Activities with your todller

[VB86]

I have a 3 year old girl and last week we visited my husbands cousin who just turned 3.

His wife was saying how she takes her daughter to ballet, football, athletics and one other thing and well this just got me thinking and I feel like a really awful parent now. I don't take my daughter to all these activities and now i'm feeling like i'm holding her back :(

I work on 4 days a week and on Fridays I try to do something 'fun' with her like painting, cooking etc.
We don't have friends and family nearby as they're mostly in Leicester and we live in London. My lo also has a few food allergies so it's quite difficult going places and generally she is a terrible eater and can take 2 hours at a mealtime!

Anyway I was just looking for any advice or ideas on how to be better, things I should be doing with her, etc?!

Thanks for reading.

You’re giving yourself a hard time, your Fridays sound lovely! My son is 4 and he was hard to entertain as a toddler - we did the park, soft plays, bubbles in the garden. Strangely, he didn’t really enjoy toys - he got some wooden train tracks and trains for his 2nd birthday and that was the first time he actually engaged with activies inside (apart from being read to). I wasted so much time on a tough tray and various ‘sensory’ activities - he just wasn’t interested.

My daughter is 23mo and again, we do park and soft plays. She likes jigsaws, scribbling and painting, reading and loves being in the garden collecting leaves or finding insects/looking at the plants. We’ve got a little play kitchen she enjoys (Facebook marketplace is good for things like tbat) or we go for a scoot/walk. She’s in nursery 3 days a week.

I don’t do toddler groups as I’ve not found any we’ve enjoyed or that have been convenient to get to.

Forgot to say, my son did start swimming at 3 but he was nearly 4, and it was (and remains) his only planned activity.

Don't be so hard on yourself
I also work 4 days and would find it pretty stressful cramming loads of activities into our free days. I think your daughter will benefit much more from time spent with you painting/cooking/running around a park now the weather is better than she would being ferried to classes. My daughter is not mega keen on organised fun so our days off together are very relaxed and revolve around the library, playground and the odd cafe stop.

I think once they are in school you will probably be overrun with requests for joining clubs so enjoy your downtime now!

We don’t do much in the way of organised activities but we do something every day that I’m at home like go to the park, a garden centre, farm, swimming, a local event.
We used to do swimming lessons on my day off and I’d like to start them again but it does take away the spontaneity of being able to do what we want