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No fast food on this outing. Tonight you’ve taken your kids to a restaurant, made your selections from a menu you can actually hold in your hands and now you’re waiting for the food to arrive. And waiting. And waiting.
Want to keep your restless, hungry children from becoming completely miserable" Melisande Neal, mom of four, always keeps a stash of pencils and paper in her purse for just these emergencies.
Start simple, advises Neal. When her kids were at the younger range of this age group, she taught them tic-tac-toe. As her children’s skills increased, she added other, more challenging games. This list should give you some ideas the next time you’re waiting at the dentist’s office, in an airport, in the car… 1. Categories

Draw a grid on a piece of paper?a square filled with smaller squares. The number of squares can vary, depending on the attention span of your child. Down the left side, put some letters of the alphabet (for example, you could spell out a child’s name: LISA). Across the top, write categories ?for example, girls’ names, boys’ names, animals, colours, cars, places. You can make this harder or easier by changing the categories. Players take turns writing in words that fit the category and start with the letter in the left-hand column. (Next to the letter L, in this example, you might have Laura, Liam, lion, lavender, Lexus and Labrador.) Give extra points for words that nobody e...