Little Cotton Candy was on spring break last week, and it was fun getting to spend lots of one-on-one time with him. It was also challenging, especially as I’ve been trying to keep up with my work and not fall too far behind this week. Not to mention, by Friday, he was getting restless and bored, despite my attempts to get us out of the house and try some new things. So for all my fellow parents who had no or sporadic help over spring break, this one’s for you: I’m sharing the five things every work-at-home or stay-at-home parent knows about spring break.
1. Your child’s bedtime will slowly creep up by anywhere from one to three hours. Before I knew it, I was falling asleep before Little Cotton Candy at night. You better believe I took advantage of Little CC sleeping in in the mornings to eat some cake and relax on the couch listening to podcasts. I knew I would be paying for it the next week when he would have trouble adjusting to his regular school wake-up time. But you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
2. You will give your child a “special treat” in the hope that it will give them something to be excited about, and that sugar high will backfire big time. We planned an entire “Mommy and me” adventure day on Tuesday, with the promise that the day would end with a special treat. We had a wonderful time attending the library’s story time and craft hour, watching random construction sites throughout the city, and playing at the children’s museum. But then I took Little CC to the snowball stand for our first snowballs of the season—and Little CC consumed probably three times as much sugar as I let him have in a day in a quick 15 minutes. Needless to say, the rest of the evening he was bouncing off the walls and did not want to go to sleep, like, ever.
The awesomely bad idea of snowballs after 4:00 in the afternoon
3. Your child will get tired of you. Little Cotton Candy is four right now, and probably more into me than he’s ever been (even as a baby he seemed to prefer Dada). But even so, by Friday of spring break week, he was totally sick of me. I don’t blame him! He kept asking to play with Gran (my mom), and why Dada had to work when he didn’t have school. I’m sorry, kid!
4. You will run out of ideas for how to keep your child entertained. Maybe this doesn’t apply to those awesome Pinterest moms and dads who’ve always got their next project ready to go, but for me, I ran out of things to keep my four-year-old from getting bored. On Friday, I got desperate and broke out the Perler beads, even though the last few times we’ve used them, they’ve ended up ALL over the floor. We played at parks, the museum, McDonald’s; we visited the library; we read books and books and books; we played with Legos, trucks, Transformers, shovels and dirt; we had a play date; we colored and crafted and glued; we ran errands; we visited family who was in from out of town. And yet…by Friday at about 2:30 PM, we were just out of ideas.
Building at the children’s museum
5. You will be so ready for school to start back up on Monday. Even though I knew on Friday that waking up and getting Little CC ready for school on Monday would be difficult, I also knew it would be nice to have a few hours of quiet to myself to get back into my working routine. And I also knew how happy I would be to see his sweet face upon school pickup!
. . . . .
Spring break was educational, for me: I’ve learned that if I want to get any work done over spring break, I need to hire a nanny, schedule some well-timed play dates, find a camp for Little CC, or ask Mr. Cotton Candy to take a day off work. With summer break coming up, I’ll have ample opportunity to figure out what works best for us; and then we’ll have the added option of going to the swimming pool!
Work-at-home and stay-at-home parents: how do you navigate school breaks?
grapefruit / 4085 posts
It’s hard when the routine changes but we made it work too. My husband’s a teacher but didn’t have a winter break so we had play dates, went out to eat, stores, went to a painting place and a play place and tried not to let any boredom sink in.
blogger / cherry / 174 posts
So true! All of these!
blogger / cherry / 142 posts
@fancyfunction: Good job, mama! Sounds like you were prepared. It’s definitely easier when it’s warm and you can get outside and do things. Don’t know what the weather is like where you are.
blogger / kiwi / 675 posts
this is so funny! I was just talking to my friend about Summer time and all of our kids being home 24/7, last year we made a 3-month calendar of things we could take our kids to do. We didn’t stick to all of them but we did a lot of them and it totally worked. Still there will be those bored and restless days!