Should the Perfect Parent, be avoided in the school holidays to save your sanity

[wotzy]

There you are quite happy with your own shortcomings, and juggling 100 things at once as best you can. Luckily your dc gets an invite for a few hours to play with their mate and off they pop for a visit. Good for you, good for them. Great.

Then that thing happens, they come back with stories of their friends Perfect Parent doing activities with them, like making cakes, or creative craft things, or building pottery or clay models, instead of thrusting the little darlings into the garden to look for worms and play with sticks for 2 hours.

Will you stop doing this, you know who you are Perfect Parent. Stop it. I will not be returning the deed.

god i wish i had a garden - 2nd floor 2bed flat not great in the UK for competitive parenting

my mum gets the baking stuff out when ds goes to theirs and regales me with stories about my childhood. apparently she baked with me all the time and made endless castles out of cereal boxes and sticky back plastic. its all bollocks. we were dumped in front of the tv for days on end.

I am a terrible cook and can barely boil eggs, so baking's out. i have no artistic streak at all, so ditto crafts. therefore all i can do with ds is unleash him on the garden to catch worms and feed soil to the dog. i draw comfort from the thought that those resourceful parents who have "rainy day boxes" and emergency presents/cards envy ds's independance. they probably dont, but i cant pretend can't i?