How To Keep Children Focused In Holidays?

Holidays are eagerly awaited by all children. So much so, that holidays are a favorite topic with the students even when they are far away. But it has been seen that once the holidays start, the children start feeling bored and ‘fed up’ with them in a fortnight or so. This is what mostly happens in almost every country.

For the first 3-4 days children sleep a lot, get up late and break all the norms of everyday routine. Parents also ignore this because they understand that their children have become ‘free’ after a long spell of studies. After that, most of the children either take resort to video games, some outdoor game or the Internet.

But this phase also remains for a short duration only. Then, children don’t find anything worthwhile to do in their holidays. They get defocused, dejected and just keep on roaming here and there without anything worthwhile to do. So, what’s the remedy for all this. Some people are of the view that this is a basic human characteristic that we tend to get fed up with everything that is available to us in excess.

We always want change and continuously keep on finding new avenues to relieve our boredom. So, they say, it’s just a passing phase and when children will start going to school, they would become focused again. While this contention is true to a large extent, it does not apply much in the case of children.

Children have very impressionable minds (what if they develop a bad habit in the totally free and boring days of holidays) and therefore it becomes all the more necessary for the parents that they give a proper direction to their children. In most of the cases parents also get vacation in the same time period as their kids. Therefore they should try to regulate their and their children’s activities according to some rules.

First of all the children should not be allowed to sleep more than that is necessary, except for a couple of days at the start of holidays. You and your children should be ready for breakfast by about 9 a.m. (variations can be there, but some time should be fixed for breakfast). After that the family should sit together for informal conversation or some kind of small game. Then the children can play as per their will for 2-3 hours.

Parents should also fix an hour or so of ‘informal study’ during the day so that their children are not totally cut off from their books and studies. It’s better that you tell them something in advance about their course (in case you are educated enough to do so). Children can also be encouraged to do some kind of activities crash course (computer course, speaking course swimming course etc.) during free time. It’s also necessary that the family should go for a walk/outing together daily or every two days. This tightens family bonds and augments filial love.