What Happens When You Take Kids On Holiday With No Planned Activities
The back of my SUV was still stacked with duffels and half-eaten granola bars when my 10-year-old Jake leaned against the cottage doorframe and asked the question I’d been dreading. “So what’s first? Are we doing the lighthouse tour after lunch, or the aquarium tomorrow?” I wiped sand off my jeans and said what I’d been practicing for a month: “I didn’t plan anything. We can do whatever you two want.”
For our past five family holidays, I’d had a running to-do list, timed departures, pre-booked tickets, snack breaks scheduled 10 minutes apart. I thought that’s what good parents did: give kids enriching experiences, make every minute count, avoid the dreaded “I’m bored” whine. This year, I’d been juggling work deadlines and extra reading support for Jake all semester, and I just… crashed. I booked the cottage two hours from home, threw some clothes and a box of random craft supplies in the car, and didn’t write a single plan.
Jake’s eyebrows went up. Mia, 7, stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Nothing? That’s boring,” she said, and flounced onto the couch to grab the TV remote. For the next hour and a half, they flipped between channels, complained that the Wi-Fi was too slow, and asked me three more times if I was sure I forgot to plan anything. I just sat on the porch drinking coffee, and said every time: “I didn’t forget. The bucket and spades are by the door, there’s paper and markers in the blue bin under the table, and we can leave to go anywhere at any time if you think of something. I’m fine hanging out here.”
By hour two, they got sick of the TV. Jake wandered out to the unstacked woodpile next to the cottage, started stacking logs to make a “fort base.” Mia followed, and they started arguing over who got the biggest piece of driftwood they’d dragged up from the shore. I didn’t get up to mediate, just listened from the porch. Ten minutes later, they worked it out: Jake got the driftwood for the front wall, Mia got to decorate the entrance with pinecones she collected. By dinner, they had a whole little fort, and a shared story about how it was a secret bunny rescue station, because they’d found a nest of baby bunnies in the brush behind the cottage that afternoon.
I’ve always bought into the idea that kids need constant planned activities to learn and grow. Jake’s teacher sends home suggestions for enrichment activities on breaks, and my social feed is full of parents posting their educational day trips. That day on the porch, I watched them negotiate, measure the driftwood to make sure it would stand, make up a whole story with rules and characters, and I realized none of that would have happened if we’d been running off to a scheduled tour. When every minute is planned, kids just follow the script. They don’t get to practice figuring out what they like, or solving their own disagreements, or creating something from nothing.
Third day, it poured all morning. They moped around for 20 minutes, and Jake said “can we just watch movies all day?” I said “we can, but what if you think of something else you might want to try first?” They dug through the craft bin, and came up with the idea of making a comic book about the baby bunnies. Jake wrote the dialogue, Mia drew the panels, and they worked on it for almost six hours straight. Jake has fought me on writing any more than a paragraph for his homework for months, but he wrote 12 pages of that comic, because it was his idea, his story. No grade, no prompt, just what he wanted to do.
A few small, concrete things I figured out that any parent can try if they’re curious about this. First, you don’t have to clear out the car and bring nothing, just don’t plan how to use what you bring. I threw a few open-ended things in: markers, a bucket, a ball, blank paper, no step-by-step kits, no scheduled projects. That’s more than enough. Second, when they say they’re bored, don’t jump in with a list of your own ideas. Just say “that makes sense, what do you think you might want to try?” It feels awkward at first, but it pushes them to think for themselves instead of waiting for you to lead. Third, it’s okay to let the first few hours be uncomfortable. I wanted to cave and turn on a movie or plan a trip to mini golf when they were moping, but I just waited it out. Boredom isn’t an emergency.
It wasn’t all perfect. On the last day, Mia ripped a page of the comic by accident, they both screamed, and I had to drive into town for ice cream to calm everyone down. We never did make it to the lighthouse or the aquarium, and when we packed up to leave, Jake asked if we could do one planned activity next time, just to see.
I’m already planning our fall break trip, and I caught myself the other day starting to book tickets for a pumpkin patch, a corn maze, and a cider mill, all in the same weekend. Then I closed the browser. I haven’t booked anything else yet, except the cabin. I still don’t know if no planned activities will work every time. Maybe next time they’ll mope the whole week. But I’m willing to find out.
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