Many parents dread and love vacation: they can spend more time with their children, both in a good and bad way. Kids are naturally filled with energy, while adults have trouble matching this energy. Throw in a couple of weeks without anything to do; it’s a quick recipe for kids to get bored and turn a vacation sour. But vacations should be a fun memory for kids and parents alike, so here’s how you can spend the best vacation with them.
Plan a Holiday Destination
One of the best ways to spend time with children is during the holidays. You can go places, experience new things, and learn a lot as well. Use your holiday trips as an opportunity to teach them good values and get them away from their gadgets -or use it creatively by practicing photography and videography.
Or you can get them heavily involved with the preparation process: imagine going on a picnic, but you and your children are the ones cooking and arranging everything. It’s a traditional way of spending quality time together that’s fast becoming forgotten, so you might as well enjoy it now.
Help Them with Their Holiday Homework
Children often have a lot of homework given to them before a holiday break. Helping them go through their homework is a good way to spend time with your kids and to get to see what they’re learning and impart some of your knowledge. Also, getting their homework out of the day will help you spend more time with them, focusing on having fun instead of constantly worrying about whether they’ve done their homework.
Make Indoor Activities Comfortable
Indoor activities done with family are among the most memorable in a child’s life. Make sure to make it comfortable for them, too. The unbearable heat might make them feel irritable throughout summer, so rent a portable air conditioner or use electric fans to cool your family. The same goes with winter: make sure everyone’s warm and dry.
When your family is comfortable, you can spend your indoor quality time together, either playing board games or video games or working on projects. This might sound like rather basic advice, but let’s face it. No one can enjoy spending time in blazing hot summers or freezing winters- especially during vacations.
Make Sure You Listen to Them
As parents, we often have the urge to tell our children what is best for them. And while there is nothing bad with it, it’s important to remember that children should learn to have their own independence. If all we do is dictate to them how they should live their life, we are not actually helping them stand on their own feet, and they might end up remaining dependent on us even through their own adulthood.
Play Games Together
Many parents have apprehensions about video games, especially because there are some with violent visuals and gameplay. But there are plenty more games that promote learning, critical thinking, and even management skills.
Trying to ban video games from home might lead to children looking for other ways to play them without parents knowing it. Instead, be more engaged in their playtime. Get to know what games are popular among kids, and know if they can be beneficial to your own children. This way, you and the young ones can play it together, solve in-game puzzles with you guiding them, and have fun as a family.
Be Creative with Indoor Activities
Apart from video games, you can also introduce other types of collaborative play with kids. Board games can be a good start, and because of the many options out in the market, you can pick out the ones that are more family and kids friendly. Or, if you have an open area, teach them to play the games you enjoyed as a child. Playing tag, hide-and-seek, or hopscotch are all fun activities to share with your children.
Take Advantage of Teachable Moments
Finally, remember that with any activity that we do with children, there is always an opportunity to teach them something new. The lesson doesn’t even have to be direct, and we don’t need to give a lecture at every possible moment. We can allow them to experience the lesson by themselves.
For example, it’s good to teach them how to stand back up on their own when they fall by holding back from running to them and expressing too much worry. In the end, our goal is to create an environment for our children that will promote good values so that they can become upstanding individuals.
With these ideas, you can spend more time with your children. These become fond and valuable memories that you can look back on with them.
