Can we talk for a second about how hard it is during the holidays?

So here we are, into week four of a six-week summer break from school in the land of the long white cloud New Zealand. Before Christmas I was surviving on gin and tonics because hey, it was Christmas and summer at the same time, that’s reason enough to drink every day right? Okay maybe not, but I needed something to stay moderately sane while having a seven, five and two year-old at home all day, every day. What has been the biggest challenge so far is dealing with the barrage of questions daily, “What’s the plan today mom?”, “Are we going on an exciting adventure?”, “When we’re finished doing this, what are we doing after?”, “Where are we going today?”

This same line of questioning does not change, day in, day out. It doesn’t matter how many activities have been scheduled or how many hours you have been out of the house. At 6am, before I have even opened my eyes, there is a tiny voice whispering “what are we doing today mom?”

One morning I took the kids to an amazing playground, got them smoothies, went to a trampoline park, then went to the beach where they swam and played with their boogie boards. As I observed each activity, all I could hear in my mind was my mom’s voice saying “look at their amazing lives! They are the luckiest kids in the world!”, which is true and there I am pandering to their endless need for funfilled activities.

Even after a morning like this, its still not enough, it’s never enough.

I then blame myself, If I didn’t do so much fun stuff with them then maybe they wouldn’t expect it. Because we are staying at home when all their friends have gone camping maybe I feel guilty and am over compensating. But I do feel that these days, kids’ lives, just like us adults, have become jam packed, full to the brim. There are more screens, more TV, more movies, more stuff to play with, its constant.

When I think back to summertime in Ireland when I was small, there was the green. That was it.

A green field next to our house where all the kids from the neighbor-hood would spend the day and I mean the whole day, playing soccer, playing rounders and playing tip the can. On a really good day there may have been a game of kiss and torture! And this kept us entertained until dinner time. The days were endless but in a good way and it never occurred to us to plan anything. Maybe we were being mindful long before that word even entered the public realm. It was summer and there was no school, that was all that mattered.

How do we get our kids to go out and play, no questions asked but also learn to be bored and figure out what they can do to rectify being bored.

When did it become our job to keep them entertained?

Up to this point we have during the kids summer break, gone bowling, gone to the cinema, gone to the zoo, gone to the trampoline park, gone to clip n’climb (a rock climbing place for kids), gone to the beach, and frequented many, many, many playgrounds.

I sometimes attempt to spend prolonged periods of time at home. I watch their crest fallen faces when my answers are “we’re not going anywhere today, we are staying at home.” It was as if I have told them Santa isn’t real. They are devastated.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I mean we are going to stay at home and relax.

“Can we relax on the ipad?”

Nope, no screens, you can read in your room or play outside, your choice.

“But that’s so boring!” they say. I’m talking about the seven year-old and the five year-old, the two-year old is not bothered about what we do as long as it doesn’t interfere with her daily routine of winding up her siblings and destroying any lego toy within reach.

What I realised quite quickly was that the phrase ‘I’m bored” changed to ‘I’m starving”, once it became clear to them I had no intention of leaving the house.

So do I bite the bullet and walk to the playground AGAIN for the 25th time this week or do I stay at home arguing with two small humans about whether they are bored or hungry.

On this particular day, we did arts and crafts at the table for an hour, I pretended to ignore the glitter all over the floor and the glue on everything. It was 28 degrees outside so they decided to have a water fight, took all their clothes off but when the 7 year-old blasted the five year-old she was horrified, cold and petrified and ran off screaming to her bedroom. Maybe we should have explained the concept of a water fight before we started. Then the eldest, Ryan, wanted to have a chat about tsunamis, we talked about tsunamis for half an hour. He reeled off terrifying facts and I pretended to be cool about it. They played cats and dogs for a while, had a game of hide and seek and ate what felt like 25 snacks in two hours. Then I look at the time and its not even close to lunchtime, that leaves roughly 8–9 hours before bedtime. And as I listen to them fighting over a bouncy ball in the back garden I think to myself “I need to get out of this house before I lose my mind.”