Every year from April onwards, parents tend to feel the pressure of the impending summer vacation. What are they going to do with their kids? Camps, grandparents, keep them at home?
It is a worry all the time even if one of the parents is a stay-at-home or has the chance to work from home. Who is going to occupy and take care of the kids?
Do they need to be occupied and taken care of all the time?
Before the era of mobile phones, nannies and babysitters, children were wondering around, finding out what to do themselves. Nowadays life is packed with activities and plans for them. Usually as the end of the school year gets closer and closer the panic to fix every single day of the holiday increases.
Luckily, for many local organizations this is a great business opportunity. Since the law is quite strict about the surveillance of children under fourteen, the number of different activities has risen, to the relief of parents. Now everybody can find an attractive, motivating, and creative solution for the empty days.
The canton of geneva offers a wide range of activities to choose from in line with children’s wishes
Before enrolling the kids for anything the family should do a brainstorming with their offspring from the age of six and draw up a plan A and B together because they were probably a great fan of Harry Potter last year but now they are more into dance, music or theater.
Besides many other requirements such as location, budget and age group, parents have to keep in mind the most important: the interest of their kids. Otherwise taking them every time to an activity will cause extreme stress, loss of time, which exhausts both parties and takes the fun out of the whole idea.
There is an idea that children should not be overscheduled but should be left alone
In 1993, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips wrote that the “capacity to be bored can be a developmental achievement for the child.” Boredom is a chance to contemplate life, rather than rushing through it, he said in his book “On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life”. “It is one of the most oppressive demands of adults that the child should be interested, rather than take time to find what interests him. Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time,” added Phillips.
It means that with careful planning a healthy balance must be found to entertain and amuse kids but leave enough time for recovery by doing nothing. It will underline, deepen and reinforce all they had learnt during the school year and prepare an open mind to absorb new information after September.
That is what holidays are for too. So enjoy them to full.
Photo credit: pixabay.com by vanna44; pixabay.com by sondich.
