Summer holidays with kids; One week down and we are all still standing!

Summer holidays with kids: Pancakes for breakfast on the first day

This is our regular Tuesday Tips for Parenting guest post by Beckie Whitehouse from Be Confident Coaching.

Last Saturday saw our traditional welcome to the summer holidays with kids; a pancake breakfast.

I would like to write we carried on in that image of complete family harmony unfortunately that would be a bit of a whopper!!

Now a few hot and painful days later, we are more in the swing of the holidays, caught up on some sleep and getting used to being in each other’s company again.

I think it takes our family a week to settle into any holiday (the same is true of term time – a week to get back into the routine of school).

In fact I bumped into a friend the other day who said she had been quoting me on that one! And had found it helpful to remember. No doubt next week will take some more adjustments as Daddy will be around as well – but no point worrying about that yet.

But I do love it that there is no set routine. No rushing around to school, swimming lessons and football practise. We can slow down and work at more leisurely place. We can all go to bed a bit later – or a lot later with this heat and lay in a little.

I have had to become a bit strict on how much screen activity they can have whether that’s TV, computer or Wii.

Summer holidays when the kids actually work together

There were initially some whines of boredom, although possibly too hot to think about what to do, but it has settled down.

Yesterday all 3 made and decorated paper aeroplanes and had some races in the garden. We have even finished a couple of craft activities from the tidy drawers! And we joined the local library summer reading challenge.

Really, so far so good, and I haven’t yet asked many more weeks to we have left.

Long may it continue!!