Greetings, fellow parents. Do you despair daily over how swimmingly other parents cope online? Are you in awe of celebrity family holiday photos? Do you eye them with a burning ache and wish that your family holiday, too, was similarly magical and less about breaking up WWE fights between your beloved offspring?

Then head this way if you want to soothe your troubled heart. (I am assuming that it is only mothers headed this way, because my research indicates that fathers care as much about what other parents are doing as a baboon would about solving quadratic equations.)

Dearest mothers: I hope you understand that those on social media with their Nat-Geo style family holidays may look convincingly human, but they most likely hail from a distant planet. Here on Earth, the children (and mothers) who do not make the final cut on social media are a distinctly different species.

A picture-perfect holiday doesn’t exist

“So we just returned from our holiday, and I don’t think I ever want to take these people out ever again,” reports Hiba, a mum in London with two young children and a dream of recreating a holiday worthy of Instagram. By “these people”, she means the children she birthed some years ago, and by “holiday”, she means the beautiful beach-side kid-friendly resort she booked in Turkey. My fellow parent currently has small children who adore nothing in the universe as much as Paw Patrol. If you do not know what Paw Patrol is, do not look it up. If you do, then you will have some idea of what’s coming next.  

“All the boys wanted to do was watch Paw Patrol wherever we went,” she fumes. “Why did we get on a plane if all they want is Paw Patrol?”

It is a question that has plagued many a parent since the concept of holidays came into existence. “You can’t see it,” says one mum as she shows a photo of her three beaming arm-in-arm children against the backdrop of a sunlit beach, “but I had to bribe them all with chocolate to get them to stand together without someone pulling a face.”

Bribing does not appear to be a problem to the social media crowd – or at least it is something they never publicly admit to – particularly when a written, or photographic, account of ‘making memories’ is on the agenda.

“I see so many parents posting so many lovely pictures of days out, but my kids just bicker wherever we go, and I feel bad we never end up having a good time,” laments Shazia, a teacher in Reading with three kids and a holiday as disappointing as Hiba’s. “Either it rains, or it’s too hot, or they’re never happy with the activities we picked, or they just want to go home. How come everyone else can do it and I can’t?”

So, as a public service, allow me to illustrate what a real parent’s version of a nice day out with the kiddies constitutes. I am using London as my example, but feel free to substitute it with a place of your choice.

What a nice day out as a family actually looks like

First, you announce to the children – First-Born, Second-Born, Third-Born – that you are going to spend the day in London as a Family. Turn a blind eye to the blank faces that greet this exciting news.

Book museum tickets. Turn a deaf ear to the repeated exaggerated sighs of children who are swallowing this development like the bitterest of pills. Find a line outside the museum longer than any distance the Proclaimers are willing to walk. (500 miles there and back, for those unfamiliar with the magnum opus of the Proclaimers.) You may be made of stronger stuff than both of the Proclaimers put together, but your travelling party is not, so you make the executive decision to go to Covent Garden instead. Switch on Deaf Ear mode when the spawn suggest ‘Home’ as an option for ‘Somewhere Else’. Take the obligatory family selfie outside the museum and bark at everyone to for goodness’ sake, smile for two seconds.

Herd the flock onto a train headed towards Covent Garden. Realise that all trains have been shut down due to trespassers. Spend two hours looking for a bus with five spare eats. Point out the sights to the child sitting next to you, who happens to be Third Born. (“Tower of London! St Paul’s Cathedral!”) Turn a deaf ear to Third Born who counters with local sights more suited to her needs. (“Look! A cake shop! Maybe we should go there instead of Covent Garden.”)

Arrive at Covent Garden. This is the point you will remember that you have one child who likens pigeons to fire-breathing dragons, and that Covent Garden is home to about a million of them. Bribe the spawn with overpriced ice cream so they can shut up about pigeons and how boring Covent Garden is.

Remind yourself that since pigeons were once used in place of postal workers, they must have something going for them, and therefore do not deserve to be shot on the spot when they cause Second-Born’s ice cream to plop to the ground during an impromptu fly-past with their cohorts.

Go home. On the journey, turn the blindest of blind eyes at First-Born’s teenage martyr face and ramp up Deaf Ear Mode for Second-Born’s soliloquy on the unfairness of life, vis-à-vis pigeons and ice cream, although if this gets too tiresome, you can always instead try to tune out the sound of Third-Born reminding you that you never take her anywhere interesting, like a cake shop. Look back at the one photo you took, and realise your eyes were closed. Delete immediately and remind yourself to stay off Instagram.

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