With most kids off for Summer Break, here are some helpful tips to find a balance between fun and routine over the next few months.
With most kids children off for Summer Break, here are some helpful tips to find a balance between fun and routine over the next few months.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Chelsea Dorcich. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hi, welcome back to Project Parenthood. I am your new host, Chelsea Dorcich, licensed marriage family therapist here in California. I am here to join you on your conscious parenting journey, bringing more curiosity, openness, acceptance, kindness, and non judgment along the way. My goal is through these podcasts that we accept what is out of our control, commit to improving our parenting life and discover better outcomes for ourselves and our family.
By now, all the kids are out on summer break. I imagine this can lead to a mixture of feelings, maybe a huge relief that we're not rushing out of the house every day, or maybe you are still rushing out to work in summer camps, but also want to try to find a way to balance this out with family fun. Maybe there's that fear of hearing the words, I'm bored or worry that you won't get everything accomplished that you had hoped.
Today's episode, I want to dive into a few quick hacks to help you and your kids enjoy summer while also keeping up with necessary skills to help you get ready for next school year. It can be hard to find a balance between relaxing and enjoying the time off while also maintaining somewhat of a routine.
We want to end summer feeling good about aspects, but also try to avoid that disappointing feeling that we didn't do all those things we imagined. The start of summer is a great time to set intentions and goals for the weeks ahead. To sign on screen time limits and expectations, set up summer academic support, and even some chores and household projects.
First summer hack, identifying a meaningful goal. You can have each child set up their own individual goal and each parent, as well as a family goal. Your children's goals could look something like musical related, sports, video games, cooking, anything they want to accomplish, finish, or do. Same goes for you parents.
Family goals can be something as simple and fun as trying a new recipe together, maybe a new spot on the lake, Or maybe it's time to start scheduling more one on one parent child time within your family. Once your children identify their goal, help them break it down into smaller chunks and map that across the summer weeks.
Help them schedule how much time they want to really allocate for each goal, each step, and what does that look like on a daily basis, weekly basis. Record this breakdown onto a planner or even a blank calendar template you can print out from online. Whether you use a planner from last school year or this is a great time to buy a new planner to get ready for the next school year.
Include all of their camps, practices, rehearsals, job shifts, anything. Playdates, all of it. Each Sunday, take time to look at the coming week as a family. So looking at family calendars as well as individual calendars. What activities are happening this week? What things do you need to prepare? Organize?
What steps are involved in reaching their goal? This is actually one of my favorite recommendations for families during the school year is having children look at their upcoming week with school, extracurricular activities, friends. It’s so great for strengthening their organizational and planning skills.
And just to add another little summer fun way to strengthen those organizational and planning skills is to get your children more involved in cooking projects or packing for trips. They need to look at recipes. They need to gather materials, ingredients for trips. They have to take into weather. What activities are you doing on that trip?
So this really helps them get thinking about what, how they can plan what they need to organize. And even if it's not a long trip, even if it's just a day trip to the park, the pool, the zoo, whatever have you, you know, including snacks, sunscreen, all those little things that are involved as we, as parents know all too well, have your kids start learning what it takes to really be organized and plan ahead.
Hack number two for summer screen time. So I know this one's one that the limits can get loosened up, you know, during summer when we don't have as much going on, but still try to find a way to break it up throughout the day or have it be the second half of a first then statement, for example, first, we're going to read 20 minutes and then some screen time, or first, we're going to work on our questions.
Goal, our summer goal. Like maybe you can get so many minutes done or the first step done, and then we'll do screen time. Maybe it's something like first, we're going to exercise for 60 minutes, or we're going to get outside for a couple hours. Then we'll have screen time, find common ground with your kids, have a conversation, make those expectations and limits transparent.
So they know what to expect.
Summer hack number three, summer academics. If your child is attending any sort of summer school or program, don't even worry about including educational activities in the summer. However, if your child's not, choose one, maybe two areas of focus. This can be a subject like reading or math or a specific skill they want to work on.
And you're going to set up a certain time during the day for them to practice this, usually first thing in the morning after breakfast, or maybe later afternoon- evening, when they would normally be doing homework during the school year. And this is just a quick 15 minute math. If that's their subject that you work on, there are so many online resources, like Khan Academy, academics, extra math, you know, even connect with teachers.
If you still have their contact info. Asking them if they haven't already recommended something writing, kids can work on their own fiction stories. There's online tools like video writing prompts that help them do that. Give them a journal or use a leftover composition book from the school year and have them start journaling weekly activities.
Have them reflect on their goals. What they've done so far. What still needs to be done. Or have it be a family involvement where there's a journal that everyone is passing back and forth. Maybe it's just a parent child. Maybe it's just siblings or the whole family And you can get super silly, super creative of what's being written back and forth and do fun things.
Like my kids the other day just started doing word jumbles, like just creating their own for us. So that's anything that really pertains to your family and interests your family. For reading, you can turn on subtitles, reference your school's reading list. I know our library always has a summer reading challenge.
We even have a frozen yogurt place that will pass out bookmarks that kids keep track of the books they've read. And then they turn that in for some free Fro-yo also audiobooks. Don't forget about these. These actually help strengthen working memory. So it's great to add into also reading books, but listening as well.
Summer hack for chores and household projects. Summertime's a great time to start new chores or like a job chart. You have more flexibility to really implement and fine tune it before the school year starts. This encourages responsibility and accountability for your children, and it helps them work on executive function skills of starting and finishing tasks that are less desirable.
Because reality is they're going to get to the school year and they're going to be subjects or projects that they just don't really have any motivation to do. And this kind of helps them, okay, how do I get started on this? And how do I keep finishing it? When you think about where your kids do homework during the school year, if you don't have one, this is a great time to create one.
Or if you do refresh it and involve your children in it, have them help decorate it, set it up. So they have more ownership and excitement about using it. Clean out, declutter, organize last year's backpacks, binders, folders, inventory your school supplies, throw out what can't be reused, or write down what you need to replace, write down what you can reuse so you don't buy more of it when it gets closer to the school year.
Use these backpacks and these items for road trips too if you have any coming up. It is recommended that you start school routines at least one week, if not two weeks, before school starts. Starting with a summer goal, incorporating screen time expectations, academic support, and making time for chores and household projects can be key to wrapping up your summer on the best note possible.
Spend time reflecting at the end of each day or each week and notice what you did, whether it was planned or unexpected accomplishments. If there's something you didn't quite get to try to stay away from judgment and just use your reflection to inspire the next day or week's intention. This concludes our episode.
Remember to be curious, open, accepting, kind, and nonjudgmental on your conscious parenting journey. If you have any questions about this episode, about your parenting journey and or topics you'd like to hear more about, please reach out to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. Or leave a message at 646-926-3243.
Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips. Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Morgan Christianson, and Brannan Goetschius. May you be happy, safe and protected, healthy and strong, and live with ease.