Supporting Your Child Through the Holidays

Picture the scene: it’s been a long school term. Your child is frazzled, you are frazzled, and everyone is desperately in need of a break. Luckily, the holidays are just around the corner and you start to fantasise about long lie-ins and spending quality time together as a family.

The holidays arrive and everything goes swimmingly – for a while. Then, after just a few days, you find yourself shouting at your child for not tidying up after themselves, despairing at the state of the house and wishing they were back at school. This is not the holiday you had in mind! You ask yourself, where did it all go wrong?

Holidays can be a source of stress

While holidays are meant to provide an opportunity for fun, rest and relaxation, the truth is that they can be tough for children (and for parents and carers, too!). Whether you’re staying at home or jetting off on holiday, there’s so much anticipation surrounding half terms and holidays, but the reality rarely lives up to the expectation.

Instead, holiday periods can actually be a source of anxiety and stress. And because children of all ages can struggle to understand and express their feelings, they communicate their emotions through their behaviour.

The good news is, there are lots of things you can do to ease holiday-induced stress and anxiety, and help your child thrive during time away from school.

Keep it simple

With the usual daily routines out of the way and all that time on your hands, it’s tempting to cram your diary full of activities: take the children to the zoo; go shopping for new clothes; pop round to the cousins’ house; arrange various play dates, and so on. The list is endless.

However, remember that trying to squeeze too much in can feel incredibly overwhelming for your child. There’s a good chance they’ll find the sheer number of activities unmanageable and if that’s the case, you may try to communicate their physical and emotional exhaustion through their behaviour.

Instead, keep it simple. Avoid the temptation to plan too many things for your child. Where possible, involve them in decisions around what to do each day (making a daily planner is a great idea) so they have a say in what’s going on. With younger children in particular it can be helpful to limit the options, rather than offering open-ended choices:

• ‘Would you rather bake some cakes or go to the park?’
• ‘Shall we visit grandad or watch a film?’

The beauty of limiting choices to two like this is that both you and your child have a degree of control over the plans and it doesn’t overwhelm them with choices.