School Vacations

April vacation is a parent's warning to prepare for summer vacation.  It's a reminder of how horribly some kids deal with a change in routine. A reminder of how quickly a child [or teen] becomes bored. Of how painful that "I'm bored" whine is. A week is too short to get in to a new routine unless you've prepared ahead. A week is too long to survive without activities to fill the time. It is plenty long enough to inspire parents to come up with a better plan for the summer vacation ahead. 

Since most of my parenting years I have had large numbers of children in the home, people often think that I don't get the I'm bored wail.  Not true.  The old adage proposes that in a big family there is always someone to play with. It  neglects to notice that the someone you could play with may not want to play with you!  Almost inevitably someone is or feels left out. Endless arguments erupt between X,Y,and Z and by vacation's end  Z  is sobbing that "we always have to do the things that X and Y want to do, never what I want to do."

Possible Strategy:

At the beginning of vacation [or even the week before vacation if you can] gather the cherubs together or talk to them one at a time about the coming vacation.  Give each a piece of paper to write down three things they would like to do during the vacation week. [HINT: Require that at least one be something which is free.]  Give them examples or you will get lots of request for Disney World or similar dream goals. Give them some time to think about it, they may even talk to each other to get ideas [or better their chances by planning multiple requests for the same thing!]. When you collect the papers you can then start to plan the vacation to include at least one thing from each person's list.  If the activities NOT done were reasonable, encourage them to put them on the next vacation list.  If they were NOT reasonable, explain why and help them come up with other ideas they might have used.  Also: Be sure that you have the grownups in the house make the same list with the same rules.  It will give you a chance to model how it all works and continue emphasizing that a family is a cooperative unit not a team of adults and a team of kids. 

Any other ideas you want to share?  Let us know...we're in this together.