If you have kids about 10-11 and 7-8 what do you now wish you'd done with them over the last 3 years?

[NormaSnorks]

OK, slightly obtuse question I know, but here's why:-

The DCs are 7.5 and nearly 5, and we've just been having a massive clear out of baby/ toddler books and toys/ and parenting books.

I am feeling very sad and nostalgic/ guilty about all the books we didn't read enough, the barely used games/ jigsaws and the various 'entertain your toddler' books with hundreds of ideas for things we never quite got around to.

The last 3-4 years have just gone so quickly, and I don't want to feel the same again in another 3 years .

So what should I be doing with my children at this age, which in 3 years time I'll wish I had?
And is there a good book with ideas for things to do with your primary school child?!

[Tinker]

I've got a 10-year old so I'll have a think. But, tbh, as they get to that age, they want to do less with you anyway. Mine just wants to play out all teh time and woudl if there were playmates around.

[shimmy]

as much happy family stuff together as possible. Picnics, games, rough and tumble, laughs.
It's those things they and we will look back on fondly rather than the expensive toys.

[tuppy]

Norma I thought it was just me felt like that .

I have ds13, ds12, dd rising 9 and ds 3.5.

Looking back, the things I did a lot of with the bigger boys were: trips to the zoo, helping them set up their little wooden railway, walks around the park, reading to them.

Not enough of: playing board games, taking them out on their trikes or stabilizered bikes (still feel guilty for finding it back breakingly hard with 2 non cycling little boys in the park, and baby dd in a sling or in her pram),enjoying the moment with them iyswim. I do believe that true happiness comes with appreciating, somehow, the moment you're in, eg mentally standing back a little and enjoying your children's innocence and enthusiasm rather than simply focussing on their squabbles, mess and strong little wills.

Dd...well I'm afaid I stopped feeling guilty for what I knew I wouldn't be doing iyswim.

As for ds3...well he was seriously hard work for about 2 years - very lively and also the more children you have just the harder it is anyway blah blah blah. Now I finally have learned to appreciate the moment and I love being his parent. The best times can be really simple for him; a bus ride home rather than walking/driving, or putting him in his wellies and anorak and letting him jump an all the puddles. Equally good is sitting in the garden with a book, half watching him run, jump, climb, water the plants with his watering can etc.

Relax. All they need to remember is having fun with you somehow, even going round Sainsbury's. Maybe I'm a loon but when dd was a bit younger, 5 or 6, I'd point to someone out of hearing range, maybe halfway down the aisle, and make up some story about him or her, the sillier the better. The sory has to end when you've bypassed all the fruit shoots and haribos and reached the till though.

[tuppy]

Oh and just wait until they hit their teens; they won't want to know you !

I went into ds1's room on Monday morning to dig him out of bed as he was showing no signs whatsoever of getting up. The sweet ds1 of old would always , even on a Monday morning, say "hello Mummy".

The teenage ds1 yelled "Get out of my room, go away ! Oh, and have you filled in my form yet ?"

[MuddlingThrough]

If you buy "a good book with ideas for things to do with your primary school child", you'll find it in three years time and feel guilty for not doing all the things listed in it. I think the trick is to go with the flow: do all the things that you and they enjoy doing, the things that come naturally to your family. Don't beat yourselves up for not doing the right-on things that some book says. The things I look back on and value from my own childhood were the really daft idiosyncratic things that only we did. So long as you do it with love and enjoyment it doesn't matter how you spend the next three years.
I've got two boys , 11 and 8. Best times have been dog walking, tree climbing.

[Hassled]

You can't do everything - and there are some things I just hate (jigsaws, games like Connect4 etc), and so seldom do. The kids are no worse off for it and I'm sure have got more out of having fun with my obsession with marble runs (I - sorry, the kids - have 3 sets ). My oldest 2 are very old - 20 and 18 (younger ones of 8 and 5), and the only thing I regret not having done was learn to play computer games with them. Now DS2 and I spend ages playing games like SimCity - he's learnt a lot from it and we have fun with it. As my older kids became teenagers I felt I had less in common with them because I didn't get involved in the things that interested them.

[frogs]

My older ones now just turned 12 and about to turn 8. No regrets really, but the things we all remember fondly are the days out and the holidays not swanky ones, but the Scottish beach where we picked our own mussels and made seafood pasta; the time we all went to Portsmouth Harbour; endless times my dc spend with their cousins bimbling about on the beach or in the woods; the boat trip where we saw puffins all that sort of stuff. Teach them to cook, and peel veg; take them out and build bonfires and do jacket potatoes; have impromptu picnics in the park.

And talk to them. A lot. It really helps as they get older if you've built up the kind of relationship where they feel they can tell you about other stuff going on in their lives that you're not part of.

[OrmIrian]

normasnorks - you have really hit a nerve with me. My eldest is 10 and my middle child is 8. My kids have loads of toys that are really due a clear out - some of them untouched. I don't think they've missed out that much but I have! I've had so little time to do anything with them. DD was given a big box of crafty stuff for christmas - hardly used because I haven't found time to help her but also because wherever she tries to do it, DS#2 (4) tries to join in.

I'm dreading the clear out because it will be a nightmare, but mainly because it will make me so sad and nostalgic. It's time we can't get back. DS#1 is starting to get all teenagey and stroppy - and I have so many regrets. How can 10 years go by so fast?

[ahundredtimes]

I regret things I think, but they're more things I have done rather than not. Like the time I lost my temper at the beach and the time I was mean and the time I shouted at them in the car and the time I stalked off in a huff and the time.......

[frogs]

The toys are really not the point, for me.

We got grandparents to invest quite heavily in Brio about 6 Christmases ago, and it's hardly been played with by any of them. And the dollshouse dd1 was given when she was three mainly gathers dust as well. But all three still play with the Duplo, and have endless hours of fun with the proper lego and the playmobil. You can't always predict what they will and won't be interested in -- some of mine have done jigsaws, intermittently, but it comes and goes a bit.

Trust me, the things that matter are the time you spend together letting them to do grownup things with you. Get an inflatable dinghy and mess about at the seaside. Get a disposable barbeque and cook bacon sarnies on the beach. Get a grandfather to dig out some carpentry tools and teach them basic woodwork, or how to check the oil in an engine, or how to propagate oak-tree seedlings.

The toys are just fluff, really. If they don't play with it, get rid, apart from anything you're really sentimental about. Flog the stuff on ebay, and you can make enough for a day out to the zoo. And have more cupboard space for the next ton of stuff they'll get given.

[potoftea]

Now that mine are all teenagers the things we look back on happily are the card games, and board games we played :
and the things I wish we'd done more of are those few times that we drew the curtains, put on a film, and snuggled down together in the middle of the day.
I regret that I felt like a bad mother doing thoes lazy days, as I felt I should be doing activities with them. Now I realise a cuddle on the sofa was so precious.

[moo]

Good thread.

Ds1 is 10 and I'm having a lot of these feelings atm - thoughts of him going to secondary school next year, teenage years looming...and so many things we haven't done. Lots of guilt about too much TV, and not enough Quality Time (whatever that is, anyway). It's the same with ds2 really - he started school in September and that's such a milestone and the end of an era - I'll never have that much time with him again: just me and him .

One thing that does strike me though is that the things you think they'll remember they often don't. You create these magical experiences which you think they'll treasure for a lifetime and often they forget all about them and remember the most mundane day to day things instead. Billy Connolly talked about it once - he and Pamela Stephensopn took their girls to Scotland for a holiday and did all sorts of wonderful things with them - made a "dragon's nest" in the garden of the place they were staying etc. and when they asked them at the end of the holiday what the best bit had been neither mentioned the dragon's nest or the places they'd visited and both said "the free toys in McDonald's" or "the sweets in the car" or somesuch

Like frogs says...talking. I may hate playing Lego and loathe Play-Doh but I will always talk with my boys, and I'll always read to them.

Oh I know (finally thinks of sort of answer to OP!) - I wish I'd taken them to the park more before they went to school: because it's always heaving at weekends and in the holidays. It was nice when we had it to ourselves

[Bink]

Lovely question. Of course I'm not there yet either (have 8yo + 6.5yo) but very interested in the responses!

There are a couple of things I definitely, purposely, do with an eye to the future, and they are:

• build up our fund of funny family stuff - legends and anecdotes and private jokes. Something I read said (a) the relationship you build between age 5-12 is the capital you live on between 13-19; and (b) a key lifesaver in teenageness is being able to make each other laugh; and
  
  
• plant some seeds of interest in things I don't expect them to really engage in till much older, but can get a taste of now - music, theatre, art (lots of art), books, poems (poems only if funny though (see above)).