Tired 4 yo ds after morning at pre-school - what do you do for chill out time?

[dinny]

he wouldn't in a zillion years nap, but is twitchy and tired afterwards - do you let them just flop in front of Tv? feel I should be doing something more constructive with him!

reading to him..... what else? thanks

yes I used to give my ds dinner and then an hour of TV before doing anything else

oh lord, put the telly on!

Definitely telly or a DVD. Nothing taxing. Brings them back to life nicely.

You can't be constructive every minute of the day. Let them dabble and potter for a bit.

Sometimes have a similar problem with my nearly 4 yr old.
I try to resist the telly until later in the day, as otherwise he just spends the whole afternoon and early evening watching CBeebies and gets a bit spacey and grouchy. Generally try to keep the telly off until 4pm-ish, unless he is having a bad day or I am totally done in.

DS finishes pre-school by midday, so usually give him lunch and then get him out for another run around or activity before settling in for the afternoon. Local park, library, swimming etc. I prefer to totally knacker him out

Do you have a garden? I let him potter around in our garden if I can't be bothered with the park.

Then encourage him to do quiet solitary activities (I get tired, too!) - jigsaws, drawing, lego etc - once we are home. We do a bit of reading together. If I am feeling like Nigella we make fairy cakes (out of the packet) or pizzas. If I am feeling like Waynetta, DVDs / Beebies go on.

yes, MrsMattie - TV in the day seems to make ds really grouchy too....

we're just about to do some Match Attacks and then swimming later

I think the important thing is to balance it out over the week. There are days when clearly DS is exhausted and slouching in front of Beebies is the only thing he is good for. There are also days when I cannot be arsed to be Mary Poppins - again, TV can be a Godsend then. But i also think that TV watching is a vicious circle 9and I don't mean it is a 'bad thing' _ I actualy think a lot of kid's Tv these days is really good quality). But what I mean is, it can lead to just wanting to watch more Tv and not do anything constructive at all. the less Tv my DS watches, the less tired he is in the afternoon, actually. And the more he gets into 'quiet activities' like lego building or sticker books or whatever, the more he enjoys them.

yes, exactly the same as ds

dd is very self-regulating naturally re TV, she likes a couple of programmes and then will happily wander off and play

ds would want to keep watching for hours and then get really moody!

What about sitting and reading a book to him? Obviously you probably don't want to do this every day but could be done sometimes to see if it helps? So he can sit and chill for a bit but away from the telly until later on?

I certainly wouldn't feel guilty about putting the tv on as they will do lots of activities are nursery and school he will be full time. But obviously if it is disrupting the rest of the day then thats not so good.

yes, I do read to him - he's just a bit over-tired I think

yes, I do read to him - he's just a bit over-tired I think