The witching hour; just before dinner with kids
I’m sure we aren’t unique in the fact that there are times of the day when travelling and camping with young kids that are by far and away the most challenging. For us, we’ve coined the time from about 4 – 5PM as the witching hour (although its getting better), as its when our kids are the most whingy, needy and unreasonable, and a lot of it stems from being worn out from a big day, and the fact that they are in need of food.
We call it Hangry, where the kids get angry, frustrated and upset because they are hungry, and I’m sure you probably know a few adults that get this way too.
Our kids have only ever sporadically eaten big meals. They’ll often pick at food, and it becomes a real challenge to get them to hold off and eat a good dinner. Often after many minutes of complaining we will get them an apple, or banana or snack before dinner but inevitably it ends up with them not wanting to eat their food, and then they want extra supper before bed and the cycle continues.
Our best tactic so far for the witching hour is to keep the kids busy. If Sarah is cooking dinner, I’ll take them for an adventure, where we’ll walk somewhere we haven’t been or we go looking for birds, or play a game together with a ball.
If they are distracted and busy then it’s a breeze, but if they are sitting around waiting for the food to cook then it’s a whole new ball game.
Please tell me you also suffer from the witching hour?!
