Holidays are happy days, and everybody needs them, parents and children especially. But when the demands on your own free time get out of hand, it’s time to draw the line, and set your children free to find ways to amuse themselves.
The December school holidays loom like some big terrible wobbly long weekend that looks like it could eat me alive. It demands to be filled with activities, going away, fun, sunshine, food, laughter. “How long is it?” I ask myself.
This time it’s only six weeks. Only. Six weeks of no work and mounting expenses, threatening to leave me looking like a thin, wet dog at the beginning of next year.
Yes, I could do with a holiday I guess, but, just like it is with weekends, holidays with children can be hard work: frustrating for them, and me, a sequence of poverty-inducing lurches from one semi-inspired moment to another, with a few tantrums thrown in just for laughs.
Now for the good part. The entire edifice of the ‘what on earth must I do to amuse them’ question is, fortunately, totally fraudulent, downright stupid and an unnecessary punishment for crimes uncommitted. It derives from the idea that we must care for our children, which I will not argue against, but takes things much too far.
Children must learn to be responsible for their own joy, their own anger, their own amusement. Sure, they can enroll you as helper and funder of their projects, and bounce ideas off you, but the “Dad I’m bored” chirp must be ruthlessly excised with a volley of mirthless suggestions: “I don’t know! Dance in the garden/bake some biscuits/read a book.”
This may then be rejoined by the familiar entreaty: “Can I play a game on your phone?”
Now, one thing I am is a person who has learnt when to say yes – which is most of the time – and when to say no, which is only when necessary. This way, saying no is a measured, powerful act, which helps the flow in our home. Saying no is earned, not instinctive. Saying yes is the first order of blissful parenting.
“Dad can I climb on the roof?”
“Yes. At your own risk. You know how to get up? I’ll be here reading on the couch. Would you like to play cards when you get down?”
I had the following experience recently at a children’s party. About to engage in conversation with a mom who I didn’t know well but with whom I was involved in a project years ago, she’d just started talking when her two-year-old came and dragged her away – the mom clearly didn’t want this to happen, she wanted to continue the conversation – but off she went. The two-year-old was the boss of her. Because she couldn’t be the boss of herself.
An ex-Primary school teacher, I have a natural affinity for young people, I really do enjoy their company. When a sugared-up laaitie decides I am his playbuddy, it’s fine with me, I know how to do that. I can roll with the crazy stuff. But when they start to become invested, it’s time to say: “Hey! Go play with some people your own age! GO PLAY WITH SOME CHILDREN!”
Other parents may roll their eyes, but then they’re first timers. I’m on number three. And, as a single parent, I do not have the luxury (for that’s what it is) of a partner to ferry the sprogs around, let alone amuse them while I do my own thing. So, we go the library and get books with activities in them. We go swimming. But that’s where it ends. I like books and I like swimming, see.
So, if you believe that you’re in their service, and must drive them all over town and find ways to amuse them over the holidays, you’re doomed. It starts now. Amuse yourself instead.
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