How to Survive the School Holidays

The six weeks of summer holidays is almost upon us. If you’re a working mum, you’ve no doubt already been planning for weeks as to how you’ll get childcare cover and if you’re a SAHM, you may be wondering how on earth you’re going to keep the little blighters on an even keel for 6-8 weeks! Mothers are, by necessity, resourceful, so I’ll leave the childcare and activity planning to you, and you’re bound to find plenty of ideas on websites and in local magazines. In this short article, I’ll share a few tips for maintaining your sanity over the school holidays!

The key is to share the load with others as much as you can. It tends to be mothers who take the lion’s share of the childcare over summer holidays, but here’s a few thoughts…

Could your partner plan to take a few days off to give you the occasional much deserved break?

Sharing the load with a few close girlfriends who live nearby is the number one sanity saver. One mum I know organized "swap the kids days" amongst a small group of friends last year. It worked a treat – just organize a rota where each of you takes turns to plan an activity and grub at your house. Ensure that you have other mums helping out and plan for each of you to have some time away when it’s not your turn to play holiday hostess or helper.

Plan some days out with friends, so that you get some adult conversation (yes, I know it will be interrupted every minute with plaintive "mummeeeeeee, she kicked me" cries, but I didn’t say I had a magic wand!)

Finding things to do for the day every day for 6+ weeks can be expensive, so get out in the fresh air with picnics will helps keep mummy on an even keel, whilst providing an essential outlet for kids’energy and saving you money. But what about the weather, I hear you ask? My top tip.. Club together with your friends and buy a pop-up gazebo so that the great British weather can never put paid to picnics in the park. You can find some for less than £30 on Ebay.

Build in some pyjama days – days when you stay in your pyjamas, loll around, play silly games, watch tv, eat what you want and generally say "yaboosucks" to all the conventional rules of providing "entertaining, educational days with plenty of exercise, healthy food and fresh air" Leave plenty of days blissfully free and unstructured. Kids get enough structure at school and school holidays should be a time to chill and make your own rules.

Which leads me to the last and most important tip for maintaining your sanity: Don’t try to be supermum. By doing so, not only will you exhaust yourself, you risk creating dependent kids with no initiative or imagination. My parents were fond of saying "Only boring people get bored" – so allow your kids space to develop their own creative muscles, make their own fun and teach them that life will not spoon-feed them. Our generation survived quite well being dragged round garden centers, or sitting in the car with a bottle of coke with a straw in it and a packet of crisps whilst our parents went to the pub. At least these are the memories of my childhood!

And before you cry "poor, neglected kids", my mum also used to take us on organised litter collection hunts on the beach – and you know what, we absolutely LOVED it! And my mum is, I think, still reasonably sane.