The October half-term has been pretty average - a bit half-hearted and half-arsed with the UK still in Covid-confusion, no-one sure of the rules and what we can and cannot do. The spring half-term came and went without many of us noticing - we were right in the middle of lockdown, where the novelty of home schooling hadn’t worn off, where one sunny week merged into the next and all we could think of was, Hurray! Half Term! No Revision! There wasn’t any pressure for parents to take children out to expand their creative little minds – everywhere was closed. There wasn’t any expectations to come up with inventive day trips, or be mum’s taxi, or try and work out exciting ways of filling the days that were both educational and cheap. Instead people stayed at home, and my two boys just got on with entertaining themselves – which, in a funny way was exactly what I had to do when I was a kid.
When I was little, the garden was my adventure playground and arguing with my siblings was my main source of fun. And before I sound like a nostalgic cliché - we did just go out for hours and hours on end without our parents; exploring, scrumping, biking or just hanging around, kicking footballs against walls and playing massive games of stuck-in-the-mud. We never expected our parents to drop us into town, or take us to the beach all day, or pay for us to visit expensive art shows and go on half term breaks to far flung corners of the world. And when I got a bit older, although I didn’t have an Xbox or a mobile - as this was the early 80s and they weren’t invented yet - I would hide in my room for hours on end on the most glorious of summer days, happily listening to music taped from the radio on home-made cassettes, ignoring my parents, experimenting with bizarre make up (a combination of Ziggy Stardust, Steve Strange and Adam Ant stripes – just awful) and chatting on the telephone to my friends about how unfair life was. That was, as long as my parents weren’t expecting a phone call in, as these were the days there was only one landline - physically attached to the hall wall by a curly wire. Boy, life was simpler in the 80s, but - I was happy being a normal, bored teen.
I do think now there is an underlying pressure we feel as parents of making sure our children are well rounded individuals and because of this, I think many of us are guilty of over-parenting. Of trying to fit too much into their lives. We want our children to do well at school, but also feel we need to fill all the free time they have with ‘worthwhile’ activities – we spend hours driving kids to sports clubs, piano lessons, scouts, drama clubs, art clubs. We stand shivering on side lines on wet weekends watching them play football, netball or rugby. Half terms and holidays spent marching around castles, museums, stately homes and wooded walks. Check lists ticked – educational? Tick. Creative activity? Tick. Character building? Tick. Cultural? Tick. Play dates and birthday parties, shopping in town, sleepovers - each activity regimentally planned down to the last 10 minutes. Jam packed diaries supposedly equals knackered kids and therefore happy parents. But is this what the children want? Did we forget to ask them? Shouldn't we just let them shove a film on, or leave them to play dens at home? Did we forget children need to learn to be bored? To have unsupervised time with peers and siblings? Are we all too busy #makingmemories for them that we have forgotten to just let them be kids?
I learnt a few years back to take my foot off the pedal a bit – I work from home, even before Covid19, so to a certain extent my two have had times when I used the TV as daytime childcare, or let them play unsupervised in the garden while I was on a call. But I also remember the pressure felt during half-terms that we should be ‘doing’ something. In fact, I remember once when my eldest had started high school – he pleaded could we just have a Duvet & DVD day rather than be dragged out somewhere, and I think I realised then that the half term break had become all about me – or how I thought they should be ‘bettering’ themselves, and had forgotten that little cherubs don’t need a fulltime PA organising their diary. They are kids and can sort themselves out if left unattended. It’s easy to overtake – mistaking parenting with doing. Of course, there are times that a walk in the woods or a visit to a fantastic castle can be one of the best days, and watching your child enjoy a sport they love as you freeze your butt off is magical. But it is all too easy to fall into the trap of feeling you need to DO something to be a decent parent, that if you haven’t squeezed in a bit of ballet between the judo and swimming lessons then you are failing. And if half terms haven’t been packed with carefully constructed activities geared to broaden the mind, then you will be judged by your own parental peers as inadequate. Parenting shouldn’t be competitive, but it feels like that some time.
Half terms for us are different now the boys are older. They have become a real way of recharging batteries as we lay off the school runs for a week or so. The boys snooze ‘til noon while I work, and maybe we manage a walk out with the dog or snuggle up to a film in the afternoon - but gone are the Tick Lists and To Dos. Thank goodness. We seem to have forgotten that children need down time as much as we do, and teaching them to be comfortable doing nothing is an important life skill. As is teaching them to acknowledge what they do have, and that life isn’t kind to everyone. We have had a real wake-up call this half-term. It has taken a premiership footballer to shame us into remembering the hard reality is, half-terms for many children has never been about castles and creativity. It has been more about survival. About being hungry. About being without. And while my social media feeds are full of images of autumnal sunshine and Halloween activities as parents try and keep up with outdoing each other; I am more aware than ever that there are children out there now, in 21st century Britain, that go hungry every day, and that often school lunch is the only time they will have a decent hot meal.
It’s humbling, and I try and remember that when I am frustrated at the amount of mess my two make when they are making lunch. It’s humbling when I am standing in a supermarket looking at my shopping list, where the boys have scribbled on their own preference of snacks and goodies we try and get in when they are home all week - yet I know that there are kids who don’t ever have the privilege of choice. It’s humbling to know that I can’t fix the problem, but I can certainly give to food banks and try and teach my sons a thing or two about gratitude and appreciation. And I make them aware that what they take for granted - enough food in their belly and a roof over their heads – isn’t a given for some.
Half-term is hard, whether you are desperately trying to amuse your little ones as you hold down a job; or working out the best way to stretch the budget. Or stuck without childcare as the country hits yet another mini-lockdown and the rug is pulled from beneath you. I, for one, am as guilty as the next for frog-marching my sons from one productive activity to the next, especially when they were younger. But I truly believe that the best way I personally can parent now, is to just let them be themselves, to stop feeling that I need to entertain all the time and to give myself a great big pat on the back that I am able to provide them with what really matters at half term- hot food and hugs on demand.
© The Real Tilly Fairfax
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