Parenting trends come and go, but the phenomenon of an ‘empty’ weekend, sounds like something that could be up many people’s street.
From helicopter parenting, to permissive, authoritative and authoritarian, there are a number of different parenting styles to choose from.
Permissive, is when you set no boundaries with your kids; authoritative (aka gentle parenting) is when you hold boundaries respectfully; and authoritarian is when you use bribes and threats to do the work.
While different, there’s almost always going to be this one thing in common: a weekend routine that includes planned activities.
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However, one man wrote for The i Paper that his method has become a staple for him and his partner.
Colin Drury explained that while his friends sent their kids off to clubs each week, his family chose to resist the temptation so that their children’s weekends could ‘be filled with something those clubs don’t necessarily provide: new experiences, variety and spontaneity.’
Also, a lie-in wouldn’t hurt too.
The way this has changed their lives is that they have to get creative to fill their weekends.
Colin wrote that ‘with no pre-booked, timetabled, always the same classes, we have been forced (as was the strategy) to think up ever-evolving ways to keep them – and us – entertained'.
While you might be worried that this method will cost you an arm and a leg as you try to come up with things to do outside of the home, the dad-of-two shared that while they do go out to the museum and on walks, or to lunch, they also do a lot at home too.
He explained: “Not a single routine have we established. One Saturday might be out of the house before the sun dawns for a day in York; another might be reading with cups of tea in bed until a bacon butty lunch.
"One Sunday morning might be visiting Lincoln Castle; the afternoon might be recreating it in the dining room with sofa cushions, saved cardboard boxes and those toilet roll tubes.
"Great fun, top times. Until you ask them to tidy away at dinner and suddenly they’re too tired.”
He went on to add that their hobbies expanded to include gymnastics, despite not going to a gymnastics class on the weekends, and that they ultimately gave them a choice to attend a class on Saturdays if they wanted to explore this new love.
They did, and so they now go.
However, 'their sheer joy at these timetabled, pre-booked, always-the-same lessons’ has ‘been worth sacrificing Saturday morning lie-ins for’.
This led Colin to ask if they’d got ‘it wrong all along’ and if they ‘should we have got them in sooner.’
In the end, he says he doesn’t regret his ‘empty weekends’ as it created memories he can hold forever.
Britt Jones