Balancing time between children of different ages

We’ve all been in this situation where one child is ill and the other wants to play. Recently my baby was not well, he had a temperature, I think there was some kind of infection going around. He was very sensitive and just wanted me to hold him and give hime lots of cuddles. My three year old boy wanted to play and run around much as any three year old loves to do.

Now obviously I am in a dilemma, I can’t put the ill child down and start to run around with the well child, but by the same token I can’t neglect the well child either.

This extends further than having an ill and well child the question is what do you do when you have two children both pulling you in opposite directions?

As children get older their intrests will inevitably diversify, this could start off at the playground where one wants to go on the slides and the other on the climbing frame which will inevitably be at the opposite ends of the playground, as they get older they will both expect you to ferry them to their favourite class which will of course be at the same time.

So how do you do it?

Do you alternate, week to week, term by term?

Do you give the one showing better progress preference, do you do it on merit, e.g. does a Maths class trump an English class, does swimming lessons trump football lessons, how do you decide? Is it based on logistics, i.e. the closer one always wins?

I want as much as I can to balance and be fair to both my boys, I’ve been taking my three year old to swimming and football since he was able to do both activities. Now I’m taking my baby to swimming too. I spent about a year taking the baby to swimming at 9am then rushing back home dropping him to his mother then rushing back with my three year old to do his swim class. That was actually quite stressful as the time gap between the two classes was just about right but meant that we couldn’t afford any delays. Now I’m looking to do that again with the football classes.

Do you ever get this as well, the fact that you did it for the first child means you should do it with the second child too?

What if he doesn’t like football, do I still do it just so I can feel inside that I gave both of them equal opportunities?

I really like to hear from you how you balanced out opportunities between two or more children especially as logistics become increasingly difficult and when you had to choose between one’s activitiy over the others purely because it wasn’t feasible to do both.

As ever thanks for reading, look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comment sections below. Thanks, Farhan