all or nothing.

It depends on your kid / you I think

Mine bicker at home but nothing major. I have one child who loves being out, very social, very confident and my other child prefers to stay at home and chill in peace and quiet 😅

Definitely out. Mine are older now but we’d be out as much as possible. However our being out was as unstructured as possible, and free. Walks, picnic by the river, park. Just letting them run and play. We’d get home after a day or and they’d usually want to play in the garden. However we were lucky with our location, I appreciate that’s often not the case.

I used to find it easiest to get my two out most days. Usually free/ modest outings like parks, swimming and museums. There's some attractions near us where the entry has free re-entry through the year which made for cheaper outings around the year.

We all benefited for burning some energy off and having a change of scenery.

In my case yes, definitely easier to be out than in. We go out everyday, I think it’s been a few years since we stayed at home all day, possibly during covid.

Depends on the children, their ages and their state at that point.

For mine, when small, dd1 was easiest when out. She loved to sit in the buggy and watch the world go by.
Dd2 was not. She hated the buggy so she either wanted to walk or to be carried. In fact with the pair of them we more often ended up with dd1 in the buggy and dd2 on the buggy board or walking - from when she first walked at 8 months. However when she got tired, and she went from 0-60 in about 3 seconds, she was awful. Didn't want to go in the buggy (she actually snapped one buggy throwing herself backwards in it with a strop) but didn't want to walk, or be carried... So actually she was easier to handle at home.
Ds a mixture. If it interested him, and wasn't too noisy (unless it was aeroplanes) he was easy when out. Mostly. However it was hard to find something that interested him enough and also interested the girls who were quite a bit older. However he preferred to be home (still does as a young adult) and was much happier pottering around, preferably naked, at home. He doesn't do the naked any more, although minimum clothes is a good description.

But they all had their moments. I remember well the time when dd1 aged about 12 announced she would rather throw herself out of the car and die than go to whatever it was we were going to. No it wasn't outrageous. We can (and have done) laugh about that now.
There were trips we went on that I discovered when there, having gone by public transport, that one, normally ds, was ill and was just miserable.
Although the two hour train journey where I discovered as we got off the train in the middle of nowhere, with no return train until a good deal later that dd2 had a temperature over 41 was perhaps more memorable.
She was less bothered than me tbf. She did spike these temperatures and seemed totally fine with them. Trying to get her to stay still, take the calpol and rest was a challenge when there were such fun trees to climb. At least it wasn't in the sun, I suppose.

As they got older, I think they all more appreciated time at home, even dd2, though. They liked their days out, but at the same time they also liked their days at home, and wouldn't have wanted to be taken out every day.
Our most successful days were our board game days. I'd buy a load of snacks and do some popcorn, and we'd start with our version of monopoly (we had a set length of time), move on to some card games, play a couple more board games then finish watching a DVD in front of the computer (no TV) with finger food dinner. Sometimes we'd have a break in the garden for half an hour, but not always.
They loved that from as soon as they were old enough to do it until they left home.

And I'd say that any two was easier than taking all three. And any one was easier than taking any two.

They can have unstructured time at the park or in the woods. Take a picnic and a rug and plan to spend enough time there for them to chill as well as run around. Making daisy chains or sketching if they are older, maybe meet up with friends there too.