It’s been four days since Jack tore his way through our stack of Christmas presents and his initial festive enthusiasm has started to wane. This year we opted to spend the Christmas holiday – two weeks through to New Year’s Day – away from home at my mum’s house at the other end of the country, and for Jack the lack of other children to play with has become palpable.

Fortunately, we’ve managed to stave off the dreaded ‘can we go home now?’ question thus far, helped by the promise of a hastily arranged playdate with an old school friend and their child on Friday.

However, this doesn’t detract from the fact that, once the Christmas buzz has passed and all the presents have been unwrapped, a child without siblings in a house full of adults begins to miss his friends.

This was a scenario we’d prepared for. Ish. In addition to his more substantial gifts, we made sure to wrap up a number of cheap toys designed to have him entertained for a few days.

In all honesty though, the results were mixed. While he loves his new fish figurines and crew of small stuffed pirates to accompany auntie’s pirate ship gift, he lost interest in his Toy Story puzzle and wandered off halfway through our concerted effort to make sock puppets using the kit we bought in the 99p shop.

Repeat plays (cringe!) of the Spongebob Square Pants movie have helped – although we’ve tried our hardest not to rely on the TV – and we even managed an enthusiastic two-hour trip out to a park yesterday to ‘break-in’ Jack’s new scooter.

Ultimately though, everyone – including Jack – is relying on the promise of playing with other children to satiate his need to let off some steam with someone his own age. Roll on Friday!

It would be great to hear about what other parents have been doing to keep their kids entertained while they’re away from home…