Yesterday, I shared the picture above of my kids and I at the supermarket (yes, we were posing in the aisles-ha) on Instagram in a bid to ease any summer holiday guilt you might be feeling. It was the only trip we made out yesterday and honestly, I felt NO shame or remorse about it.
Why would I?
Not every day of the holidays needs to be brimming with activity. You’re not Mr flipping Tumble and nor am I so stop feeling like you need to entertain your kids 24/7.
Boredom is good for their developing brains. It enables them to discover what they actually like doing and lets their imaginations run free.
I was featured on ITV’s Good Morning Britain recently discussing the summer holidays and fought back on the issue of parental pressures. There’s enough of those already!
I personally love the summer holidays and a more chilled way of life. My kids are 8 and 6 now and like sleeping-in so our days usually start around 10 am and can involve anything from free days out at the library and picnics in the park, to visits into London, or weekends away OR like yesterday, nothing much at all.
A slow day.
We all need them. We all need a lot of them.
As we paid for the produce of last night’s dinner which included a big bag of grapes, the kids declared how fun it had been to choose what they were going to eat that night. To feel in control for once.
They’d both relished our walk to Waitrose meandering through the back streets and pastel doors of Windsor, inventing stories as they went, and later scoffing the grapes on the journey home.
I even found I’d clocked 10k steps on my FitBit thanks to the trip, but most of all, I’d reconnected with my family in that short time, after making deadlines in the day and sorting boxes of toys for our move.
It just took a trip to the supermarket.
That’s what life’s about after all. The every day mundane moments which ARE in fact, THE TIMES OF OUR LIVES.
I love this image below which testifies as much.
Strolls around the shops, picnic carpets, a movie on while you hit publish. It all counts.
So please stop the guilt and start living, yeah?
The summer holidays are what you make of them!
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Here here. Couldn’t agree more. My girls love chilling and having slow days. Term time is so busy, holidays are there to be enjoyed and taken at a pace that encourages rest too!
Tom @Ideas4Dads recently posted…When is it the right time to jettison dead weight friendships?
Amen to this!!
Social media puts so much pressure on us as parents…
We haven’t done anything during these holidays…My girls are 10 & 15 and are happy to amuse themselves but we have spent time together just doing not much. It has been lovely.
Kim Carberry recently posted…Making bath time fun with Mini-U – Review!
Sounds perfect to me xx
Yes I fully agree! I see so many parents filling every single moment of the holiday and filling their child’s free time with instant gratification as soon as they start to whinge that they are bored. I’m a teacher in ‘real life’ when I’m at work and children today don’t know how to be bored, but it’s so important for their imagination and development! Love this post 🙂
So true Kate, we all need to let kids be kids, and that means being bored and getting inventive! x