The kids' club that changed my mind (and I'm not a kids' club person)

Guest post by Allie, founder of family travel blog Little Brits Abroad

I need to admit something before I get into this: I don't like the idea of kids' clubs. Or at least, I didn't used to.

Not in a snobby way. I just never liked the idea of handing my son over to a room full of strangers and a rota of different staff each day, away from all the things that made us pick the hotel (the beach, the pool, the local area), so we could go off and do our own thing. Surely the whole point of a holiday is to spend quality time as a family?

So when we arrived for a week at Mousses Villas in Lefkada, I wasn't sure if we'd really use the kids' club. It came highly rated, so we thought we'd try a session or two if our son R, who was 18 months old at the time, seemed up for it. By the end of the week we'd used it every day, and I'd go as far as to say it was one of the best parts of the holiday. Not because it gave us some much needed solo afternoon chill time (which admittedly was nice), but because we could see just how much our son loved it and the confidence he was building over the week.

 

It's small, and that changes everything

Mousses only has room for a dozen families at full capacity. During our week there were about eight of us staying. That's not a kids' club in the way I'd always pictured one. There's no big group of children rotating through different staff, and all the children knew each other by name (well, the ones that could talk!). If I was ever seen walking around the pool without R I was met with a chorus of "where is he?" and "can he come and play" from the 4 and 5 year olds. We saw the same two members of staff, Anna and Fifi, every single day, and by Wednesday they knew his favourite toys and snacks. By Friday they knew him well enough that we happily paid the hourly babysitting rate and left him with them in the evening while we went out for dinner, something I have never considered doing on holiday.

Simply, it just didn't feel like childcare.  

Built around the whole family, not just the kids

A normal kids' club, in my head, exists to separate children from parents so the adults can have a break. Mousses does the opposite. The whole set-up is built around the family experience, with childcare woven in rather than bolted on.

For example, Wednesday is a family barbecue night at the resort taverna. Children under three eat with their parents at the table or are in bed and the older children spend the evening with the nannies in the creche garden, with frequent visits to come and say hi to their parents as they run off to their next game. Nobody's shipped off to a separate room on the other side of the resort. We stayed at that table until 11pm with the other families, glasses of wine going round, R's grandmother taking him back to our villa to sleep while we carried on chatting with our neighbours.

Even the garden the kids' club uses during sessions is open to families the rest of the time. We ended up there most evenings after dinner, R playing with the same toys he'd used that afternoon, us sat on the grass nearby enjoying the safe outdoor space. 

Movie night wasn't what I expected

We're not a screen time family, so when we heard one evening session was billed as "movie night," my first instinct was to skip it. I assumed R wouldn't sit through a film and I didn't love the idea regardless.

Then I found out what movie night actually is. The older kids watch something together with popcorn in one room while the younger ones have a completely separate space with an age appropriate film playing quietly in the background. But really by Thursday it's a chance to stay up late in a room full of their friends, with games and toys galore, rather than a film night.

We left him for just over two hours, even though we could have done three. When we picked him up he was still awake, still having fun, and got a hug goodbye from two older children in his group on the way out.

 

Who Mousses is best for

If you love a big resort kids' club with a full daily programme and sixty other children, Mousses probably isn't what you're looking for, and that's fine, there are plenty of brilliant options for that.

But if you're like I was, someone who has always found the idea of a kids' club a bit much, and who wants a holiday that still feels like a family holiday but with some brilliant opportunities for your kids to make new friends with children from different walks of life, Mousses sits in a lane of its own. 

Kids' club here is mostly outside (unless it's too hot) playing new games and reading new books, rather than your children having to follow you around on your holiday (or you having to stop doing the things you'd love to squeeze in because it's not child friendly, even if that is just a couple of hours reading your Kindle by the pool!). We didn't even leave the resort during kids club, but some parents took the chance to go solo to the beach and have a different sea experience, or go for an adults-only lunch. And what a joy to be able to do that for a couple of hours a day while knowing your littlest family members are having much more fun than they would probably have with you!

I went into our week at Mousses fully expecting kids club to be something I felt guilty about using. I came home having booked to go back, at our own cost, the following year. I cannot tell you how brilliant a week it was - it really is something quite special - almost the "anti kids club" kids club!

You can read our full review of Mousses Villas, and our wider guide to visiting Lefkada with kids, over on Little Brits Abroad.

Allie

Allie is a senior marketing director with 15 years of experience at some of the UK's biggest brands. Her travel stories feature her husband and co-pilot Jack, and their toddler, R. Little Brits Abroad exists because when she was pregnant, the internet was full of advice about whether to travel at all, and almost nothing useful about how to travel well with kids. Find more of their family travel stories at Little Brits Abroad.