Family time

[fluffytowel]

DS1 (5 years old) really struggles when not in a routine. He needs to know set times for things, will ask constantly about what's happening next and finds it hard to entertain himself etc he's a great kid, fantastic with his little brother DS2 (2.5year) and overall is no issues. We have a little park across the road we let him go to (with our supervision) but he just really struggles to interact with the kids and they've started calling him "weird" and "a baby". It doesn't help that he's only 5 but wears age 8 clothing he's so tall and people assume he's a lot older/ emotionally mature than he is. He takes this really to heart and it's getting him upset. We're new to the area so not sure if I should speak to the parents already or just monitor it for now.

I've been pintresting and seen a routine clock where it's coloured with times of things. I want to have a set "family time" where we all do something together that isn't dvds/ anything really technology related and was looking for ideas to have on days...eg.

Monday - family walk to the shop for an ice cream/ sweet/ or just a walk!
Tuesday - board game night
Wednesday- baking night

Or even like a big jar of ideas and they take turns picking one for that night.

I'm just finding it hard to think of anything out the box/ creative that we can all do together that both children can gain as much out of. This would be the last hour before the wind down to bed starts. Me and DP both work full time so not normally home till 5ish.

DS1 starts school in August so the first part of our night will be homework/ dinner/ family time/ bedtime routine.

Anyone with a creative mind that can help thanks in advance!

Does it need to be out of the box or creative? Board games, evening walk and baking sounds nice. My ds is starting school in September too and i'm anticipating him being absolutely shattered by 6/7.00!

Have you asked him what he'd like to do? I find my dd (also 5 but going into Y1) is pretty good at telling me the sorts of activities she'd like to do together.

That said, if he's just starting school, I might give it some time to get into the new routine of school before trying to shove one more thing into the very small window of time you have before bed. We work so that we can do the school run at 3 (and at the moment I'm on mat leave anyway), but I find that even picking my dd up at 3pm, it's a real challenge most days to get homework done, dinner cooked, everything sorted for the next day, bath and to bed by 8. Do not underestimate how much of a time drain the school routine is and he is likely to be exhausted for the first few months.

But as for things to do, mine really likes sitting and talking about our day or reading books together. We often ask eat other what our favourite parts of our day were and why. Building things, like a model or a puzzle, is also good.