First appeared in the Ealing & Acton Gazette on July 28th 2007
 We all love having kids at home, but the frantic rounds from holiday sports sessions to friends' houses to cinemas could frazzle the most dedicated parent or carer. And family holidays - those most precious once yearly treats - can become a minefield when family members are in each others' company an unaccustomed 24 hours per day. Whatever kind of parent you are, here are a few tips that I hope will help you.
We often regard the daily tedium of life as a distraction from what would otherwise be perfect happiness. It’s easy to romanticise family life. But issues normally submerged under daily demands can appear more easily in leisure time. When the gap between expectation and reality gets too large, the disappointment can lead to frayed tempers and misery. So it may be wise to prepare for the prospect of the odd spat, especially between siblings, and to regard them constructively in advance - an opportunity to sort a few things out.
Get homework out of the way right away. It’s my patented ‘eat your sprouts before your roast potatoes’ philosophy! The enjoyable stuff will be there when they’ve finished, and will be much more fun without the black cloud of duty raining on their mood. You can give help to your kids
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freedom from one of the most debilitating conditions suffered by us all – procrastination – by getting them into good habits now. If you have stuff of your own to do – keeping books, writing letters – all the better. Set a number of hours per day and sit together around the table together ‘til it’s done.
After the duty there's a lot of fun out there, and a lot of it doesn’t even cost anything. Look at internet listings for great days that won’t require a remortgage. Take turns to choose what to do - the resentment levels drop like a stone when everybody has had a hand in the planning. And the memories are guaranteed if you make a summer scrapbook. One ring binder and a packet of plastic sleeves mean they’ll have somewhere easy to deposit all the leaflets, photos and tickets, and it's a distraction from those inertial pastimes like computer games and TV. These are fine in moderation, but who wants to find their child welded to the sofa after six weeks?
And my final tip: stop ironing! Who’s going to notice if your sheets aren’t flat? Now that you’re not at the office/workshop and the kids aren’t at school, who needs starched collars? Dry T-shirts flat(ish!) over racks and banisters. Ironing regularly appears in surveys as the most hated household chore, so give yourself a break. Remember – it’s your holiday too.
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