Perhaps you come home from a long day at work, and after taking the children to sports and dance class and other activities, and making dinner and checking homework, all you want to do is put your feet up on the couch and fall asleep in front of the television. A single parent’s day can be a long one and many of us have a hard time really making good use of the time we have with our children in the evenings. While the days of sitting around the radio like The Waltons might be long-passed, there are kid-friendly evening activities that are well-suited to a single parent family.
In my many years as a single parent, I have learned there are a few key things to keep in mind for the great family evening activity. It needs to be something that appeals to all or most of the family members, makes a minimum of mess, and is easy to stop and start if interest changes. Depending on the age of your child, this can include all sorts of mutually pleasant activities.
Reading stories is a traditional parent-child activity, but consider books on tape/cd for that “old time” radio feel. This way you can do other things like play checkers or a board game, or learn to knit or draw while you are listening to stories together—less work and stress for a tired parent.
Consider baking freezer cookies—to minimize the mess of making cookies from scratch, you can simply pull out the freezer dough and bake cookies. This is a simple way to do something very comforting on a busy weeknight.
Instead of simply turning on the television and ‘vegging’ out, think of ways that you can actually talk to each other—tell ghost stories or look through photo albums. My children used to love it when we would get out their baby books or scrap books. As a single parent family, there are many ways to connect with each other at the end of a busy day without making too much mess or taking up too much energy or resources.
See Also: ACTIVITIES in the Parenting Blog