hoidays with an young (only child)

[chocolatemummy]

Does anyone esle find it hard with an only child on holiday, My dd tries to make friends with any other children that are around bless her, I feel guilty sometimes that she is lonely, we always try to go places where there will be lots of other kids ..........wish you could rent a sibling sometimes lol

sorry don;t have any advice although when we were on hols ds was 5 and dd one so not really at an age where they could play as such

ds went to the onsite kids club for an hour nearly every day and made some mates he could play in the pool with after and they also had a kids entertainment thingy on a night early on so the kids could mingle iykwim

yeah we try and go places like that now

I already am finding holidays hard because ds so wants to play with other children.

I also tend to choose places where there will be lots of other children or kids clubs. I figure he didn't choose to have no siblings (well neither did I strictly but if I'd started sooner I might have been able tp have more) so I figure going to child friendly holiday places is a small sacrifice to make for him.

I know a lot of people with only teenagers (from about 12 years on) who often invite a friend of their child to go on holiday with them.

yes I hope that will come in a few years but shes only 4 at the moment,
makes me feel guilty when she approache other children and tries to join in, you know how children can be sometimes, she doesnt understand when they ignore her or tell her to go away

I know. I really feel for ds when this happens too (he's nearly 4)

The other option is to go on holiday with other frinds with children. That is often difficult to arrange though and you have to be confident you will get on and will enjoy the same things. It is very difficult.

Sometimes when I see the very snobby comments made on mn about kids clubs on holidays etc, I wonder if any of them realise what it is like for an only child and their paretns on holiday. Especially as the child gets older and wants to have other children to play with.

We find this hard with our only child (DD 8).

Not so bad when she was younger but in the past couple of years we've really tried to go to places where there are likely to be other children. I can't say that it has worked terribly well for a bunch of reasons specific to the places we chose.

Have also gone on holiday with friends which worked pretty well for the parents (got to go out for evening while other parents babysat, sharing cooking etc.) But after the excitement of the first day or two, the children bickered, whined and eventually fought.

I honestly don't know how we are going to deal with this this year. Sigh.

we go away with other families but stay in separate apartments so we have our own space too.

We have the same issue. DS will be 7 in August.

Went to Spain 3 years ago and was determined to go before UK schools broke up - of course silly me forgot that would mean there were no English speaking children around either!

Went to Greece 2 years ago and coincidentally some friends were staying in the same resort and we overlapped by about 4 days so he had their 2 to play with then. When they left he made friends with a lovely little boy and we got on well with the parents so that worked well.

Last year we went to La Manga in Spain and signed him up for the very expensive football academy in hopes he would make friends there that he could then play with by the pool. Unfortunately none of the kids doing the football were staying where we were staying!

This year we are going back to Greece for a week - fingers crossed!