Relaxing With Your Kids
Posted in Your Family on 23. Oct, 2009
These days, it seems like more and more moms are rushing their kids from one activity to another. Soccer, ballet, and music class seem to fill up the time slots that used to be allotted to climbing trees, making forts under the dining room table, and playing games with the kids down the street. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s great that there are so many activities available for little kids these days. We’ve participated in various activities, and I’m looking forward to doing more with my kids as they get older. It just occurs to me that in this busy world of motherhood, sometimes we overlook the simple things – like taking a day at home to just hang out.
Have you ever declared a pajama day? Or perhaps threw out your to-do list and just played all day long? Sure, we need to take care of the kids and feed our families… but sometimes the other stuff will just have to wait. You’ll never get this day back, and so I encourage you to take the day off here and there (with your kids, of course!).
Some fun things you can do on your day “off” –
- Baking projects (and don’t forget to add the love). My four year old just loves to help me bake, and it’s something we can do together. Make cookies, let the kids ice them (and get incredibly messy), and turn up the music while you’re cooking. Another thing my four year old does while we are baking is to be in charge of “adding the love.” I let her dump in the flour, sugar, and other dry ingredients, but the most important ingredient she adds is love. She’ll pretend she holding “love” in her hands, and she’ll shake her hands in the bowl to add the love. I tell her it makes everything taste better.
- Have a living room picnic. When lunch rolls around, spread a blanket on the floor in front of the TV. Turn on your favorite Disney movie and have a picnic! This is great for cooler weather, because real picnics outside would be too cold for everyone. Turn an ordinary event like lunch into a fun treat for the kids.
- Get creative. Pull out the art supplies, and go nuts. Coloring books, play-dough, and other craft projects are so much fun!
- Set up a scavenger hunt. Kids as young as two can get into this one. Hide stuffed animals (or anything else) around the house or in a single room and have the kids go searching for them. My daughter thinks it’s hilarious when I “hide” stuffed animals under the rug or behind a pillow.
- Enjoy story time. Read, tell stories, and have your kids tell stories. We like to start a story, and then have the kids finish it. Sometimes we take turns, and the tale keeps getting sillier and sillier as we add things to it.
- Consider going out somewhere, but not to do anything productive at all. Rather than stopping for a quick chocolate milk in between errands, take the kids out for a treat and make that the entire purpose of the outing. I like to take my girls to Starbucks, get them milks, and coffee for me. We’ll sit and visit like we’re girlfriends, and I absolutely love it. I’ll hang out there for as long as they’ll sit (relatively) still, and just enjoy being out with them.
My kids will only be little once. Soon enough, they won’t want to play with me, and they’ll be busy enough with their own social lives and extracurricular activities that I’ll long for the chance to spend an entire day hanging out with them. So on those days when I’m tempted to rush around doing housework, errands, and running them to preschool or pre-ballet, I know that it’s important to take a down day here and there. So remember to slow down a bit, and savor these moments in childhood.
-Grace
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