Have you noticed how every other hotel seems to be adding on a kids' club? It is the must-have thing of the Noughties. Spas were the must-have of the Nineties and gyms made a huge appearance across hotels in the Eighties. Every hotel had to have them.

But hang on a minute. Does anybody use this stuff? How often have you passed the gym - nothing more than a cheapie exercise bike and a couple of weights - and wondered what the point was? Not serious enough for a proper workout, it seems to be there to satisfy one thing: to make you choose the hotel before another one. You think, I can't possibly go for a fortnight without a workout, get there, find it is useless or simply feel too lazy and don't bother anyway. It was simply a marketing ploy to get you through the door.

I have a sneaky feeling that kids' clubs are going much the same way. As a parent of young kids flicking through the holiday brochures, your eyes light up at the sight of childcare: you imagine wafting around some spa in a dressing- gown, sipping herbal tea and listening to Oriental rain music before popping down to the beach for a couple of hours of uninterrupted bonkbuster reading.

So you take your beloved offspring to the kids' club - full of jolly nursery-rhyme music, multicoloured plastic furniture, lovely new toys and, hey, other children to play with (far more interesting that boring old Mum and Dad) and leave them sucking their thumb and looking shyly around the complex. You notice five-year-old twins sobbing and clinging to their mummy's thighs for dear life, as if they're about to be dumped in an orphanage, and smugly think thank goodness my three-year-old daughter isn't like that.

You return three hours later. As you walk up the pathway to the kids' clubhouse, you hear wailing. The long boo-hoo, sob, sob that sounds as if it has been going on for some time.

Horror of horror. It's yours. 'We've been trying to ring you for three hours on your mobile. She hasn't stopped crying since you left her here. She wants her mummy.' The reunion is of the long-lost variety.

'Mummy, you went to work?' asks your little one.

Imagine the guilt. You read two hours of a novel and went for a swim all by yourself. Meanwhile, your child has been suffering - and this is supposed to be her holiday. She's supposed to be having fun.

As the week in the resort progresses, you meet more parents with similar stories. 'Ours refuse to go in the kids' club,' they say, with a raising of the brows and rolling of the eyes. The children, on just hearing the mention of the dreaded 'kids' club', start clinging to their mum, protesting: 'No, no, Mum. You're not going to put us in the kids' club, are you? We want to be with you!'

I've learnt the hard way. Holidays, especially if you work full-time, are for spending with your children and enjoying their company, not dumping them. Why bother to pay for their airfares if all you're going to do is bung them in the club? You may as well have left them at home with a favourite relative rather than put them through all that. Better still, take the children with you, and savour every moment.