This morning my boys and I sat at the kitchen table to make a list of everything special we wanted to do this summer. The obvious answers of "Children's Museum" and "Zoo" made the list quickly, but then something funny happened. They started listing off restaurants. The same restaurants we always go to. Places we've been in the last week or two.
My initial thought was, "that's not very imaginative." But when I thought about it some more, I realized some things.
First, anything out of the routine (even something as simple as lunch at McDonald's) is special. Just taking time to break out of schedule and switch up life a little bit is exciting to a three year old.
Second, they enjoy what we do together, even if it is just having dinner. They love having the attention my husband and I lavish on them when we are out to eat. That attention is largely our monitoring of appropriate behavior for a meal out with the general public. But we are hyper-focused on them, and they lap it up.
Finally, my own reaction to adding fast food joints to the list...YES! Not cooking is always a vacation-worthy endeavor!
My kids LOVE to go out to eat. They think it's the greatest thing ever! :-)
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the not cooking, although I don't have to if I don't want to - as the only person in the house I only have one individual's nutritional intake to worry about. Mine!
ReplyDeleteI want to go to the Childrens Museum and the Zoo, too! :) But hey, not cooking is always good.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I have taken our granddaughters on adventures. They love going to a hardware store, or a plant nursery. Anything can be made fun.
ReplyDeleteWe once took our kids for a ride on the train my husband commutes on every day. We got off 2 stops down, went into a bakery and had a treat, then took the train back home. They LOVED it :)
ReplyDeleteI love Susannah's idea, unfortunately there are no trains at all where I live and my son loves them. We go to McDonalds way more than I ever did as a child, but with fussy eaters even my mum agrees it is good for them if they eat it all. You don't have to do mega exciting things all the time for your kids to be happy. My son keeps asking to go to this playland place we went to recently and he needs to learn that that is for special occasions not the same frequency as the local play group lol.
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