Creating Monsters

It's the Easter holidays, we're still (sort of) in lockdown and I have inadvertently created some sort of monster in trying to limit the boys' daily screen-time. 

During term they are allowed to be on 'devices' from when they get home from school until 6pm. For Eddie, that generally means two and a half hours. Gilby will get slightly more some days as he walks home for school, but less than two hours on the days when he does a sporting activity or club after lessons. 

At weekends and during the holiday they are allowed to take the 'two o'clock option' - but they must be off by 5pm.

That means that from waking until the magical hour of 2pm when Fortcraft, Mineleague and Rocketnite (or whatever) are allowed, there are just empty hours to be filled.  The last half-term challenges, while updated for this holiday, have lost their allure. My children do not seem to be magically reciting Hamlet or producing short films. Instead the Boredom Basilisk pays a visit.

Things I read tell me that boredom is good for children.  That it is character-building, invites creativity and problem-solving, encourages the mind to wander and daydream, improves mental health.

It doesn't feel like a good thing when they are lethargic and complaining and entirely unmotivated and exist only for Fortleague (or something) later. Oh, and some foraging for food. That happens. Snacks disappear faster than working pens in this house. 

The return of football training and clubs has done much to release some of the pent-up energy in the household, but it has, in turn, unleashed another monster - the calendar Kraken, with its sinister, impossibly-intertwining limbs. 

A bunch of fixtures that I would have taken utterly in my stride pre-lockdown suddenly seems entirely overwhelming as I try to work out how I can get both boys to football matches in different directions at the same time on a Saturday morning or dash between drops to cricket and dancing on the same evening, - while my own diary column fills up with book groups and stoolball training and committee meetings. 

Like many people I have no desire to return to pre-covid levels of craziness, but I feel powerless to stop it happening at the moment.

Bribing My Way Through Lockdown Days

Half term is always expensive, and turns out it still was, even in lockdown during a global pandemic when we can't really live the house, and certainly not the village. 

How, you ask? 

Well, we have a 'rule' in our household of no devices before 3pm. Mornings, without the discipline of homeschooling, became long voids of time. Gertie met a friend to walk around with for an hour each day. Gilby managed a socially-distanced morning of fishing with a schoolfriend, and Eddie, too young to meet up with a friend independently, read quite a lot of Beano. (A subscription has been his lockdown treat.) What we really needed was structure and purpose. 

So I resorted to bribery - always a parenting win - and came up with a series of half-term 'challenges' with a heirarchy of financial reward. (And before I am judged too harshly, they don't yet get pocket money.) 

The list included poetry and Shakespeare by heart, cooking, DIY, writing, music and sport. 

Gertie learned the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. Eddie learned the first part of Hamlet's 'To Be Or Not To Be' soliloquy - though it sounds funny coming from the mouth of a 9-year-old. We had two three-course-meals cooked for the entire family, and the boys collaborated on writing and recording a song about the foibles of various family members. Several 5km runs were completed in increasingly competitive times, and I got a new birdtable. (To be fair, that birdtable required some intervention from Hearth Father as it was a little more complex than I originally envisioned, but still.)

I am now skint. 

The littler people have decided that challenges are an easier way to earn money than chores. It's a crying shame that they require the extrinsic motivation of a financial incentive to do this sort of stuff. I seem to have created some sort of monster. Easter is only three weeks away. Let's hope we have a few more freedoms. It would be cheaper to go to a theme park or eat out every day. And it might have been cheaper to buy a handcrafted birdtable from an artisan online shop, but never mind. 

Currently reading: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Do Arms Dream of Electric Whisks?

School Holidays essentially become a daily battle to:

a) see how long we can exist each day without resorting to screens of any kind

b) complete a) in the context of spending as little money as possible.

Today we reached 3pm before the television went on with its infuriating YouTube gaming videos. Apologies if I offend someone who actually produces these, but whilst playing a computer game for hours on end seems to me like an utter waste of life, watching someone else do it feels even less worthwhile. It's one of those generational things where my children turn to me, shake their heads, and tell me that I 'just don't understand'. Quite.

And I managed to do it all whilst only spending £4.42 on baking ingredients. Winning at life. So, today's activities included:

1. A continuation of the comic strip collaboration (between Eddie and Gilby) of Captain Mega and the Alien Invasion  (where the lid of a permanent marker being left off led to the, well, 'permanent marking' of a drying towel.

2. An Irish dancing practice session.

3. Starting the new jigsaw puzzle.

4. A game of chess that turned into who could twirl the pieces on their edge for the longest.

5. Several hours of trampolining. (Because it was a bit damp and drizzly, it required Eddie wearing 11 - count them - pairs of socks to stop his little toes getting wet.)

6. An extra washing load. See 5.

7. A banana cake, made by Gertie and Eddie

8. And, not to be outdone, a rival baking adventure that resulted in Gilby's first Victoria sponge.

The banana cake created the most mess, but also produced my favourite exchange of the day:

Gertie: Oh why is it taking so long to cream the butter?

Eddie: Because we aren't electric.

Currently reading: The Wife by Meg Wolitzer