Some days my kids don’t want to go anywhere. Those days seem to be the ones where I really need to go somewhere. Anywhere! Even a short trip to the market would help reset my perspective.
The other day was one of those days.
After a few failed ideas, I even try to sweeten the deal:
But he won’t budge.
Sigh.
Five minutes later…
Oh wow, I thought only my 5 year old had those days. I like to leave the house daily, he does not.
My 3 year old is the same. Lol. He’s a home body, when we went on vacation he cried every night cause wanted to go sleep in his own bed at home. Whn we left he cried cause we left! Lol.
LOL! This is my 3 year old daughter Lea exactly! We were away for a week and every night it was “let’s go home, I want to sleep at home”. The she was so sad when we left. Maybe our kids will find eachother someday and get married and live happily ever after…and barely leave the house 🙂
Lol 🙂
This is my 8 year old. Did you spy on me yesterday? LOL!
Make cards! 🙂
That is exactly what he did!!!
The big question – once crappy boy says he’s bored, do you then go somewhere or is he simply implying that he wants something to do at home? And you’re much braver than I am if you take your kids to library, haha!
Yep, at home. We did some art stuff but I did convince him to go to the library.
My husband had a day at home with the boys earlier this week and I suggested he went to the library as the books were overdue (1 day only, phew not too bad) and I don’t think he’d ever been. My crappy boy (4 & 3/4) happily picked and read books, especially cartoon type books (he can’t actually read he just looks at all the pictures studiously). My crappy baby (16 mnths) on the other hand hasn’t quite got the idea as he ran around, then pulled books out to throw on the floor so he could jump on them… oops
Ugh. That’s what my crappy baby (20mths) does too…and not just to books. Everything around him is potentially a projectile or rudimentary ladder *sigh*
Books in our house are very precious – my husband and I are big readers (or at least I was until I had children) and I find the toddler phase with boys of tearing out the scary animals/using them as a ladder/projectile/weapon phase very painful – My crappy boy is five and he has settled into a love of books for READING but my crappy baby is 22 months and still using them as objects. sigh.
My 2 1/2 year old son has taken to sleeping with his books. He chooses a different one to sleep with every night, and oddly he has been sleeping BETTER since he started this. Books as teddy bears? Works for me.
I left the library yesterday in shame as my 12mth old ripped a page out of a book 🙁
books instead of soft toys at night! Wow, he really loves books, anything that makes them sleep better is a good thing 🙂
My 4.5 yo son loves to sleep with books. When we moved him from his crib to his twin bed at 2 years old, we would find him sleeping in the floor by his door frame surrounded by books. He will still get about 8-10 books to put in bed with him along with his 20 stuffed animals. We’ve tried to get him to remove some so he has room to sleep but we fail every time.
As a recently retired elementary school librarian now volunteering in my local public library, I continue to be amazed at all the programs the public library has for kids and families that were rarely there when my kids were growing up. There is NO QUESTION that kids who come from families who read to them, value stories in whatever form–written, audio, visual–definitely STAND OUT academically, behaviorally, and creatively. Kudos to all of you who read to your children and visit your public libraries. And might as well get a “plug” in–September is National Library Card month!
Mine never wants to stay at home!! It’s tiring!
I find it harder and more tiring to stay at home with my 2 year old & 3 1/2 year old. I’m always the one insisting we go somewhere every day (often bribing with ice cream!)Unfortunately they have so much fun at the park, the farm, the library that they don’t want to go to nursery on the days I have to work!
I love the way you draw your hands in the pictures…almost like you are praying for cooperation!!! : )
Haha, I thought those were her boobs!
Lol Shannon. After reading your comment I went back and looked and saw your point. So funny!
That’s exactly what I was going to say. LOL
This was me earlier this week!! My 3 year old daughter was in a mood. I swear she might be 16 already with her attitude that day. I just needed to get out of the house while the sun was shining for a while. She was not going to budge! After a long sigh from my 3 year old going on 16, she said “fine mama, I guess I want to go somewhere with you.” I’m so glad I was an option…. 😀
Heck, when I was a babysitter, “no” wasn’t a choice. It was “Do you want to go to the library or the park?” The annoying thing is, they usually have TONS of fun when they get to wherever you take them… It’s sooooo frustrating that they don’t realize that!
We use choices at our house too and the kids eventually do learn to get around that. Right now the almost 5 year old would answer the choice question you posed with: “i don’t want to go anywhere” and the 2 year old would answer either “no” *frowny face* or “yeah” but raise heck when I tried to actually take her someplace. sigh…
I too get frustrated when they refuse to do something that I know they would enjoy. Come on, I want what you want, just get on with it so we can get to the fun part!
Crappy Baby is even known to say “I don’t wike dose options, Mama.”
“I don’t wike dose options Mama” this made me laugh out loud! sounds like my boys
Oh, that’s just TOO funny! 🙂 How do you keep a straight face when he says that??
But why is he wearing a dress?
Maybe it’s a nightgown. Or a very long t-shirt. Why *can’t* he wear a dress?
Maybe because it’s easier to draw? Just a thought….
Because the name of the blog is not “Parenting with realistic pictures”
You win all the points for today!! 😀
That is all he owns. Blue dresses. I like mine purple.
Haaaaahahaha!!! And Crappy Papa only owns black t-shirts and jeans, and Crappy Baby only wears solid-colored cloth diapers 🙂
Underpants. He’s potty trained now! 😉
My son went through a phase where all he would wear was blue dresses! He had a sweater style one, a long traditional one , a gingham one and a short one!
My 4 year old would be happy if we were never home. Me on the other hand would prefer to never leave. He drags me out of my shell. Which is a good thing I guess. Days at home look like your picture but they’re peppered with “Can I watch TV?” “No” “BUUUT I WANT TV” “too bad why don’t we do xyz”… “Now can we watch TV”
I wish we could go to the park without melting! Lol. Can’t wait for cooler weather…
Mine are the opposite. They always want to go somewhere and I always want to stay home.
This sounds like me and my kids. Only I’m the one who doesn’t want to leave!
2 days ago this was me with my 2 year old – at 2.30pm “do you want to go to the park?” “No”, same at 3, 3.30 and 4. At 4.30 pm (when I am all settled down with play doh knowing that dinner is at 5 and bed at 6.30) “Mummy, park!” Grrrrrr….
Bed at 6:30? What time do you guys get up in the morning?
Yeah. We had one of those days. Yesterday being the most recent. I think I bribed him out of the house with a trip to the toy store for new bath toys (most were retired after a floating poop the other night).
Oh, you’re bored, are you? Well, here’s a bowl of fruit. Can you dodge tomatoes? Nope. Avocados? Apparently not. Gotta be quicker! Here come the Bananas! Gotcha! Better run, kid. Better run! Apples on the way!
When the fruit bowl is all out, move on to the toys left strewn about the house. Can you dodge micro-machines? Can you dodge a rubix cube?
Clearly, I need to get out of the house more, too.
this is awesome. Come teach my daughter how to not be bored when there are plenty of legos to dodge??
Micromachines? Rubik’s cubes? Is your house straight out of the 80s? 🙂
I don’t know about my house, but *I* am straight out of the ’80s.
My almost 5-yr-old is newly interested in listening to music. Good that I’ve been growing our music collection. When she needs more to do, I let her have the Walkman and kiddie headphones and she suddenly becomes more engaged in finding things to do… Coloring, scissor projects, Legos, etc.
I think maybe my 5 year old read this site this morning. “Let’s go outside, kiddo!” “No, I hate the sun. I don’t like going outside! I want to play Lego!”
I think my kid’s turning into a geek-vampire….
The “I don’t like going outside” is like a stab through my heart. Although I’m sure I probably said it as a kid too. Will have to ask my mom.
My issue with going outside is that we live in an area with high 90’s temps and 80-90% humidity. Air conditioning keeps us from having to grow gills.
Mine’s not even two yet and I get this everyday. As soon as I get us ready to go to the park he finds something suddenly irresistible. He. Can. Not. Stop. Playing. With. It! Anything, lint, paper towel tube, stick, bellybutton, shoe. And I’m the bad guy for suggesting we go out and leave the greatest thing in the world behind. But as soon as we get there he acts like it was the only thing he has ever wanted and I was holding him back. If I relent and we stay in he suddenly gets antsy to go right at the point of no return, about 45 minutes until lunch. The kid runs like a Swiss clock–lunch at 11:30, stories at noon, nap at 12:34. He does not accept deviations, detours, or subsitutions to his schedule. I just wish one day he’ll realize that I’m not the one holding him back… And that he can eat more than just bread, peanut butter sandwiches, humus, fruit pouches and yogurt.
Re. Eats – how about raisins, yoghurt raisins, dried mango, prunes? My 20mo can scoff these bite-sized sweet treats whatever his mood. Unless he wants milk.
These days he also quite likes chicken drumsticks. I started him 14mo on wing drumsticks – with the meat scraped to the knobbly end, so there is a good handle while he eats. Now he gets dibs on the leg drumsticks when we have roast chicken.
Our go-to emergency food is beaten egg microwaved for 30s in a ramekin (or similar).
We may do French toast – just egg-dipped bread & fried, no extras – this weekend. If I’m up to it.
I’ve tried everything with him. He’s just stubborn. He very barely “licks” his father’s ice cream. I think he just woke up one morning around 12 mo and decided that he’d only eat like 5 things and everything else was either poison or a trick. It’ll be hilarious when he’s 4 and wants cookies; I’ll tell him correctly that he’s never liked them. Ha! too bad for him, sucker.
Don’t feel bad, my daughter is the same way! She takes a loooooooong time to warm up to new foods. Introducing a food to her 10 times is not enough–it’s more like 20 or 30. Forget a balanced meal…I shoot for a balanced week!
🙂 life is too short to fret about food.
My boy spent most of a year eating nothing but peanut butter (out of the jar), plain yoghurt and oat porridge. At 2 1/2 he is *just* starting to branch out to a few more interesting things. He is bizarrely healthy. Life is too short to stress about food!
My 4 yo insists that anything other than his favourite 5 items (crackers, bread, cereal, cream cheese and yoghurt) is ‘bad for me’…. the only meat he has EVER eaten is chicken nuggest – and we all know that they don’t actually contain meat … *sigh*….
Don’t forget – you’re the Mom! Although I must admit your Blog wouldn’t be near as interesting if you had just told him you were going to the park or the library or Jack’s and that was the end of your post!
Hahaha. My 3 year old likes to say she wants to go somewhere and then refuse to actually leave the house.
Hilarious! I can totally relate. The days my kids don’t want to leave the house are usually the days when they go “bat shit crazy” by 10am.
*ps. thanks for “bat shit crazy” on a previous post. It makes me smile just to think it, so it has become part of my lexicon.
lol – exactly! my husband tried to take our 4 y.o. son to see a baseball player (at a shopping center, signing autographs) on Tuesday. he would only stay at home and play with his cars.
Turning down treats? *gasp*
I know! He REALLY wanted to stay at home.
I had one of those days, too – except that going out didn’t help much. I have 3 under 3 (all girls) and it was a bit of a challenge yesterday.
Good to see that I’m not the only one 🙂
Eek!!!
My son (18-months) hates going in the house after daycare. All he wants to do is wander around the backyard. And on the weekends he fetches my shoes, his shoes, makes me pick him up and then says “Bye bye!”… this is his subtle way of saying he is ready to go somewhere – ANYWHERE – other than be in the house one more second 😛
This is my son. He’s 2 years old, and desperate to go “bye bye car” the moment he’s had his morning butt change. And post-nap is the same way, if he had his way we would only come home to sleep, and even that is optional.
You don’t have to ask you know. Just say we’re going and go.
I do when I have a plan, which is most days. I didn’t have the energy for the get out the door struggle.
I totally get it. When there is a plan and energy, it’s doable. But those days when you are just scraping the bottom of the barrel and just want your kids to be willingly entertained somewhere, it’s to hard to muster up the “let’s get this done!” attitude.
That I totally get. So much so that I rarely leave unless we got somewhere to be.
Lol, I don’t leave the house often. Never turns out well. We can feed the ducks or go to the library and that’s about the only 2 things that dont end or begin in tantrums or tears.
I have been known to resort to trickery by saying something like, “Put on your shoes, we are going to a special place. I can’t tell you where because it’s a surprise.” Then we usually go to a local park. The hardest part is getting mine out the door. If I reveal the location ahead of time, this tactic fails and results in copious amounts of whining.
Gonna try this trick! It will only work once, but I’ll take it.
If you go to a reasonably good place the first time, it can work more than once. At least I’m hoping so.
I’ve done this and it does work more than once. However, The Boy will say from time to time, “Mommy, let’s not go the store this time. That is NOT a good surprise.” LOL
Trying this!!!
The one time my mom used this trick on us, she was taking us to get shots at the doctor! I can see how it could work well if you ended up somewhere fun though.
Sounds like my three kids over the weekend! It was gorgeous out and all they wanted to do was sit inside and play legos, build puzzles, and play with lincoln logs. Terrible 🙁 It took me awhile to get them dressed and out into the yard but we eventually went. It bugs me so bad when they tell me they don’t want to go outside….
When my oldest two were 2 and 4ish they were complete opposites. The older one never wanted to stay home, and the younger one never wanted to leave home. She’d have happily stayed at home every day. Eventually, I was able to lure her out to playdates by calling them “parties” which is toddler for “cake” or some other ridiculous treat. She never did become super fond of people, but she learned to appreciate other people’s stuff at least.
My three year old will only go to a party because he knows there is cake.
Just like he will only go to Uncles house because he gets an insane amount of sugar.
He can remember those things but can’t remember where is beloved blue car is!
My 3yo is always ready to roll (especially if it involves Wal-Mart) but I hate going places. I’m almost a hermit, LOL.
Instead of kids I have a fiance who NEVER wants to go anywhere. I’m a social butterfly but he’s not very social. If he had it his way he’d just stay at home all the time except to wall the dog. When I do convince him to go out he acts like I’m torturing him by making him communicate with other humans!
walk NOT wall
Wow, this was my day today totally! We were outside for 10 minutes and they wanted to come in and not leave the rest of the day. I’m sooo glad to hear other peoples’ kids are the same! So boring!!! I said, ‘if we don’t go out I’m going on the computer, or do you want to go out?’ They let me go on the computer. I agree with Amber, it’s the fight to get out of the door I just don’t have the energy for.
My son is the opposite. I can get him to go places but then I can’t get him home!
I’m realising what a lucky mama I am. Not once in 3.5 years has my son ever said he is bored. We do go out every day, and sometimes twice, but at home there always seem to be lots of things to do. Maybe it helps that we do everything together. He even enjoys helping with housework… Perhaps we’re both a little weird…?
(Perhaps, more realistically, it’s because he’s had health problems and so when he’s well it seems to us both like holiday).
That is so exactly what happens at our house. 🙂
My older boy and I are like crappy boy, quite happy at home doing our thing, but my 16 mnth old wants to go out, if I open the front door he tries to escape, or he climbs in his buggie in the hope I’ll take him out in it.
Last week I caught him by the outer front door holding a big umbrella that has a hooked handle trying to hook the door handle to get out. Quite an ingenious plan given handle is too high for him to reach but probably quite easy to open with the umbrella. I quickly closed the ‘real’ front door so he doesn’t have access to execute his escape plan…
Pretty much my day on Monday. I think Gracie was even wearing a blue dress.
yes that is very frustrating….my son drives me nuts with that-I need to go to the store or something after I pick him up from after-school care and his words are when he sees we are not going home-But i want to go home…. or when I tell him where we are going -but I want to go home….sigh….. but when I tell him we are going somewhere he wants to go (On the weekends)-he asks me twenty million times Is it time to leave yet???? I need to stop telling him when we are going… lol
After that, I’m glad I’m 60.
Bangkok, what with all the rain and boiling hot days, is famous for indoor playgrounds. I made a (rare) playdate with another mom friend to bring our kids to a really cool, but expensive indoor playground last spring. I couldn’t believe the things coming out of my son’s mouth as I tried to get him ready. Me: They have giant slides there. Him: I don’t like giant slides! Me: They have a room full of balls for jumping in. Him: I don’t like those. Me: They have bikes you can ride on! Him: I just want to stay here!! I don’t want to do anything!
I know the feeling bud…
Mine don’t want to leave the house more often than they do which is fine by me because I’m part hermit (on my mothers side). But then I worry, Am I doing this to you?
Haha! These drawings always make my day. Thank you!
A wise mother of 5 told me that she had only one response for a child who claimed to be bored: “Go scrub the toilet.” Almost like magic, the child immediately thought of something (else) to do.
OMG my older boy drives me crazy with this! I can’t stand being cooped up inside the house even for a single day and he never wants to go anywhere or do anything. He’s even been known to turn down Disneyland!!!!
Whose child is this, seriously?
Luckily, when my younger son was born it was clear from the start that he was more like me. So we will continue to drag Mr. Anti-social around everywhere we go!
Yup, my four year old does the same thing. I get cabin fever and she just wants to lay around complaining. I tell her she can either go to the store, park, friend’s house, or wash the windows. Usually stops the whining and we go OUT!
good for him! my daughter never seems to want to go home even after a long day at daycare!! what’s up with that?! I love being home.
WOW ! My kids don’t want to stay home at all !! They need to move and do stuff outside the house all the time, even my 15 months old is always bringing me her shoes to go out at 7am every morning. It’s me who want to stay at home some time to time…
I do love how you get advice-‘ just say you’re going and go’. It’s strange. I thought this was a blog with amusing anecdotes, not a ‘please tell me what I’m doing wrong blog’. 😉
My kids are the opposite they want to go places all the time. And most days I don’t want to get out of my pajamas.
Wow!! awesome things you people done here. I like it very much this hand drawing Art. Great effort!! and nice response from various peoples.
tie guan yin
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Hehe, happens all the time. I want to take a walk more than my son does. Oh well!
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