Help - getting through winter evenings with toddler

[hopingforapeainapod]

I have an incredibly active 14 month old boy and I am STRUGGLING with these dark winter evenings and relying much, much more on TV than I would like. What do you guys do after 4pm to keep them occupied?! He’s obviously too young for quiet independent play (eg colouring etc) and I also find it very difficult to occupy him when I’m cooking dinner (the days he is the childminder he is also pretty cranky in the evenings cause of over tiredness). He absolutely loves being outside so we try and get as much fresh air as we can earlier in the day, go to soft play, swimming, playgrounds etc but I just have absolutely no idea what to do when it’s dark and the evenings just draaaaag (we have a lot of hour long bath times at the moment!) Help!

My go to was the bath too, but I can see you're already getting your money's worth out of that! Chasing bubbles can kill twenty mins or so, especially if you get the big wands that you wave rather than blow and you hold the pot and he tries to dip it. We also put on music and did dancing, and a pile of cushions on the floor for climbing. But yeah, basically it's a bit shit!

I’ve often found that part of the day the most difficult too! I tend to batch cook meals a lot which I’ll make when my DC are napping, so dinner usually doesn’t take too long and I can play with them whilst keeping an eye on a pan of pasta to go with the bolognese I batch cooked for example. Mine are a little older but which activity we do is their choice, they will just pick something from the toy box. If they do end up watching TV I usually let them choose a half hour animation rather than something that just goes onto the next episode so that helps us easily limit the time.

We would go for a walk down the high street and they found the lights in the shops interesting to look at…

Go out to places like swimming or soft play. Or IKEA (let them open and close all the drawers)

During Covid we went bananas, one weekend we brought the (full size) slide into our (tiny) lounge.

Sympathies, it’s the worst age for being stuck indoors.

I’ve been having this same ‘argh!’ with my energetic 5 and 3 year olds this week.
Indoor little climbing frame/Pikler triangle with a slide attachment is my suggestion. I’m getting my kids a gymnastic bar and spinning seat 😂
The long cold evenings are really hard

One of our faves we learnt from a friend,
Make an obstacle course in the front room..a tunnel toy or crawl under a table, stepping stones you can buy or use cushions or even sheets of paper if the floor isn't slippy, a bucket to throw balls or bean bags into,
A piece of string on the floor to try to balance along...then do circuits...can yoi do it backwards/on one leg/ faster etc it gets their energy out :)

Grab a cheap second hand gym ball...fun to roll to each other or to sit on with him and bounce or help him roll on his tummy, lots of ways to play.

Hide and seek (very basic and won't last long at this age but its fun and different).

Walks with torches are also faves here. Walking in the dark looking for Xmas lights are fun this month. But mine also loved just holding a torch and shining it at hedges telling me they had found giant spiders or other terrifying bugs 🤣.

Cooking. Its a pain and messy but they love to help bake. Things like mug cakes are an easy win on dark evenings.

Baths are a good send, you can mix it up with different games - toy car wash, squinty bath foam- glowsticks or light up bath toys.

Invite a mum friend and their little on over...dissolves the length of time and loneliness .

Big hugs, it does get easier. Xx