Traditions / Birthdays & celebrations / Yes Day
KIND
Yearly
WHERE
Home, or out
HOW LONG
1 day
AGES
5+
IN THE COLLECTION
Nº 005
A YEARLY TRADITION
Yes Day
today, the answer is yes!
One day a year, the answer to almost everything is yes. Ice cream for breakfast, the long way home, the ridiculous idea they've been saving up. They'll remember it for years.
HOW IT WORKS
Say yes, inside the lines you agree together
01
Announce it, and fill in the sheet together
Tell them a week out: next Saturday, the answer is yes. Then sit down together and fill in the Yes Day sheet — the date, the hours it runs, what there is to spend, and the few things that stay off the table. Ten minutes, everyone signs it, done.
02
Hand out the yes coupons
Each child gets a small stack of paper tickets that say YES. These are the day's currency. When they want something, they hand over a coupon and the answer is automatically yes. No pleading, no negotiating. Small kindnesses stay free all day; coupons are for the big asks.
03
Then say yes
Follow them into their idea of a perfect day, even when it isn't yours. Ice cream before lunch. The slide again. The long way home. Whatever the coupon buys — yes. If something truly can't happen, it's a "yes, but": not the trampoline park, but we could do the pools?
04
Add to the list
Over dinner, everyone names their favourite yes of the day. Write it on the same sheet, on the line for this year. That growing list is the real keepsake. The day is fun — the list is the tradition.
You'll be tired at the end of it. It's one day a year. They'll bring it up for a decade.
WHY IT WORKS
It isn't the ice cream. It's being followed
Kids hear no all day long, mostly for good reasons — not safe, can't afford it, no time, too tired. A Yes Day doesn't undo any of that. It carves out one day a year where the default flips and they find out what happens when their ideas are the plan.
What lands isn't the ice cream. It's being followed. For one day, they decide where the family goes and what it does, and the grown-ups come along. That's an enormous feeling when you're seven, and just as good at fourteen when the ask is a long drive for a specific burger.
And the sheet is what makes it work from your side. Without it, a Yes Day is an open tap and you end up saying no by 2pm anyway. With the rules and the budget already written down and agreed by everyone, you genuinely get to say yes every single time — which is the whole point.
MAKE IT YOURS
Make it fit you
One each, near their birthday
Instead of one family Yes Day, give each child their own in their birthday week. Everyone else spends the day saying yes to them. This is the better version if your kids are years apart — a four-year-old and a fifteen-year-old want completely different days, and this way nobody has to compromise.
The at-home version
No budget needed at all. Yes to a blanket fort in the lounge, dessert first, the sprinkler on in the driveway, a film in the middle of the afternoon. The location was never the point — the sheet and the coupons work exactly the same.
Watch the film first
If you want to build it up, watch the film Yes Day together the week before. It does the explaining for you — by the credits everyone knows what's coming and the kids are buzzing. Entirely optional; the tradition works just as well without it.
FREE PRINTABLE
The Yes Day Sheet
Two pages. One you keep, one you cut up for coupons.
- The agreement — date, hours, budget, and the few things still off the table
- Space to sign, so nobody argues the terms later
- A page of cut-out YES coupons, ready to hand out
- Your favourite yes, written down year after year on the same sheet
FREE. NO ACCOUNT. STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX.
