Are you looking for ways to make your child’s day brighter and memories magical? Mothers are the ones that always find ways to make waits shorter, make injuries seem less painful, and carry the Mary Poppin’s bottomless bag. From making your moments magical on a road trip, family vacation, or in the backyard, the following can create magical memories with your children that they’ll remember for years or a lifetime!

• Keep Things Simple

You do not have to make the moment perfect to make it memorable. In fact, stressing over perfection can cause the moment to be less magical. Keeping things simple makes it much easier to fit a magical memory in here and there, such as making fun-shaped sandwiches or creating forts from pillows and couch cushions. 

Children have amazing imaginations and often find the simplest activities amazing. 

• Ordinary Reimagined

Spend time showing your kids how to look past the first impression of things around them. Encourage imagination! A blanket pile could be a castle, a hamper may be a stranded pirate ship; the possibilities are endless when children use their imaginations. 

• Join Them!

Remember how we said keep it simple? Join them on the floor while playing, hop on the monkey bars or playground equipment you can fit on. Cuddle with them and watch their favorite show, etc. Joining them in something they are already having fun with can create a simple memory they can cherish for years. 

• Don’t Plan It

By creating a plan, you are likely to stress over perfection. If something does not go right, it may ruin the rest of the ‘plan,’ do something without planning it! Most of the best-planned stuff goes wrong when winging it, and embracing the unexpected creates adventure. This will create a memory not only for your child but for you as well!

• Getting Messy

Most of the day is spent ensuring cleanliness; on occasion, it is okay to get messy. Bring out finger paints, have your children join in baking or decorating a cake, stomp around in mud outside, etc. Don’t worry over the mess every time. Instead, let the mess and cleanup come later, enjoy the moment and have fun with your kids! 

• Go Outdoors

With technology all around us, take time with your child doing something outdoors. It could be a simple walk in the rain, playing in the snow, camping, or watching a meteor shower. Whatever the activity, there is no wrong time to get outside and create memories!

• Play Music

Many people associate memories and music. Play something even during the most common activities like cooking, cleaning, or doing laundry. This increases the fun factor, boosts the mood, and can be anything from your favorites to your child’s fav show toons. Create a playlist or two and have it handy to play. This can also help make picking up toys more fun for kids at the end of a day of playing. 

• Sharing Memories

If you have magical memories from when you were a kid, chances are your children may be interested in knowing them too. Introduce them to your favorite movies, books, a favorite vacation location, or play your favorite childhood game. Have special photographs from your childhood? You could recreate them with your own children. 

• Saying ‘Yes’

If you are the type of parent that often says ‘no,’ switch things up and surprise them. Although as parents, some situations simply have to be answered with ‘no,’ but that doesn’t mean you can’t say yes to more reasonable requests for 24hrs!

• Flip A Bad Day

Magical moments are not always something that starts out good and ends great; sometimes they are made from a bad thing turned good. Such as days when everything did not go as planned, and you decide to wing it and turn it into something positive. If you wake to it raining when you planned a beach day or ruin breakfast by forgetting an ingredient, find a way to turn it around and do something else fun. 

• Let The Kids Lead

Let your kids plan out the day and see what they come up with. Not only will the day be fully unexpected and unplanned (by you), it allows you to see what type of day your child would enjoy. If you have multiple children, simply split the plan between them. For example, one plans the lunch menu, another chooses the activity, and so on. 

• Ask Questions

If you are trying to figure out what your child would enjoy doing, remember you can always ask them. Many times parents get caught up trying to assume what their children would have fun doing and forget there’s a simpler approach – simply asking them. 

Children do not always remember specific activities over the years, but allowing them to feel special is something they will remember for a lifetime. Let them know that you are listening by focusing on conversation, what they like, goals, dislikes, dreams, and aspirations. This will help reassure that their hopes and perspectives actually matter and that you are truly interested in them. 

These are just some of the possible things you can do to help create magical memories with your children. Just remember, the best memories do not have to be planned out 100% or go perfectly as planned. Most of the memories we remember throughout life were the unexpected, off-the-wall things we experienced.