School holidays: stressor or stress buster?
People who have school-aged children most often have strong feelings about school holidays, whether they love them or hate them. For working parents, it can be hard to arrange childcare and/or find the right holiday programs.
For stay-at-home or working from home parents, the situation can be complex, and fraught. On the one hand you don't want your kids using screens all day long, but the peace is very enticing...
One work-from-home mother we know has it sorted.
She takes a couple of days leave at the beginning of each holiday and resets/reminds her kids of the rules, which rely heavily on an old alarm clock. The kids set an alarm for 30 minutes, during which they enjoy screen time. When the timer goes off, the kids have two minutes to pause the screen and take themselves outside to play. Any complaints and the screens are off for the rest of the day. Anyone who complains of boredom is immediately given a job to do, from the list of jobs posted on the fridge. Anyone who interrupts their mother (except for an emergency) loses screen privileges for the rest of that day AND for the whole of the next day. By the times day three rolls around, the kids are pretty much self-regulating, and the mother is able to work with very few interruptions.
Does this sound doable to you? Do you have other tricks/methods for managing the school holidays? Or perhaps, if your children are grown up, your only concern during the hols is to remember to stay away from day time movies at the theater?! Love to know your thoughts!
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